Lesson Eleven: Conjugo, Sin Jugo...Not Interested

David’s mom is leaving. Hooray! However, David is not as happy as we’d expect him to be—he’s sick ☹

Now, like most gringos, David is hesitant to head to the hospital. I hear ya, David. In the US of A, people can’t just go to the hospital for anything—we’ve got to be damn near dying to consider going to the ER. Even though David is from England, he still has the same concern regarding health insurance. Beautiful Argentina, however, has public hospitals and Jimena basically demands that David visit one. She tells him how to explain to the doctor how he is feeling (me duele el pecho y me duele la garganta). Jimena then tells him that she thinks he has angina—which we would think is really serious, but again, false cognate (I think?) In Spanish it means strep throat. David calls her a hypochondriac, and I don’t think he’ll end up going, honestly.

David asks how to get to the hospital, and we then venture into the different between hay and está and then imperative verbs (dun dun dun). My little profe guy agrees with me on this one: “The thing about verbs to remember is that they are absolutely infuriating.” Amen. In this lesson, I learned that Spanish has (depending on how you count them) between 18 and 54 different tenses! What the f*&%?! David is tired of it, too:





Anyway, we move on from that and get to learn the weirdest song in the world. Apparently, Jimena’s mother used to sing the following to her when she was sick as a child:

Sana, sana, colita de rana,


Si no sana hoy, sanará mañana.



Now, the second part I get (if you don’t heal today, you’ll heal tomorrow) but colita de rana means “butt of a frog”. Hm. David didn’t get it either.