#233 – How do you say ‘To get’ in Spanish?

How do you say ‘To get’ in Spanish?

Good question!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Post 233/365
Es martes, 14 de noviembre de 2017

 

Buenos días y gracias por estar aquí.

We’ve been working on reflexive verbs in Spanish.

We’ve covered 3 uses so far.

1. La rutina diaria

2. El ‘se’ impersonal

3. Acciones recíprocas

 

 

Today we’ll use them to express ‘to get’ in Spanish. We’ll be looking at this use for several days.

How do you say ‘to get’ in Spanish?

You don’t!

What I mean is that you can say ‘to get’ as in ‘to obtain’ by using these verbs:

obtener – to obtain.
Necesito obtener un pasaporte.

 

conseguir– to get – less formal than obtener
Voy a conseguir leche y pan.

 

But, what if I want to say, ‘to get up’?  or ‘to get married‘?

That’s our 4th use of reflexive verbs.

 

levantarse – to get up

Me levanto a las 6:00. – I get up at 6:00.

Ayer me levanté a las 5:00. – Yesterday I got up at 5:00.

 

 

casarse – to get married

Rogelio y Ana van a casarse en junio. – Roger and Ana are going to get married in June.

Me casé hace un año. – I got married a year ago.

 

 

 

enfermarse – to get sick

Pienso que me enfermo – I think I’m getting sick.

Me enfermé el sábado pasado. – I got sick last Saturday.

 

 

 

As we can see, there is no separate word for ‘to get’ in these examples. It’s shown with the reflexive verb.

‘levantar’ means to lift something up.

‘levantarse’ means to get up

 

 

‘Casar‘ means to marry (That is what the priest does), but

‘Casarse‘ means to get married.

 

 

This is where translation can be a problem. When we try to translate everything word for word it can mess things up.

Knowing the difference between ‘to get’ as in ‘to obtain’ versus ‘to get’ as in ‘to get married’ and how to use reflexive verbs will help out a lot!

 

We’ll look at more tomorrow, but in the the meantime…

Action steps: study and reread the examples above.

 

Déjame un comentario. Quiero oir de ti.

Gracias y hasta mañana,
Carolina