Spanish Idioms in Real Spanish Conversations between Two Natives
When it comes to acquiring fluency at upper-intermediate levels, learning idioms, expressions, colloquial words is essential. Surely by now you have learned funny Spanish idioms and expressions to speak fluently. Here I bring you more. In this case they are phrases that refer to animals but aren’t about them. Or maybe they are. Well, sometimes yes hahaha, you’ll understand when you watch this video. They are phrases that are going to help you for colloquial conversations and also they will help you sound more Spanish.
Click here to practice more with this topic for free. You will have a comprehension exercise, transcripts, translation, and a vocab word list.
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What are we going to see? Well, first we are going to focus on the domestic animals par excellence, the dog and the cat. They are always around us. We observe them, we live with them, we feed them, we play with them, we go for walks with them. We look after them when they are ill. So it is easy for their actions, their interactions, their personalities to become part of popular culture. That is why we have Spanish idiomatic expressions with animals. I am sure that if you stop to think about it, you have them in yours too, don’t you? These are the kind of phrases where we see someone acting the way a particular animal acts. Or when we create an image with that animal to create an analogy about a specific life situation. They often use the figurative sense.
I am sure you will be able to identify some situations or personalities in your life where you use these expressions.
However, it is not only dogs and cats that are part of our everyday vocabulary. We also have expressions for other types of animals, domestic and non-domestic. These expressions are usually preceded by some old acquaintances, the verbs “Ser” and “Estar”. Animal expressions with “Ser” and “Estar”.
So, as I say, we will first start with these two regular human companions. We’ll focus on dogs to start with. You can’t imagine how many we have! “Tener una vida perra”, “Perrear en el sofá”, “Mismo perro, distinto collar”, “A otro perro con ese hueso“, … so many. Next, we will see more expressions with animals. In this case with cats. As I said, we have a lot of them: “Aquí hay gato encerrado”, “Llevarse como el perro y el gato”, “Llevarse el gato al agua”, “Lavarse como los gatos”, … etc. Let’s look at them all in context, so that you know how to use them.
However, they will not be the only verbs that pop up in our talk. This is what happens with our conversations. We don’t have a set guide, did you know that? Because we intend these video podcasts to be the real deal for how to understand conversations. We intend to show you real conversations, only with Spanish people talking. So we had a list of idiomatic expressions with “Ser” and “Estar” which during the recording was extended to some other verbs.
As always when we do a video podcast together, we apologise for the opinions and comments that arise spontaneously. We don’t want to offend anyone, of course. It’s just that, as we really do it to be able to offer you language tools conversations, we don’t hesitate to express opinions. In a world of continuous cancellations this can be a problem. We know that. Still, we want to offer the best for the learner. In this way you will be able, little by little, to deal with native level.
We will talk about gorillas, parrots, goats, monkeys and more.
Always remember that, at the end, you can go to this link that we leave you here, to practice with an exercise, with the transcription, the translation and a biiiiig vocabulary list. Hopefully you will learn a lot and laugh too! If you like the podcast option, which you can find in this link to work on vocabulary, transcription, etc… you can always subscribe to the podcast version from your favourite podcast platform.
Link to exercise, podcast, transcripts, translation and vocabulary word list here.
We also have another podcast to learn how to describe your pet, did you know? So if you’re in love with your pet, you can learn a lot more. I’m going to leave you the link here as well.