Spanish GCSE Reading and Grammar — Constance e Imran Episode 41 (learn through a novel)
- The story episode in Spanish.
- The translation into English.
- A grammar explanation with examples from the story.
—Bueno —dijo Maya—. Ya tenemos un músico y un sociólogo. Nos falta la escritora.
“Well,” Maya said. “We already have a musician and a sociologist. Now we just need the writer.”
Constance sonrió.
Constance smiled.
—No sé si soy escritora todavía.
“I don’t know if I’m a writer yet.”
—Pero quieres serlo —dijo Daniel.
“But you want to be one,” Daniel said.
—Sí. Eso sí. Yo empecé a leer cuando era muy pequeña. Y cuando digo leer, quiero decir leer de una manera bastante enfermiza. Mi madre me mandaba a dormir, yo apagaba la luz y esperaba un rato. Después sacaba una linternita que tenía escondida, me tapaba completamente con las mantas y seguía leyendo ahí debajo para que nadie viera la luz.
“Yes. That I do. I started reading when I was very young. And when I say reading, I mean reading in a rather obsessive way. My mother would send me to bed, I would turn off the light and wait for a while. Then I would take out a little torch I kept hidden, pull the blankets completely over my head and carry on reading underneath them so that no one could see the light.”
—Qué vida tan peligrosa —dijo Daniel.
“What a dangerous life,” Daniel said.
—Terrible. Leía hasta que se acababa la batería de la linterna. Devoraba los libros. Sobre todo, me fascinaban las biografías. Quería saber cómo habían vivido otras personas. Qué les había pasado. Qué decisiones habían tomado. Por qué habían terminado siendo quienes fueron. Supongo que porque yo era una niña y todavía no tenía una vida que contar. Entonces leía la vida de otra persona e imaginaba la mía.
“Terrible. I would read until the torch battery ran out. I devoured books. Above all, I was fascinated by biographies. I wanted to know how other people had lived. What had happened to them. What decisions they had made. Why they had ended up becoming the people they became. I suppose it was because I was a child and didn’t yet have a life of my own to tell. So I would read about somebody else’s life and imagine my own.”
—¿Y hubo algún libro especial? —preguntó Daniel.
“And was there one particular book?” Daniel asked.
—Sí. Una biografía de María Antonieta, del escritor austríaco Stefan Zweig. Me impresionó muchísimo.
“Yes. A biography of Marie Antoinette by the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig. It made a huge impression on me.”
—¿Por la Revolución francesa? —preguntó Maya.
“Because of the French Revolution?” Maya asked.
—También. Pero sobre todo por ella. María Antonieta llegó a Francia siendo prácticamente una adolescente. Todo había sido fácil para ella. Había nacido rodeada de privilegios y durante mucho tiempo no comprendió que esos privilegios tenían un precio. Hay una frase que dice: «La comodidad de los ricos depende de un abundante suministro de pobres». Ella tardó demasiado en comprenderlo. Y cuando comprendió las implicancias de ser la mujer más privilegiada de Francia, mientras la población vivía en la miseria, fue demasiado tarde. Murió en la guillotina con solo treinta y ocho años.
“That too. But mainly because of her. Marie Antoinette arrived in France when she was practically still a teenager. Everything had always been easy for her. She had been born surrounded by privilege, and for a long time she didn’t understand that those privileges came at a price. There’s a quote that says, ‘The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.’ It took her too long to understand that. And by the time she understood the implications of being the most privileged woman in France while the population lived in poverty, it was too late. She died at the guillotine at only thirty-eight.”
Maya hizo una mueca.
Maya pulled a face.
—Una vida bastante diferente de las princesas de las películas.
“A rather different life from the princesses in films.”
—Exactamente. Eso fue otra cosa que me fascinó. Cuando eres niña te cuentan la estupidez de las princesas de las películas infantiles de Netflix: la princesa conoce al príncipe, se casa con él y es feliz para siempre. Después lees la vida de las princesas de verdad. Las casaban con hombres que no habían elegido y a los que muchas veces no amaban o incluso despreciaban. Las mandaban a otro país. A veces ni siquiera sabían hablar el idioma, como cuando la española Catalina de Aragón vino a Inglaterra para casarse con el heredero al trono. Y después podían pasarse la vida aburridas como hongos dentro de un palacio.
“Exactly. That was another thing that fascinated me. When you’re a child, they tell you all that stupidity about princesses in children’s films on Netflix: the princess meets the prince, marries him and lives happily ever after. Then you read about the lives of real princesses. They were married off to men they hadn’t chosen and whom they often didn’t love or even despised. They were sent to another country. Sometimes they couldn’t even speak the language, like when Catherine of Aragon came from Spain to England to marry the heir to the throne. And then they could spend their lives bored stiff inside a palace.”
Daniel se rio.
Daniel laughed.
—¿Aburridas como hongos?
“Bored stiff?”
—Aburridísimas. María Antonieta se aburría terriblemente en Versailles. Y lo loco es que incluso las diversiones eran obligaciones. Bailar, asistir a una cena, recibir visitas, organizar una fiesta… Todo estaba regulado por la etiqueta. Cada momento del día tenía su protocolo. Eran prisioneras de lujo. Tenían vestidos, joyas, criados y palacios, pero casi ningún espacio propio. Y lo más impresionante es que ni siquiera tenían intimidad para cosas que hoy consideraríamos absolutamente privadas. En Versailles, una reina debía dar a luz delante de miembros de la corte porque el nacimiento de un heredero era un acontecimiento político. Había que ser testigo de que aquel niño había nacido realmente de la reina.
“Completely. Marie Antoinette was terribly bored at Versailles. And the crazy thing is that even entertainment was an obligation. Dancing, attending a dinner, receiving visitors, throwing a party… Everything was regulated by etiquette. Every moment of the day had its protocol. They were prisoners in a gilded cage. They had dresses, jewels, servants and palaces, but almost no space of their own. And the most impressive thing is that they didn’t even have privacy for things that today we would consider absolutely private. At Versailles, a queen had to give birth in front of members of the court because the birth of an heir was a political event. There had to be witnesses to prove that the child had really been born to the queen.”
Durante unos segundos ninguno habló.
For a few seconds, none of them spoke.
—Y eso es lo que a mí me enloqueció de la literatura —continuó Constance—. Historias como esa, vidas como esas, entender por qué una persona llega a ser quien es, de qué manera nos vamos construyendo o destruyendo. Lees una biografía y ya sabes cómo termina. Pero la persona cuya vida estás leyendo no lo sabe. María Antonieta no sabía, cuando llegó a Versailles, que un día la llevarían a la guillotina.
“And that’s what made me fall in love with literature,” Constance continued. “Stories like that, lives like that, understanding why people become who they are, the ways in which we go on building or destroying ourselves. When you read a biography, you already know how it ends. But the person whose life you’re reading doesn’t. Marie Antoinette didn’t know, when she arrived at Versailles, that one day she would be taken to the guillotine.”
—Eso es un poco inquietante —dijo Daniel.
“That’s a bit unsettling,” Daniel said.
—Muchísimo. Porque nosotros tampoco sabemos cómo termina nuestra historia.
“Very. Because we don’t know how our story ends either.”
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We continue studying irregular verbs in the Preterite, whose correct name is Pretérito Perfecto Simple. Remember that we started in episode 39, where we covered the verbs ser, ir, dar, ver. In episode 40, we covered the so-called fake irregulars ending in car, gar, zar, and today we will discuss verbs ending in uir. It’s a relatively big group. The most common are:
Atribuir, autodestruir, concluir, constituir, construir, contribuir, deconstruir, destituir, destruir, disminuir, distribuir, excluir, fluir, huir, incluir, influir, instituir, instruir, obstruir, prostituir, reconstruir, restituir, retribuir, sustituir.
-UIR is a verb ending that comes mainly from Latin verbs ending in -uĕre. For example: constituĕre → constituir; fluĕre → fluir.
The “i” in -uir appeared as a result of the evolution of these Latin forms into the Romance languages (languages derived from Latin). This is why Spanish today has a fairly recognisable family of verbs ending in -uir. If you speak French, this is particularly useful because you will notice that these verbs in your language often resemble the Latin form much more closely. For example: construir → construire; instruir → instruire.
Let’s look at the irregularity now:
| Construir | Regular verb escribir | |
|---|---|---|
| Yo | construí | escribí |
| Tú | construiste | escribiste |
| Él, ella, usted | construyó | escribió |
| Nosotros, nosotras | construimos | escribimos |
| Vosotros, vosotras | construisteis | escribisteis |
| Ellos, ellas, ustedes | construyeron | escribieron |
I have included the regular verb escribir here so you can see that the endings of construir are completely regular.
Now, bear with me, because this is the difference between memorising forms parrot-like and understanding a language. I will explain the reason for this irregularity and you will know and remember when and how to use it. These verbs can also be considered fake irregulars, because their endings are completely regular. The small irregularity is merely phonetic.
In forms of the present such as construo* or construes* (remember this: when we put an asterisk after a word, it means that it is incorrect), two vowels would come into contact, creating a hiatus. In these forms, this hiatus is avoided by inserting a consonantal sound represented by “y”. This gives us construyo, construyes, construye, construyen.
However, this change does not occur in construimos or construís. The reason is stress: in these forms, the “i” is stressed. Compare construyo, construyes (stress on the “u”) with construimos, construís (stress on the “i”).
The same phonetic tendency can be seen in the gerund. Instead of construiendo, with an unusual accumulation of vowel sounds, Spanish uses construyendo. Although triphthongs do exist in Spanish, they are extremely rare (a triphthong is a sequence of three vowel sounds pronounced within the same syllable).
So, once again, the apparent irregularity is not in the verb endings, which remain completely regular, but in a small phonetic adjustment that makes the pronunciation conform to the sound patterns of Spanish.
And this explains Constance’s phrase:
“De qué manera nos vamos construyendo o destruyendo”.
“The ways in which we go on building or destroying ourselves”.
A superlative is a form used to show that someone or something has the highest or lowest degree of a quality within a group. For example: “the tallest, the most interesting, the least expensive”. In English, we tend to use the word “thing” in these structures: “the most interesting thing, the best thing, the worst thing”… And, although “thing” translates as “cosa” into Spanish, we tend to use these structures without that word. Let’s compare:
What happens if you say la cosa más interesante*, la mejor cosa* o la peor cosa*? In many cases, you are merely translating an English structure to a non-existent utterance. So remember this:
The most expensive thing that I bought in my life.
Lo más caro que compré en mi vida. Correcto
Here are the examples from our episode:
Y lo loco es que incluso las diversiones eran obligaciones.
And the crazy thing is that even entertainment was an obligation.
Y lo más impresionante es que ni siquiera tenían intimidad para cosas que hoy consideraríamos absolutamente privadas.
And the most impressive thing is that they didn’t even have privacy for things that today we would consider absolutely private.
Find all the episodes here: Contents – GCSE Spanish
We post new episodes every week — keep up with Constance and Imran’s story!
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