Lesson 21 Notes

March 31st, 2007
CoffeeBreakSpanish.com
In this edition:
talking about
the weather
today and
tomorrow.
Lesson 21
Notes
¿Qué tiempo va a hacer mañana?
Lesson 21
Programme Notes
Welcome to Coffee Break Spanish, the podcast
aimed at independent learners of Spanish. In
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helping you to learn to communicate in Spain
and Spanish-speaking countries.
Here are more examples:
hace calor
it is warm (“it does heat”)
hace frío
it is cold (“it does cold”)
In this first lesson of unit 3 we deal with the topic
of weather. Use these notes as you listen to the
podcast to get full benefit from the recording.
The weather today
To talk about the weather in Spanish you need to
use the word el tiempo, “the weather”. In fact the
word tiempo also means “time”, but it’s
understood as weather in the question:
¿qué tiempo hace?
what is the weather like?
We’ve come across the word bueno in many
situations before. Bueno means “good”, as in
buenos días. To talk about “good weather” we
shorten bueno to buen:
hace buen tiempo
it is good weather
(“it does good weather”)
The opposite of buen tiempo is mal tiempo:
hace mal tiempo
it is bad weather
(“it does bad weather”)
Note the use of the verb hacer, meaning “to do”
or “to make”. In English the weather “is sunny”,
or “is windy”, but in Spanish, the weather “does
sun”, “does wind”, etc.
You can also add in the word hoy, meaning
“today”:
¿qué tiempo hace hoy?
what is the weather like today?
Let’s look at bueno in more detail:
m sing
bueno
f sing
buena
m plural
buenos
f plural
buenas
We’ll use hace in lots of answers to this question:
hace sol
it is sunny (“it does sunshine”)
hace viento
it is windy (“it does wind”)
1
This is how we arrive at phrases such as buenos
días (días is masculine plural) and buenas tardes
(tardes is feminine plural). You will, however,
notice that buen doesn’t feature at all in this list.
Bueno is often used before a noun, and like a few
other words, it loses its final -o when it comes
before the noun:
un buen libro
a good book
hace buen tiempo
it’s good weather
Don’t worry too much about bueno just now - it’s
probably easiest to learn it as part of a phrase for
the time being. Note that exactly the same thing
happens with malo:
un mal libro
a bad book
hace mal tiempo
it’s bad weather
The weather phrases up to now have used hace
which comes from hacer, meaning literally “to
do” or “to make”. We’ll need to use this infinitive
later in this week’s lesson.
Two more weather phrases are:
llueve
it is raining / it rains
nieva
it is snowing / it snows
Llueve comes from the verb llover and nieva comes
from nevar. We’ll be using these in the next
section.
The weather tomorrow
Until now we’ve been looking at how to talk
about what the weather is like currently, ie. today.
It’s often useful to know what the weather is going
to be like tomorrow. We’re going to be using the
phrase va a ... meaning “it’s going to...”:
it’s going to snow
va a llover
it’s going to rain
Note that in both examples, we’re using the
infinitives as explained above. This means that
when it comes to using the “tomorrow”
equivalent of hace sol, hace viento, etc., we’ll have to
use the infinitive hacer:
va a hacer buen tiempo
it’s going to be good weather
va a hacer sol
it’s going to be sunny
va a hacer frío
it’s going to be cold
We’ve already come across the word for
“tomorrow” in the phrase hasta mañana, meaning
“see you tomorrow”, so we can use that in the
phrases:
mañana va a hacer viento
tomorrow it’s going to be windy
mañana va a llover
tomorrow it’s going to rain
We can finally come up with the question:
¿qué tiempo va a hacer mañana?
what is the weather going to
be like tomorrow?
We can also come up with phrases such as:
hoy hace sol pero mañana
va a hacer frío
today it’s sunny but tomorrow
it’s going to be cold
va a nevar
CoffeeBreakSpanish: Lesson 21 - Basic Vocabulary
el tiempo
the weather (also: the time)
¿qué tiempo hace?
what is the weather like?
Coffee Break Spanish: Lesson 21
page 2
hoy
today
hace buen tiempo
it’s nice weather
hace mal tiempo
it’s bad weather
hace sol
it’s sunny
hace viento
it’s windy
hace frío
it’s cold
hace calor
it’s warm
llueve
it’s raining
nieva
it’s snowing
hacer
to do / to make
llover
to rain
nevar
to snow
mañana
tomorrow
va a + infinitive
it’s going to...
¿qué tiempo va a hacer mañana?
what’s the weather going to be like
tomorrow?
va a llover
it’s going to rain
va a nevar
it’s going to snow
va a hacer buen tiempo
it’s going to be good weather
CoffeeBreakSpanish: Lesson 21 - Bonus Vocabulary
voy a ...
I’m going to ...
voy a cantar
I’m going to sing
voy a comer
I’m going to eat
el pronóstico
the weather forecast
¿cuál es el pronóstico?
what’s the forecast?
¿cuál es el pronóstico para hoy?
what’s the forecast for today?
¿cuál es el pronóstico para mañana?
what’s the forecast for tomorrow?
una tormenta
a storm
va a haber una tormenta
there’s going to be a storm
hay una tormenta
there’s (currently) a storm
hay niebla
there’s fog
¡Qué tiempo más bueno!
what good weather!
¡Qué tiempo más malo!
what bad weather!
¡Qué tiempo más precioso!
what beautiful weather!
Qué tiempo más asqueroso!
what horrendous weather!
Coffee Break Spanish: Lesson 21
page 3