Elementary - Let me pay

Do you often fight for the bill? A mi me gusta invitar a mis amigos en ocasiones especiales, como cumpleaños, pero muchas veces me gusta pagar la cuenta. I like to invite my friends in special occasions, like birthdays, but sometimes I like to pay the bill.

Hola, En la parte de expansion hay la siguiente frase con la palabra 'pagar'.......¿Cuánto pagaste por la cena? (How much did you pay for the dinner?). ¿Se puede decir también?...¿Cuánto pagaste la cena?

Mharbus No, se dice "por" la cena, porque estas pagando "por" algo.

In the dialogue, dejame is pronounced in a way which, to my ears at least, sounds very much like de-SA-me. Have I misheard it or is it a local variation ? Denis

So tratar can't be used in the sense of paying the bill for that person, ie 'treating' her?

Denis, That /j/ is never pronounced as an [s], so that may have been your ear tricking you. However, that does remind me to talk about the /j/ in a pronunciation segment! Merci! keno, tratar does not mean "to treat someone to something," for that, you need the word invitar. tratar on the other hand usually means "to try." For example, Trata de comprender Try to understand. tratarse is a whole different verb, it means something like 'to deal with' in the sense of 'to involve.' So, No se trata de su ambición, sino de...; It's not about his ambition, but rather... Hope that helps!

Suelo acceptar con mucho gusto cuando alguien me invita pero tambien me gusta invitar. Cada su turno.

Hola Lilli, Si se dice 'por' la cena porque estas pagando 'por' algo, ¿ por qué in la misma parte de expansión hay esta frase..'Yo pago las copas.' (I'm paying for the drinks.)...? Para mí, en esta frase alguien todavía está pagando 'por' algo.

Mharbus Sometimes when it is a question and you are using "cuanto" then you use "por", in the case of 'Yo pago las copas', then you don't use "por" also if I say "yo pago la cena" no use of "por."

A note to Lili, antes de escuchar el podcast: I don't understand your sentence near the beginning of this series of comments. I like to invite my friends to special occasions like birthdays, but sometimes I like to pay? Huh? Did you mean "but sometimes I *don't* like to pay? Because otherwise it doesn't make sense, literally. And I remember we have learned that to invite someone is, by definition, to propose paying the check. Te invito a cenar means I'm asking you to dinner and I'm going to pay. So you must have left out a word. "Don't," to be specific. ¿Tengo razón? also, I noticed that "invitar" is one of those verbs like conocer, esperar and others that take the preposition "a" when the object is a person. That's good to know.

Yardbird Welcome back! In my comment I said, "pero muchas veces me gusta pagar la cuenta," which means, but often I like to pay the bill. What I meant is even if its not a special occasion sometimes I like to pay the bill.

Hi At the end of the dialog the man uses the word "vale". Is vale widely used out side of Spain? Steve

Hola Yardbird. I think almost all verbs take the preposition "a" when the direct object is a noun referring to a specific person or persons (or even a specific pet :-) ). This is called the "personal a," and it often doesn't translate into English. I think the personal a is also used with pronouns like alguien, nadie, and quién when they're used as direct objects.

Cyberdiva and Yardbird I think cyberdiva's answer is right on the money. For a description of the personal a try the link below. http://spanish.about.com/cs/grammar/a/personal_a.htm Steve

The exercises do not seem to be working for this lesson for me. Thanks Steve

1. Lili, I see. I didn't read it that way. Creo que no vale la pena continuar con esto. It's just the editor in me. Or the teacher. :-) 2. Steve (two above, not the most recent one). Thanks for the link to that nice and helpful site. I really was familiar with the personal "a," but this recent example was reminding me of the pattern, and that Web page you linked to breaks it down very nicely. Speaking of that site: After reading the topic discussion, I looked through the global navigation links to find the site's home page in order to bookmark it for future reference. But I couldn't figure out from the labeling of the links which of them is to the site's home page. Do you know, or do you have the URL? Thanks. It looks like a really nice resource.

yardbird, the site is... http://spanish.about.com/

Qué hace español un desafío es cuando se aprende una palabra, entonces lo descubre que tiene otra significado. : ) Invitar significa "to treat" también, que interesante. ¡Mas para aprender, excelente! What makes spanish a challenge is when you think you learn a word, then find it has another meaning. : ) Invitar means "to treat" too, how interesting. More to learn, excellent!

The spanish.about.com site whose URL mharbus provided is excellent. It offers all kinds of interesting and useful information about Spanish grammar, usage, and culture at both beginner and somewhat more advanced levels. You can also arrange to receive email several times a week with links to new or revised information. And it's all free. Here are a few more sites that provide some useful help with Spanish grammar. They may not be needed once JP gets his grammar resource ready, but until then.... Spanish Grammar Tutorial. (The same material seems to be available as well at Spanish Home. Learn Spanish Spanish.Language&Culture. This site offers some audio and video as well as text. It used to be called Spanish Grammar Exercises at http://www.colby.edu/~bknelson/exercises/index.html. I liked the old site better because it was easier to tell which sections offered more than just text. I hope some of this proves useful.

Thanks Mharbus and Cyber Diva for the links. I've signed up for a couple of the About Spanish emails (dichos y palabras) and found a lot of tempting features on all the sites.

Generalmente nosotros dividimos la cuenta. Cuando invito, yo pago, pero cuando soy invitado no me dejam pagar.

Another interesting site is... www.uni.edu/becker/spanish3.html

my previous link to http://www.uni.edu/becker/Spanish3.html doesn't seem to be working....you will need to type in the address yourself.

Sorry about this..another correction about the link...the link that includes 'http' is working fine...in the future I will include the 'http'.

Mharbus, I think that the presence or absence of the http is not the issue. The first link doesn't work because you typed a lower-case "spanish3," whereas this URL needs "Spanish3" to be upper-case. URLs are case-sensitive. By the way, at first glance, the site looks VERY useful! I look forward to exploring it further when I have more time. Muchas gracias!!

Hello everyone, Thank you for all the extra sites you have given. I have added them to my favorites and will explore later.

Feel free to contact any of the spanishpod team members to answer any kind of doubt.