December 02, 2006
Lesson 07
Notes
In this edition:
talking about
your job; saying
where you
work; saying if
you like your
work or not.
¿En qué trabajas?
Lesson 07
Programme Notes
Welcome to Coffee Break Spanish, the podcast
aimed at independent learners of Spanish. In
Coffee Break Spanish we’ll be guiding you
through the basics of the Spanish language and
helping you to learn to communicate in Spain
and Spanish-speaking countries.
In lesson 07 you’re going to be learning to talk
about your job. You’ll reuse a word we learned in
earlier lessons, soy, to say what your occupation
is. You’ll also learn how to describe your job by
saying where you work, and whether you like
your job or not.
One very important thing to consider when
talking about professions in Spanish is that you
don’t need the word for “a”, so note that you
don’t say soy UN profesor.
Many professions in Spanish have different
versions for masculine and feminine forms:
profesor
teacher (m)
profesora
teacher (f)
Some words, however, have only one form:
Soy profesor...
To say “I am a ...” you use the same word you
used to talk about where you’re from. If soy de
España means “I am from Spain”, the word soy is
one way of saying “I am” in Spanish.
Look at the following phrase:
estudiante
student (m)
estudiante
student (f)
Here is a list of the words covered in the main
podcast for various occupations. Note that where
feminine and masculine forms exist they are
listed with o/a endings.
soy profesor
I am a teacher
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There is also a formal version of this which
follows the same patterns as all other verbal
phrases we’ve learned so far:
ingeniero/a
engineer
abogado/a
lawyer
¿en qué trabaja usted?
what do you work as? (for)
fontanero/a
plumber
To answer the question you can use one of the
phrases above, eg. soy profesor; soy estudiante, etc.
ama de casa
housewife
I work in an office
In all of the above examples you can combine
the word with soy to say “I am a...” eg.:
soy ingeniero
I am an engineer
See below in the “Bonus Vocabulary” section for
more words relating to occupations.
It’s not possible to cover every possibility for
listeners in terms of occupations. There are some
bonus items of vocabulary listed at the end of
this podcast. Sometimes it may be easier to
describe where you work: translating “I am a
legal secretary” or “I am a consultant
neurologist” into Spanish may be quite
challenging, but you could alternatively say “I
work in an office” or “I work in a hospital”!
If trabajas means “you work”, then “I work” is
translated as:
Asking the question
If you’ve been following Coffee Break Spanish
from the beginning you should now be in a
position to start creating your own sentences and
questions. You already know the word for “are
you” in both formal and informal versions:
¿eres...?
are you...? (informal)
trabajo
I work
So, let’s combine this with some places of work:
trabajo en una tienda
I work in a shop
trabajo en una fábrica
I work in a factory
¿es usted...?
are you...? (formal)
You could therefore ask someone if they are, for
example, a teacher:
¿es usted profesor?
are you a teacher? (for)
Or, using the informal version:
¿eres profesor?
are you a teacher (inf)
Note that in these phrases you also leave out the
word for “a”, just as you’ve been doing when
saying “I am a teacher”.
However, if you want to find out what someone
does for a living then you could spend rather a
long time trying to guess, using all the words you
know for occupations. It would be easier to ask
the person, “What do you do for a living?”
¿en qué trabajas?
what do you work as? (inf)
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trabajo en una oficina
I work in an office
trabajo en un restaurante
I work in a restaurant
trabajo en un hospital
I work in a hospital
Do you like your job?
It’s also useful to be able to say if you like or if
you don’t like your job. The phrase for “I like...”
is going to be very useful in future lessons.
me gusta...
I like...
me gusta mi trabajo
I like my job
no me gusta mi trabajo
I don’t like my job
Jorge: Hola. ¿Qué tal?
Eva:
Bien, gracias. Me llamo Eva.
Jorge: Soy Jorge. Soy de Barcelona.
¿Eres de aquí?
Eva:
No, no soy de aquí. Yo soy de
Burgos.
Jorge: Muy bien. ¿En qué trabajas?
Remember you can combine this with the word
for “yes”, sí or “no”, no:
sí, me gusta mi trabajo
yes, I like my job
no, no me gusta mi trabajo
no, I don’t like my job
Eva:
Soy ingeniera. Y tú, ¿en qué
trabajas?
Jorge: Trabajo en una oficina. No me
gusta mi trabajo.
Eva:
¡Qué pena!
Below is a translation of the above dialogue to
help you.
Jorge: Hi. How are you doing?
To ask someone if they like their job, use:
¿te gusta tu trabajo?
do you like your job? (inf)
We’ll be covering the formal version of this
question in future lessons.
Eva:
Jorge: I’m Jorge. I’m from Barcelona. Are
you from here?
Eva:
Two final phrases we need to cover in this lesson.
Perhaps you don’t work. You can probably
already work out how to say this, based on what
you’ve learned in previous lessons. To say “I
work”, you use the word trabajo. To change this to
“I don’t work” you say:
no trabajo
I don’t work
You may also be retired, in which case you use
the phrase:
estoy jubilado/a
I’m retired
No, I’m not from here. I’m from
Burgos.
Jorge: Very good. What do you work as?
Eva:
And finally...
Well, thanks. I’m called Eva.
I’m an engineer. What about you?
What do you do?
Jorge: I work in an office. I don’t like my
job.
Eva:
What a shame!
You’ll notice the phrase:
qué pena
what a shame
This is listed below in the vocabulary. Notice also
that in addition to upside down question marks,
Spanish also uses upside down exclamation
marks.
Bonus vocabulary
Pronunciation tip: Remember that the “j” at
the beginning of this word is not pronounced as
in English. It’s a guttural “j” and sounds
something like the “ch” in the Scottish word
“loch”.
Sample conversation
Let’s look at a conversation which brings
together some of the language we’ve covered in
this unit and in previous lessons.
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In each edition of Coffee Break Spanish we
cover the basic language you need to
communicate. However we also provide some
additional vocabulary for our listeners who
download the extra materials. The bonus
vocabulary is covered in the top-up podcast each
week so you can improve your pronunciation of
these extra words and phrases!
CoffeeBreakSpanish: Lesson 07 - Key Vocabulary
soy...
I am...
profesor / profesora
teacher
estudiante
student
ingeniero / ingeniera
engineer
abogado / abogada
lawyer
fontanero / fontanera
plumber
ama de casa
housewife
¿eres profesor?
are you a teacher? (informal)
¿es usted profesor?
are you a teacher? (formal)
¿en qué trabajas?
what do you work as? (inf)
¿en qué trabaja usted?
what do you work as? (for)
trabajo
I work
no trabajo
I don’t work
trabajo en una tienda
I work in a shop
una fábrica
factory
una oficina
office
un restaurante
restaurant
un hospital
hospital
me gusta...
I like...
me gusta mi trabajo
I like my job
no me gusta mi trabajo
I don’t like my job
¿te gusta tu trabajo?
do you like your job? (inf)
estoy jubilado/a
I’m retired
¡qué pena!
what a shame!
CoffeeBreakSpanish: Lesson 07 - Bonus Vocabulary
(un) actor / (una) actriz
actor/actress
(un) arquitecto / (una) arquitecta
architect
autor / autora
author
camarero / camarera
water, waitress
carnicero / carnicera
butcher
carpintero / carpintera
carpenter
cocinero / cocinera
cook
(un) dentista* / (una) dentista*
dentist (NB. no change in ending)
dependiente
shop assistant
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enfermero / enfermera
nurse
granjero / granjera
farmer
hombre de negocios
business man
mujer de negocios
business woman
mecánico / mecánica
mechanic
médico / médica
doctor
peluquero / peluquera
hairdresser
piloto / pilota
pilot
secretario / secretaria
secretary
técnico / técnica
technician
estoy desempleado / desempleada
I’m unemployed / out of work
*dentista: this is one of those rare Spanish words which has a masculine form ending in -a. If you’re a
male dentist then you would say soy dentista. Exactly the same form is used for female dentists.
There are obviously lots more jobs we could list. This collection of words and phrases is intended to
provide a basic list of vocabulary. If you’d like some help describing your job, visit the Forum at http://
www.coffeebreakspanish.com and post a question. We’ll answer your question there and the other users
of CBS will benefit from the answer too!
CoffeeBreakSpanish.com
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