This week teacher Carolina shares a video lesson on three different verbs: pedir, preguntar, and ordenar. From what she tells us, the verbs pedir and ordenar have very similar meanings and uses and, in certain contexts, it's not always easy to decide which one to use. Let's review some examples of these two verbs to complement Carolina's video lesson!
The most common way to order food in a restaurant is to use the verb pedir (to ask):
Aquí, por lo regular, por lo... económico, piden la comida corrida.
Here, generally, because it's... cheap, people order the lunch special.
Captions 36-37, Fonda Mi Lupita - Encargado
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However, perhaps due to an influence from English, using the verb ordenar (whose primary meaning is "to command" but also means "to put in order") has become a popular way to order food or products in Spanish:
Estamos ordenando tres tacos y una ensalada.
We are ordering three tacos and a salad.
Si ordenas hoy mismo recibirás un descuento.
If you place your order today, you will get a discount.
Estamos listos para ordenar.
We are ready to order.
¿Qué quieren ordenar?
What do you want to order?
In the previous examples, you can use either ordenar or pedir without altering the meaning of what you are saying. In some contexts, however, you can't use ordenar instead of pedir. For example, you can say Quiero pedir un descuento (I want to ask for a discount), but not Quiero ordenar un descuento (I want to order a discount); you can say Quiero pedir un favor (I want to ask a favor), but to say Quiero ordenar un favor (I want to order a favor) is an obvious contradiction.
Finally, it's worth remembering that the verb ordenar also means "to put in order" and "to command":
¡Vos no sabés,
You have no idea,
estuve media hora ordenando todo el departamento!
I spent half an hour organizing the whole apartment!
Caption 21, Muñeca Brava - 8 Trampas
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No, señora. Usted no me ordenó nada.
No, ma'am. You didn't order me [to do] anything.
Caption 69, Muñeca Brava - 44 El encuentro
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We hereby "order" you to read more free Yabla Spanish lessons!
Pena frequently refers to "sorrow" or "grief," as you may have discovered when listening to the melancholic lyrics of "Frente a Frente" by Enrique Bunbury:
Y así ahogar las penas
And like that drown our sorrows
Caption 15, Bunbury - Frente a frente
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Pena also can refer to "shame" or "pity," as used by Spanish soccer star Iker Casillas when discussing catastrophes, such as the earthquake in Haiti.
La... la pena es que siempre suceden en...
The... the shame is that they always go on in...
en los sitios más desfavorecidos.
in the most disadvantaged places.
Caption 27, Iker Casillas - apoya el trabajo de Plan
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It’s no surprise, then, that the common expression ¡Qué pena! is used to express "What a shame!" or "What a pity!"
Pena is often preceded by a form of the verb dar (to give), giving us the expression "dar pena." It can be used to express sorrow or sadness.
Me da pena verlos sufrir así.
It makes me sad to see them suffer like that.
In much of Latin America, dar pena is also commonly used to express a sense of feeling ashamed or embarrassed. We hear this in the worldwide hit Fuego from Colombia’s Bomba Estéreo.
Vamos hasta abajo, a mí no me da pena
Let's get down, I don't feel ashamed
Caption 25, Bomba Estéreo - Fuego
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Along the same lines, many Latin Americans also use dar pena to express feeling shy. When we visit Fonda Mi Lupita for lunch in Mexico City, the manager, José, tells us why Carmen, the cook, is doing her best to hide from the camera:
Ella se llama Carmen, que le da un poquito de pena.
That's Carmen, who is a little shy. [She feels a little embarrassed.]
Caption 31, Fonda Mi Lupita - Encargado
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Dar, in the case of dar pena, falls into the category of "verbs like gustar." The construction is not parallel with the way we usually express the same sentiment in English; a mí no me da pena literally translates to "[it] does not give me shame." This sounds rather awkward, of course, in English, where "I’m not embarrassed" is the common way to express the same sentiment. (In line with typical "verbs like gustar" construction, our Spanish natives agree that José would have been more grammatically correct if he had said a quien le da un poquito de pena.)
Pena can also commonly refer to "punishment," so it’s not unusual to see it used in phrases like con la pena de muerte (under the punishment of death) or la pena máxima permitida por la ley (the maximum punishment permitted by law).
Vale la pena ("it’s worth it") to keep an eye out for these and other interesting uses of the word pena!
Related lessons from our archives:
Merecer la pena
Le in "verbs like gustar"; Le in leísmo
Gustar: To like, to please, to taste
It's time to learn a little bit more about tiempo -- which is one way to express time in Spanish.
So, tiempo means "time" -- as in "a system used to place one event in relation to another (such as past vs. present, yesterday vs. today)" -- it also means, less abstractly, "period" -- as in "a span of time" (which could be minutes, hours, days, weeks...). For example, soccer fans getting online updates should note that a match consists of primer tiempo, entretiempo and segundo tiempo, often abbreviated as 1T, ET and 2T, respectively. Meanwhile, in English, we might speak of first period (or, more common in soccer, first half), half time and then the second half.
OK. Now let's spend a little time with the latest videos on Yabla Spanish. In one, we hear restaurant manager José Luis Calixto Escobar of Mexico speak of tiempos in the following sentence:
La comida sale económicamente porque contiene lo que son tres tiempos.
The food is cheap because it has what are three courses.
Caption 38, Fonda Mi Lupita - Encargado
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Outside of México, it may be more common to hear talk of una comida con tres platos (literally: "a meal with three plates") to describe "a three-course meal." Una comida en [o, de] tres tiempos describes the same idea. To illustrate, José goes on to describe a soup course, then a rice or pasta and then a meat plate. Yum. This menú -- another word used to describe a meal of many parts -- even comes with water. Completamente (That's José's oft-repeated verbal tic. Think: "totally" in English.)
Incidentally, flip comida de tres tiempos around, and you have los tres tiempos de comida -- that is, breakfast, lunch and dinner, or the three meals/mealtimes of the day. Note that comida not only means "food," but that it also can describe the time spent eating food -- i.e., a meal.
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