El cuerpo y la salud
This lesson is mostly words: the body from head to foot, and everything you say when some part of it stops cooperating. The one piece of grammar in it is doler, and you already know its shape, because it is built exactly like gustar from lesson 14 — the part that hurts is the subject, the person is an indirect object, and so Me duele la cabeza says, word for word, 'the head hurts to me'. Two forms cover nearly every sentence you will ever need: duele for one thing and duelen for several. The second habit to pick up here is smaller and just as constant — Spanish says me duele la cabeza and never mi cabeza, because the me already said whose head it is.
doler runs backwards, like gustar
In lesson 14 you learned that Me gusta el café puts the coffee in charge and leaves you as the person it happens to. doler is the same machine with a different job. Me duele la mano — one hand, so duele. Me duelen las manos — two hands, so duelen. You are never the subject, which means the verb never changes for you; it changes for the body part. The person lives in the pronoun in front: me, te, le, nos, les — five of them, because les covers ustedes and ellos at once. ¿Te duele algo? A mi abuela le duelen las rodillas. Nos duele la espalda de tanto trabajar. When you name the person out loud, the a-phrase comes along in front of the pronoun and does not replace it: A Camila le duele la garganta, never Camila duele la garganta. The verb is stem-changing o→ue, which is why the infinitive doler looks nothing like duele. In the past it behaves normally: Ayer me dolió la cabeza todo el día, De niño me dolían mucho los oídos. And there is a noun sitting next to it, el dolor: Tengo dolor de cabeza and Tengo dolor de estómago are both real and sound slightly clinical, the way 'I have a headache' does next to 'my head hurts'. Me duele la cabeza is what comes out of a mouth.
The article, not the possessive
English marks the owner of a body part every single time — my head, your hands, his back. Spanish marks it once, in the pronoun, and then uses a plain el or la. Me duele la cabeza. Le duelen los pies. ¿Te duele el estómago? Saying me duele mi cabeza is not so much wrong as redundant, and it is the fastest way to sound like you are translating. The same rule runs through the reflexive verbs you met in lesson 16: Me lavo las manos antes de comer. Me lavo los dientes. Se cortó el pelo. In each one the reflexive pronoun already answers 'whose', so the possessive has nothing left to do. It even survives into the blameless se from lesson 34: Se me durmió la pierna — my leg fell asleep — and Se le rompió el brazo jugando fútbol.
The head and the face
el cuerpo is the body, and the top of it is la cabeza. On it: el pelo, which in Mexico is often el cabello when someone wants to sound careful, and la cara — watch that one, because cara on its own is also the feminine of caro, so la cara is a face and es cara means it is expensive. In the face: los ojos, la nariz (feminine, plural narices), la boca, los dientes, la lengua, and la frente, the forehead a mother touches to check for fever. la oreja is the ear you can see and hang aretes from; the one that hurts from the inside is el oído, and that difference matters at the doctor: Me duele el oído is an earache, Me duele la oreja means somebody pulled it. Below all of that is la garganta, the throat — Me duele la garganta is half of every winter conversation — and then el cuello, the neck.
From the shoulders to the feet
el hombro is the shoulder, el brazo runs from there to the wrist, and hanging off it is la mano — feminine in spite of that -o, so la mano derecha, las manos limpias — and then los dedos. Down the front, el pecho; down the back, la espalda, which is the single most complained-about part of the body in any office in the region. In the middle, el estómago: the neutral word, the one a doctor uses. In a kitchen or between friends it is la panza in Mexico or la barriga almost anywhere, and when a meal is to blame the sentence is Me cayó mal la comida. Lower down, la pierna for the whole leg, la rodilla for the knee, el pie for the foot — masculine, los pies — and el tobillo for the ankle. Two of these words get used far away from the body: a pie means on foot, de pie means standing up, and de cabeza means upside down.
Saying you are sick
The state is estar enfermo — Estoy enferma, Mi hijo está enfermo — and the event of becoming so is the reflexive enfermarse, which is what the whole region reaches for: Me enfermé el fin de semana. Notice the tense. A finished event that happened today or yesterday takes the preterite here, so it is Me enfermé ayer and ¿Ya tomaste la pastilla?, not the present perfect. For symptoms the verb is tener, with no article: tener fiebre, tener tos, tener frío, tener sueño. Tengo fiebre — and if you want the number, it is Celsius: Tengo treinta y ocho de fiebre. In a Mexican or Caribbean house a child's fever is la calentura: El niño tiene calentura. Then the colds. estar resfriado and tener un resfriado are understood everywhere; the Southern Cone says el resfrío, Mexico and the Caribbean often say el catarro, and the flu is la gripa in Mexico and Colombia but la gripe in most of the rest. In practice gripa and gripe get used for anything worse than a sniffle. Two more you will need: Estoy mal covers everything at once, and Me siento débil or Estoy cansada covers the days after.
sentirse, and the trap inside me siento
sentirse is how you report your own condition, and it is reflexive with an e→ie stem: me siento, te sientes, se siente, nos sentimos, se sienten. No me siento bien. ¿Cómo se siente hoy? — that is the doctor's question, in usted. Ya me siento mejor. Now the trap, and it is a good one: me siento is also the yo form of sentarse, to sit down. The two are told apart by what follows. Me siento mal is I feel bad; Me siento en la silla is I sit down on the chair. Nobody in the region is confused by this for even a moment, and neither will you be after a week. Keep sentir without the reflexive apart too: it takes a thing as its object — Siento un dolor aquí, Siento frío — and on its own, Lo siento, it is the ordinary apology.
En el consultorio: at the doctor's
The room is el consultorio and the person in it is el doctor or la doctora — the title you actually say to their face, while el médico stays in writing and on forms. Getting in: sacar una cita in Mexico and Colombia, pedir hora in Chile, hacer una cita anywhere. Once you are there the whole exchange runs in usted, in both directions, and that means every instruction arrives as an usted imperative: Abra la boca. Saque la lengua. Respire hondo. Tome una pastilla cada ocho horas. Descanse. Vuelva en tres días. No salga con este frío. Your side of it is short: Me duele aquí. Desde el sábado. No me siento bien. You leave with la receta, which is both the prescription and the cooking recipe, and you fill it at la farmacia — la droguería in Colombia, la botica for anyone over sixty in Peru. What you buy there is la pastilla for a pill, el jarabe for cough syrup, las gotas for drops, la inyección for a shot. la píldora exists but has narrowed: on its own it usually means the contraceptive pill, so ask for pastillas. And people say tomarse rather than plain tomar for medicine — Tómese esta pastilla ahorita — the same reflexive that shows up on Tómate el jugo.
Getting better, and what people say to you
mejorar is to get better, and it works with or without the reflexive: Ya mejoré and Ya me mejoré are both fine, as is Espero mejorar pronto. The wish you will hear most is a subjunctive, the one from lesson 29 with the que left hanging: Que te mejores, or Que se mejore pronto to someone you address as usted. Alongside it come Cuídate and Cuídese, Que descanses, and for a sneeze, Salud — the same word you raise a glass with, while the one you hear at somebody's table is Provecho. To ask after someone who was ill, the region usually leaves estar aside and reaches for seguir: ¿Cómo sigues? ¿Cómo sigue su mamá? — how are you coming along. And this whole topic is where the diminutive earns its living, because -ito softens bad news and makes an offer gentler: Tengo un dolorcito de cabeza, Está malita, Tómese un tecito y descanse, Ahorita le doy la receta. A learner who says Me duele un poquito la garganta sounds like somebody who lives here; Me duele la garganta sounds like a report.
