Sometimes mastery of a foreign language is less about how many words you know and more about how many words you know well.
Your job as a language student is not to cram as much into your memory bank as possible but to focus on learning the right things. And learning them well.
This idea of knowing the right things applies to today’s podcast. In today’s podcast I am going to take a close look at one spanish word. This podcast is similar to a recent podcast on the word ‘dar’.
The word for today is ‘echar’. Similar to the episode on ‘dar’—I’m going to focus on ‘echar’ because it is a common spanish verb.
If you want to learn Spanish effectively, it is much better to know 100 common words really well than 1000 words poorly. Or worse—100 uncommon words.
Examples from today’s podcast:
To throw – echar.
They threw me out on to the street (They fired me) – Me echaron a la calle.
Take a look – Echar un ojo.
Remember to keep an eye on the oven – Recuerde que echarle un ojo en el horno.
To lend a hand – Echar una mano.
Can you lend me a hand – ¿Me puedes echar una mano?
To burst into tears – Echarse a llorar.
I was so upset that I burst into tears – Yo estaba tan molesto que me eché a llorar.
To pass the blame (To pass the buck) – Echar la culpa.
They blamed me for everything – Me echaron la culpa de todo.
To miss something – Echar de menos.
I miss you a lot – Te echo mucho de menos.
Other episodes mentioned in this podcast:
- 3 Common Ways To Use “Llevar” In A Conversation.
- 3 Spanish Phrases With The Verb ‘Poner’.
- Common Spanish Verbs – 5 Uses of the Word ‘Dar’.
Spanish proverbs:
El mal escribano le echa la culpa a la pluma.
Literally: a bad clerk blames his pen.
English equivalent: A bad workman blames his tools.
Con el agua de la bañadera echar también al niño.
English equivalent: Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
How else can you use the verb “echar” in a conversation?
Podcast: Play in new window
Very useful examples!
Tienes las más importantes.
Solo echo de menos “echar en cara”—to throw something in somebody’s face.
Thanks Jorge. I know there are many more but like you said I was aiming for the most important.
don’t forget “echar a perder” – to spoil/ruin
Gracias por echarme una mano con mi español. Echaré un ojo en tus podcasts en el futuro.
Gracias Mary 🙂
why do you need to add -le on to echar in the sentence “keep an eye on the oven”?
thank you.
Hola Jade, Spanish grammar works a little differently from English and so sometimes the translations don’t work as smoothly as we would expect them to. Sometimes we need an extra “le” and it sounds wrong to English natives but is perfectly natural for Spanish natives.