Morning conversation help

Question

Recently, a coworker and myself have been trying to converse a little in Spanish every day, although neither of us not terribly skilled with speaking the language.

One of the things I have been trying to do, is ask questions in Spanish every morning. I want to ask common questions I would otherwise ask in English, such as:

• how was traffic?
• how was your evening?
• what did you eat for breakfast?

• did you watch TV last night?

  ... things like that.

So this leads me to ask if anyone has a dialogue like this they can post here? If not, maybe it would be a useful teaching moment to create a list of these questions (and answers), because it reinforces the use of the preterit and irregular verb conjugations of 'ser' and 'estar'.

For instance, I am seriously confused about the above listed questions. I understand that preterit is used for time-constrained occurrences, but I am not confident I can properly use the correct construct consistently. So, would the questions be translated to Spanish as follows?

• ¿Cómo fue el tráfico? Is this ser - preterit?
• ¿Cómo fue su noche? Is this ser - preterit?
• ¿Qué comió para desayuno? is this preterit?
• mira la televisión anoche? preterit?

Perhaps, I've just been spending too much time on this lately, and it's all starting to blur together :/

Thanks

Watching your question Primus! :) - galsally, Jun 13, 2010

Answer 1

You might like this: estuvo vs. fue

¿Qué hiciste anoche? (What did you do last night?) Miré el televisión y me dormí temprano. (I watched television and went to sleep early.)

¿A qué hora dormiste? (What time did you go to sleep?) Me dormí a las ocho.

¿Cómo la pasaste anoche? (How was your night?) Muy bien, salí con Maria. (Really good, I went out with Maria.)

¿De veras? Y cómo te fue? (Really? And how did it go?) Me fue bien. (It went well.)

¿Cómo estaba el tráfico esta mañana? No estaba tan mal. (How was the traffic this morning? It wasn't so bad.) The question sounds a bit odd to me. I'm not sure why. I'd ask: ¿Había mucho tráfico? No, no mucho. (Was there much traffic? No, not much.)

¿Qué comiste para el desayuno? Comí tocino y huevos. (What did you eat for breakfast? I ate bacon and eggs.)

OR

¿Qué desayunaste? Desayuné fruta y cereal. (What did you eat for breakfast? I ate fruit and cereal for breakfast.)

P.S. I'm not a native speaker and corrections are welcome. - alba3, Jun 13, 2010

Desayuné con o comi.. para el desayuno - BellaMargarita, Jun 13, 2010

I think you're right; it does sound a bit better w/con fruta but I have heard it without it, too. Thanks. - alba3, Jun 14, 2010

Answer 2

I know what you mean about the blurring!

I'm often uncertain too, about when literal translation works and when it doesn't - I have the feeling it's more often the case that it doesn't work or sounds weird!

I have heard, however, ¿Qué tal.....(la clase, la cena, etc), so I get the feeling this could be a very useful one.

•¿Qué comió para desayuno? is this preterit?

Comió is preterit (2nd person formal or 3rd person sing.), but would be comiste for 2nd person informal.

•mira la televisión anoche? preterit?

Mira is present tense as far as I know, preterit would be miraste (2nd person informal)

However for watching tv I think one uses Ver, the preterit would be viste so maybe - ¿Viste la televisión anoche? or ¿Has visto la....? Present perfect tense. Now I'm not sure here either, if I watch something online it will say 'Estás viendo' I think, not 'estás mirando' Oh the muddle in my head. :/

Nice question, wait for more experienced voices!

Comió is also 2nd person formal singular (usted). - webdunce, Jun 13, 2010

I forget that so often. :/ I think it's because I seem to be older than everyone I talk to and alwyas thinking to say tú etc. - galsally, Jun 14, 2010

Answer 3

I wonder if the use of 'fue' when asking about something like 'last night', or your drive to work may equate more to the inherent qualities of the night/drive in question? Similarly, I wonder is the use of 'estuve' would be the construct to use in this case.

Thus asking: como fue su noche? would it be more in line of asking about the quality of the evening?

Whereas, maybe using 'estuvo' would be asking the question like you wanted to hear about the details?

**note that both examples ser/estar are in preterite... and that I am asking which is correct (fue, or estuve), because somehow 'estuve' seems right to me.

Como estuve su noche?

Looking forward to hearing what the pros have to say about this.

Answer 4

• ¿Cómo fue el tráfico? Is this ser - preterit? Yes (pretérito indefinido)
• ¿Cómo fue su noche? Is this ser - preterit? Yes (pretérito indefinido)
• ¿Qué comió para desayuno? is this preterit? Yes (pretérito indefinido)
• ¿mira la televisión anoche? preterit? No (it's presente de indicativo)

¿Miraste/Miró la televisión anoche? (pretérito indefinido)

And in the first question you could also use pretérito imperfecto, but it depends on the context. It's more like describing the setting that night: cómo estaba el tráfico.