i'd like, and can i have
module: food and ordering
thirteen lessons in. last time we ordered tacos. today we back up a step, because ordering only works if you can actually say what you want, and "i'd like" or "can i have" is the door you walk through to get there.
in english we've got a dozen ways to ask for something. "can i get," "i'll have," "gimme," "could i get," "i want." spanish has a couple of workhorses that cover almost all of it. learn those first. sort out the fancy stuff never, since you don't need it.
the two phrases that do the work
quisiera — "i would like." your polite, all-purpose one. works at a restaurant, a counter, a stand at the farmers market up by the point.
quisiera un café. quisiera dos tacos de pollo.
me puede dar — "can you give me" / "can i have." a little more direct, still totally polite. it's the one i use more, because it's closer to how i actually talk.
me puede dar un agua. me puede dar la cuenta. (can i have the check.)
say both out loud right now, before you keep reading. i mean it. quisiera. me puede dar. again. that's the whole lesson, really — everything else is just what you plug in after.
building the sentence
it's basically:
quisiera / me puede dar + the thing you want
that's it. nothing needs conjugating fancier than that for this to work. quisiera un taco. quisiera una torta. me puede dar más salsa. me puede dar la cuenta.
to add "please" — por favor — tack it on the end, like we practiced two lessons back. quisiera un café, por favor. always lands soft and polite.
practice at home this week
grab five things from your own kitchen or your own grocery list and build the sentence out loud. not written down first — out loud first, every time. that's the pattern for this whole class and it's not changing now.
- quisiera pan.
- quisiera leche.
- me puede dar dos huevos.
- me puede dar una manzana.
- quisiera agua, por favor.
do it in the car. do it doing dishes. do it while you wait for something to heat up, since our elevation up here means everything takes longer in the oven than the box says anyway, so you've got the time.
an opinion, since we're here
the thing i always say: you don't need two hundred vocab words for this. you need "quisiera" plus ten foods you actually eat, said out loud a hundred times, and you're more functional than somebody who memorized a whole menu and can't get a sentence out. depth on ten phrases beats a wide shallow list every time. that's the work.
when it goes sideways
the honest part. you can ask perfectly and still get the wrong thing, because the person on the other end hears what they're used to hearing, not necessarily what you meant.
i tried this exact thing at a taco place in provo, ordering completely in spanish just to practice, feeling pretty good about myself. asked for pollo — chicken. the guy heard something else entirely. i ended up with a plate of tongue. lengua. did not know that's what i'd asked for until it was in front of me.
and it was good, actually. better than i expected. but that's not really the point. the point is: you can do everything right and still end up with tongue on your plate, and that's fine, that's part of it. you say "no, quisiera pollo" and you try again. nobody's mad. worst case you learn a new word for something you didn't expect to eat.
this is exactly why we learned "no entiendo" and "más despacio" back in week one, before any of this. those two phrases are what let you fix the tongue situation calmly instead of just eating it and hoping. use them. don't be embarrassed to use them. the embarrassed ones are always the slowest learners, and i say that kindly but i also say it a lot.
before next time
pick five foods, build the "quisiera" or "me puede dar" sentence for each one, and say all five out loud twice before we meet again. don't write them first. mouth before paper, every time.