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Getting started with Spanish 1
Getting started with Spanish 1

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1 Saying your name

To start this week, you will learn how to say your name using the verb ser (‘to be’).

Verbs: ser (‘to be’)

Verbs in Spanish are conjugated; this means that they change according to which person they refer to. For most verbs, conjugating involves changing the verb ending, but ser and a few other commonly used verbs are irregular which means you need to learn the different forms individually.

Table 1 Ser (‘to be’)
  ser  
(yo) soy I am
() eres you are
(usted) es you are
(él, ella) es he, she is
     
Soy Martín.   I’m Martín.
¿Eres Mónica?   Are you Mónica?
¿Usted es la señora Pérez?   Are you Mrs Pérez?
Es José María.   He is José María.

Note that in Spanish it is not always necessary to use the personal pronouns for ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘he’ or ‘she’.

Activity 1

Listen to the audio, in which people are saying their names, and write down the word they all use before saying it.

Download this audio clip.Audio player: lxs001_wk2_act_aud001.mp3
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