Episodi 3. What's your name? Introducing yourself. - Catalan for Beginners

Hola! Benvinguts i benvingudes...

This episode will teach you how to introduce yourself in Catalan, ask someone their name etc.

We hope you enjoy it! 

Feel free to leave a review or a message if you are enjoying the podcasts so far :)

Chapters

• 0:10 Intro
• 0:52 Learning how to give and ask name
• 1:40 Mini dialogues
• 2:58 New language
• 5:31 Recap - translations of the words
• 8:21 Wrapping up - thank you for listening!

Transcript

00:00:10 Christina

Hola, benvinguts al episodi tres.

What do you think that means, Alex?

00:00:15 Alex

Hello and welcome to episode 3.

00:00:18 Christina

Yeah. See, at this point, I'm just teaching the numbers as well as we go through all the episodes! D'you remember what episode two was?

00:00:26 Alex

Episodi dos.

00:00:29 Christina

Sí, episodi dos. So now you know un, dos, tres - one, two three... but numbers is not the topic of today's episode. We will be doing that next week so that we can give our age.

But before we give our age, we would probably want to tell someone what our name is when we introduce ourselves, so that is what we're going to be doing today, som-hi!

00:00:52 Christina

Let's get straight into it then. So, I am called or my name is in Catalan is em dic.

00:01:03 Alex

Em dic.

00:01:05 Christina

Sí, em dic.

OK, so I would say em dic Christina. What would you say?

00:01:16 Alex

Em dic Alex.

00:01:17 Christina

Molt bé, very good. Now we also want to be able to recognise this question if someone asks us what our name is. Likewise, if we want to ask someone what their name is, the question is ‘com et dius?’.

00:01:33 Alex

Com et dius?

00:01:36 Christina

Com et dius?

00:01:38 Christina

So that means, what's your name? Molt bé. Let's put this into a little dialogue and see if you can follow along if you're listening.

00:01:46 Christina

Hola Bon dia. Com et dius?

00:01:51 Alex

Bon dia, em dic Alex. I tu?

00:01:55 Christina

Em dic Christina.

Did you get all that? We slipped in a couple of extra things in there, but they are things that we've covered in previous episodes, so one of them was bon dia. Do you remember what that meant?

00:02:13 Alex

Good morning.

00:02:13

Yeah, good morning or good day. And the other one, Alex actually said you said ‘i tu’. Do you remember what ‘i tu’ was?

00:02:25 Alex

And you?

00:02:26 Christina

Perfecte. So instead of just repeating the question com et dius? What's your name? We might want to say and you - i tu?

00:02:36 Christina

Great. Let's try the dialogue again one more time, but this time you can start Alex. Again, if you're at home listening, try and answer these questions before I do.

00:02:46 Alex

Hola, com et dius?.

00:02:52 Christina

Em dic Christina, i tu?

00:02:55 Alex

Em dic, Alex.

00:02:57

Encantada

00:03:00 Alex

What does encantada mean?

00:03:03 Christina

Yeah, I've thrown a new word in there. So when you meet someone for the first time, what is something polite that you might want to say to them?

00:03:12 Alex

Nice to meet you?

00:03:12 Christina

Yeah, exactly. That's what it is. It's just one word in Catalan. Again, it's similar to Spanish and French for those linguists out there who are probably making comparisons all the time. Now, I said encantada, but you would have to say and encantat, do you know why that is?

00:03:33 Alex

Is that the whole masculine and feminine versions of the words?

00:03:38 Christina

Sí, exacte. Encantat is the masculine version and encantada is the feminine version. So you can choose whichever you want to use.

Right, so we've learned quite a bit already, but I want to add a little bit more. We've said my name is, I am called, but another way of introducing yourself could be simply to say ‘I am’. OK, so in Catalan that is the verb 'Sóc'. So I could say 'Sóc la Christina'.

OK, won't get to repeat that one, but it's a bit different for you. OK, notice that I said sóc la Christina, you need the article here, so the word LA and that again is the feminine form. So for a female like myself, I would say sóc la Christina but for males, they would say 'sóc el' and then whatever their name is OK? However, it's a bit more complicated in your case Alex, because your name starts with a vowel, so it would sound a bit strange to say 'el Alex', instead what they do here is combine the two words and we would just have an L and an apostrophe in that case it would be l'Alex, so ‘Sóc l'Alex’.

So can you repeat that ‘Sóc l'Alex’.

04:56

Sóc l'Alex.

00:04:58 Christina

Molt bé. So that's a little bit more on articles. They're your singular, definite articles. OK, so EL and LA, and they apply to other words as well that are either masculine or feminine. So for example, la taula is the table, el armari is the wardrobe.

OK, so we can translate this definite article as the word ‘the’ in English sounds a bit strange in English for us to say I am the Christina. I am the Alex, but that's what they do.

Ok, so we're going to recap these new words and phrases that we've learned today. I will say them in English, see if you can say them in Catalan and then Alex is also going to have a go.

00:05:43 Christina

OK, so the first one is What's your name?

00:05:52 Alex

Com et dius?

00:05:54 Christina

Sí, com et dius? So it's 3 words there, com et dius.

00:06:02 Christina

And then how do you say? My name is or I am called.

00:06:10

Em dic.

00:06:12 Christina

Sí, em dic.

00:06:14 Christina

So how do you say my name is Alex?

00:06:18 Alex

Em dic Alex.

00:06:19 Christina

Molt bé

How would you say nice to meet you?

00:06:28 Alex

Encantat.

00:06:31 Christina

Sí, molt bé. Encantat, that is for the masculine version. Do you remember what the feminine version was?

00:06:38 Alex

I believe it was encantada. 

00:

Sí, encantada. Encantada i encantat.

Then we also had the word I am. So you could say I am Alex or I am Christina. What was that?

00:06:54 Alex

Sóc

00:06:55 Christina

Yeah, like a sock you wear on your feet, sóc. It's a little bit different. So sóc.

And we mentioned that we need to say the article for saying sóc. OK, so we need to say I am the Alex, I am the Christina. So do you remember both versions of the?

00:07:14 Alex

So for female, it was 'sóc la'.

00:07:20 Christina

Sí, la.

00:07:23 Alex

And then for masculine, it was sóc el.

00:07:29 Christina

El. Yeah, good. So EL and LA are the two versions, masculine and feminine.

And then I mentioned that because your name starts with a vowel, how would you say I am Alex?

00:07:46 Alex

Sóc l'Alex

00:07:49 Christina

Molt bé. Sí. And it would be the same if you were a girl. OK, it's like if you're called Alexa. Sóc l'Alexa.

Yeah. So you've combined the L apostrophe A so Sóc l'Alex, sóc l'Alexa. Jo sóc la Christina. So that's all from us today. We hope you enjoyed this week's episode and you learned something from it and you can now introduce yourself in Catalan.

00:08:11 Christina

Moltes gràcies, moltes gracies Alex.

00:08:14 Alex

Moltes gràcies, Christina.

00:08:16 Christina

Gràcies... And we'll see you in the next episode. Adéu.

00:08:21 Alex

Adéu!

00:08:22 Christina

Fins aviat!