New Song for Learning Spanish – Agua (the transvestite noun)
Our fabulous production team here at Bueno, entonces… has animated yet another song on the Pizarra Mí¡gica to help you with your Spanish!
The song today is called Agua, and it is sung by a Spanish band called Jarabe de Palo (translated: Syrup of Stick — try not to think about that too much). Don’t worry, the song is nice and slow, which makes it easy to understand. It’s a love song in which the singer is comparing his beloved lady to water– he has a thirst for her, and she is his water. Get it?
Anyway, you probably caught on pretty quickly that agua is one of those words in Spanish that is just a pain in the ass. It’s what we like to call a transvestite noun. Meaning to looks as though it should be one gender (feminine, because it ends with ‘a’), but it actually takes on its identity as masculine (EL agua). What is funny about this word, too, is that when an adjective is paired with it, the adjective takes on the ending as if it were a feminine verb (with an ‘a’). Ya, I know, it’s just one of those rare exceptions in Spanish to the normal rules of grammar. Here of some examples:
agua tibia = warm wateragua salada = saltwateragua bendita = holy water
Unfortunately, agua isn’t exactly one of those confusing words that is easy to avoid– in fact, you probably use in several times a day, so you’re just going to have to get used to the way it works.
There are a few interesting phrases embedded in this song, as well.
Examples: Nunca digas: de esta agua no beberí©. Literally, this phrase means ‘Never say: from this water I will never drink,’ but in real world terms, it is Jarabe de Palo‘s way of saying ‘Never say never’. The word beberí© might be in a tense that you are not familiar with– it is referring to the future. So that’s how we got the I will never drink translation out of just one word.
Another good phrase? Se me hace agua la boca. The English equivalent is ‘It makes my mouth water,‘ but of course it isn’t that simple. When you get further into the phrase, it can get into a big, confusing grammatical mess for several reason.
Reason 1: You see, hacerse is the verb being used in the phrase, which is a reflexive verb. This is why the phrase starts with Se me hace instead of simply Me hace.
Reason 2: In Spanish, you don’t ‘possess’ your own body parts. It sounds weird, I know, but you’ll see what I mean in a second. For example, in English I cut MY hair, but in Spanish (yo) ME corto EL pelo. Get it?
Alright, guys, hopefully the video did you some good! We’ll keep posting more, and if you have any recommendation as to what songs you would like to see on the pizarra mí¡gica, let us know here, on Twitter, or on Facebook!
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