Emociones y sentimientos
Feelings get into a Spanish sentence through four different doors, and choosing the wrong one is most of what makes a learner sound translated. estar plus an adjective for the state you are in right now: Estoy contento. tener plus a noun for the handful of feelings this language treats as things you carry: Tengo hambre, Tengo miedo, Tengo sueño. dar and poner for a feeling that something else causes you, built backwards like gustar: Me da miedo volar, Esa canción me pone triste. And sentirse when you are reporting on yourself: Me siento bien. Sitting on top of all that are three verbs where English has only 'become' — ponerse for the quick turn, volverse for the permanent one, hacerse for the slow one you worked at.
Estar + adjective: the weather inside you
A mood is a state, so it takes estar and never ser: Estoy contento. Está triste. Estamos preocupados. Están enojados. The adjective agrees with the person feeling it, not with the feeling: a woman says Estoy cansada, two men say Estamos nerviosos, a mixed group Están asustados. Five rows carry the whole verb — estoy, estás, está, estamos, están — and that last one covers ustedes and ellos at once, so it is what you use for your closest friends and for people you have just met, with no change of tone. The list worth knowing cold: contento, feliz, triste, cansado, enojado, nervioso, tranquilo, preocupado, asustado, aburrido, solo, emocionado, orgulloso, celoso. Then the trap you first met in lesson 3, which never stops mattering: ser aburrido is a boring person, estar aburrido is bored this afternoon. Ser listo is clever, estar listo is ready. Ser malo is a bad person, estar malo is sick. Say Soy aburrido at a party and you have volunteered something nobody asked. To turn the feeling up, the region has its own intensifiers alongside muy: bien contenta in Mexico, re contento in Argentina, súper cansada everywhere, and the -ísimo ending that outranks all of them — tristísimo, nerviosísima.
Tener + noun: the feelings you own
A short, closed list of feelings are nouns, and Spanish says you have them: tener hambre, tener sed, tener sueño, tener frío, tener calor, tener miedo, tener prisa, tener vergüenza, tener celos, tener razón, tener ganas. English says 'I am hungry'; here it is Tengo hambre, with no article and no estar — estoy hambre and soy hambre are not sentences. Because these are nouns, the word that turns them up is mucho or mucha, agreeing with the noun, and never muy: mucha hambre, mucha sed, mucho sueño, mucho miedo, mucha prisa. Muy hambre is the single most common mistake in this lesson. Note that hambre is feminine even though it is written el hambre — the el is only there to keep two stressed a-sounds from colliding — so mucha hambre and un hambre enorme. What you are afraid of arrives with de: Tengo miedo de los perros, Tengo miedo de manejar de noche. Hurry is where the map splits: tener prisa is understood everywhere, Colombia says tener afán and estar de afán, the Southern Cone estar apurado, Mexico andar con prisa — and the verb the whole region shouts is apurarse: ¡Apúrate! to one person, ¡Apúrense! to two or more. Last and most useful, tener ganas de is to feel like: Tengo ganas de un cafecito.
Dar and poner: when the feeling comes from outside
These two are built like gustar from lesson 14 and doler from lesson 36 — the thing causing the feeling is the subject, and you are the little pronoun in front. With dar the feeling is a noun: dar miedo, dar pena, dar risa, dar lástima, dar rabia, dar coraje, dar flojera, dar igual. Me da miedo el avión. Me dan miedo los perros grandes — several dogs, so dan. Me da risa is it makes me laugh; Me da igual is I really do not mind; Me da flojera is I cannot be bothered, said that way in Mexico and Peru and as me da pereza almost everywhere else. With poner the feeling is an adjective, and it agrees with the person on the receiving end: Me pone nervioso el ruido, said by a man, Me pone nerviosa by a woman. Esa canción me pone triste. Me pone feliz verte. Mexico adds a whole mood to it: Ese tráfico me pone de malas, and its opposite, Andaba de buenas. A larger family behaves identically and is worth recognizing on sight: alegrar, preocupar, molestar, aburrir, interesar, encantar, importar — Me alegra verte, Me preocupa mi mamá, Me aburre el fútbol, No me importa.
Sentirse — how you report it yourself
You met this verb in lesson 36 at the doctor. It is reflexive with an e→ie stem: me siento, te sientes, se siente, nos sentimos, se sienten — five rows, the last covering ustedes and ellos. With an adverb it reports a condition: Me siento bien, mal, mejor, peor. With an adjective the adjective agrees with the subject: Me siento sola, Nos sentimos raros, Se sienten orgullosos. A friend asks ¿Cómo te sientes?; a doctor asks ¿Cómo se siente? The trap flagged in lesson 36 is still there and still harmless: me siento is also the yo form of sentarse, and what follows tells them apart — Me siento mal is a feeling, Me siento en la silla is a chair. Keep plain sentir apart too, since it takes a thing rather than an adjective: Siento frío, Lo siento, Siento que algo cambió. And this region leans on a second verb that Spain uses far less: andar, for a mood that has been walking around with you for days. Ando triste. Anda de malas desde el lunes. Ando cansadísima. If estar is where you are today, andar is where you have been all week.
Three verbs for 'to become' — and two more
There is no single verb for 'become', and the one you pick carries the meaning. ponerse plus an adjective is the fast, temporary, usually emotional turn: Se puso rojo. Me pongo nervioso cuando hablo en público. Se puso feliz con la noticia. It is the same ponerse you put a suéter on with in lesson 38, this time with an adjective instead of a piece of clothing, and the adjective agrees with the person. volverse plus an adjective is the deep change that stays, and it usually is not good news: Se volvió loco. Se volvió muy desconfiada. La renta se volvió impagable. Where ponerse wears off by dinner, volverse does not wear off. hacerse plus a noun or an adjective is the slow becoming with work or years inside it: Se hizo doctora. Se hicieron amigos. Se hizo rico vendiendo tacos. Two more you will hear constantly. quedarse plus an adjective is what a change leaves behind, and it leans toward loss: Se quedó solo. Me quedé dormido en el camión. Se quedó sin trabajo. And llegar a ser is the end of a long climb: Llegó a ser directora del hospital. Before reaching for any of them, remember that everyday Spanish usually just uses a reflexive verb where English says 'get': enojarse, alegrarse, preocuparse, asustarse, aburrirse, cansarse, calmarse, enamorarse. Me enojé. No te preocupes. Se asustó con el temblor. Se enamoró en Cartagena. Shorter, more common, and the first thing a native speaker says.
Emotion + que + subjunctive
When the feeling is about what somebody else does, the second half of the sentence goes into the subjunctive you built in lesson 29: Me alegra que estés acá. Me da miedo que llegue tarde. Estoy contenta de que te vaya bien. Qué pena que no puedan venir. The rule is worth stating plainly, because it is mechanical: emotion in the first clause, que, subjunctive in the second. But only when the two halves have different subjects. If it is you feeling it and you doing it, drop the que and leave an infinitive: Me da miedo volar, not me da miedo que yo vuele; Estoy feliz de verte; Tengo ganas de dormir; Me da pena preguntar. One habit here is specifically Latin American and worth hearing correctly: after qué bueno que and Mexico's qué padre que, people very often stay in the indicative when the thing has already happened — Qué bueno que llegaste, Qué bueno que te fue bien — where the textbook offers hayas llegado. Both are correct; the indicative is what comes out of a mouth in this region.
Softening it, and what people actually say
The diminutive does real emotional work here, and this topic is where it earns its living. -ito and -ita take the edge off bad news and the pressure off an offer: Está tristecito. Se quedó solita. Tengo un poquito de miedo. Ahorita se te pasa. Tómate un tecito y descansa. Then the comfort phrases, which you will need before you need anything else in this lesson: Tranquilo and Tranquila, No te preocupes, Cálmate, Ya pasó, No es para tanto, Todo va a estar bien, Ánimo, and Mexico's Échale ganas. To ask what is wrong: ¿Qué te pasa?, ¿Estás bien?, ¿Qué tienes?, and in Mexico ¿Qué traes? Anger has its own map: enojado across most of the region, bravo in Colombia, Venezuela and the Caribbean, molesto for the mild and polite version, de malas in Mexico; Spain's enfadado is understood and sounds foreign. Estar harto de is fed up, and a child's tantrum is un berrinche. Finally, the word most likely to trip you: pena. In Mexico, Colombia, Central America and the Andes Me da pena means I am embarrassed, and in Colombia ¡Qué pena! is simply 'excuse me'. In Argentina, Uruguay and Chile pena is sadness, so Qué pena there means what a shame. vergüenza means embarrassment everywhere and is the safe choice when you are not sure which country you are standing in.
