As you head off to bed in Spain or Latin America, you may hear "Dulces sueños" ("Sweet dreams"). But note that the noun "sueño" isn't just for dreamers. From our online dictionary:

Sueño (masc.)
shut-eye, light sleep; sleep, unconscious state entered into by the body for the purpose of rest and rejuvenation (in humans and animals); dream, series of thoughts and visions which occur during sleep; delusion
                                                   --Babylon Spanish-English

Here are a few more examples of "sueño" for sleep and dreams:

¿Cuántas horas de sueño necesitas?
"How many hours of sleep do you need?"

" Yo tengo un sueño"
"I have a dream" (as Martin Luther King famously declared)"

Tengo sueño
"I'm sleepy"

Es el hombre de mis sueños
"He's the man of my dreams"

Naturally enough, "sueño(s)" make their way into many songs. Search Yabla's music directory and you'll find it in song titles like "Bienvenido al sueño" ("Welcome to the dream") by SiZu Yantra and "Por El Boulevar De Los Sueños Rotos" ("Along the Boulevard of Broken Dreams") by Joaquín Sabina.  In our latest batch of new videos, sueño pops up within two musical numbers.
 
In Gardi's Leña apagada, if you aren't too distracted by the Cuban singer's hirsute axila, you might grapple with lyrics like this line:

Dicen que su sueño respiraba moribundo
They say that her dream breathed as if dying
[Caption 32, Gardi > Leña apagada]

Ok. It's figurative. Chalk it up to poetic license.

Moving right along... Within the documentary of Alejandro Fernández's music, we hear the singer belt out:

Sueño contigo
I dream of you
[Caption 6, Alejandro Fernández > Viento a Favor > 2]

Aha. This "sueño" is a verb, not a noun. It's is the first-person (present tense) form of the verb "soñar" ("to dream"). "Soñar" is a stem-changing verb (o -> ue), as is "dormir" ("to sleep").  Here are a couple examples of dream and sleep as verbs:

¿Dormiste bien?
Did you sleep well?

Que sueñes con los angelitos
May you dream of little angels (an expression meaning, basically, "Sweet dreams")

While in English,  you "dream of" or "dream about" someone or something, in Spanish, the preposition to use to get the same point across is "con" (which, as you probably know, usually takes the meaning "with" -- but not in this situation).  Here are two more examples:

¿Sueñas conmigo?
Do you dream about me?

Juan sueña con Jeannie
Juan dreams of Jeannie.

"Soñar con" is just one of those verb-preposition pairings you must memorize to speak like a native. Sleep on that one, ok?

Hola. ¿Qué pasa?

Now let's get started by looking at "pasar" -- a verb with many meanings. Here are some examples:

Hola. ¿Qué pasa? ¿Y qué te pasó?
"Hi. What's up? [used as a common greeting] And what happened to you?"

Pásame la sal.
"Pass me the salt."

Vilma pasó veinte minutos buscando las llaves.
"Vilma spent twenty minutes looking for the keys."

Él es muy cuidadoso al pasar la calle.
"He is very careful crossing the street."

As you can see from our examples, "pasar" can mean "to happen" or "to occur." It can also express the passage of an object (like salt), the passage of time (like 20 minutes) or the passage from one place to another (e.g., across the street).

In the first part of our documentary about singer Alejandro Fernández, we hear a reflexive version of the verb pasar:

Alejandro, te pasaste
Alejandro, you've outdone yourself
[Caption 3, Alejandro Fernández > Viento a Favor >1]

At first glance, a native English speaker might try to translate this as "Alejandro, you've passed yourself," which obviously isn't quite right. However, if we modify this attempt slightly, we get "you've surpassed yourself," which has the same meaning as what we went with,  "you've outdone yourself."

The sentiment here is positive; Alejandandro has done an excellent job on his new album. However, it's interesting to note that pasarse is probably most often used to indicate the negative sentiment of "going too far," either literally:

Nos hemos pasado, el teatro está más arriba.
"We've gone too far, the theater isn't this far down."

or figuratively:

Esta vez te has pasado, voy a llamar a tu mamá.
"This time you've gone too far, I'm going to call your mother."

In English, another way of expressing "to go too far" is "to cross the line." The same is true  in Spanish , where we find pasarse (de la raya). The de la raya portion of the phrase can be stated explicitly or omitted, in which case its meaning is implicitly understood. For example:

Me pasé (de la raya) al intentar besarla en los labios.
I went too far (crossed the line) when I tried to kiss her on the lips.

Las gasolineras se pasan (de la raya) con esos precios tan altos.
The gas stations are crossing the line with such high prices.

¡No te pases (de la raya)!
Don't cross the line! (Stay in check; control yourself.)

But all this negativity aside, in our video, "te pasaste" is clearly a compliment. Tone and context clue us in. It's similar in English when you say: "You've outdone yourself this time!," and, depending on your tone of voice and the context, such a statement can be taken as an insult or as praise.  We'll take that as a compliment.

In your dictionary, "mayor" may first pop up as the comparative and superlative form of "grande" meaning "bigger; biggest; older; oldest," but it carries other meanings, too. For example, "al por mayor" means "wholesale." Listen to our new featured song "Aparencias" ("Appearances"), where Héctor Montaner croons:

Si el amor me lo vendieran al mayor,

pagaría lo que fuera por comprarlo.

"If love were sold to me wholesale,

I would pay anything to buy it."

captions 5-6, Héctor Montaner > Aparencias

Note that Montaner takes a little bit of poetic license by skipping "por": In your dictionaries, "vender al por mayor" is the full, correct way to say "sell wholesale."



Elsewhere in new videos, Francisco in Salamanca describes his campus as:

...donde vamos los mayores

"...where we, the elders, attend"

caption 7, Francisco Pérez > Salamanca

At his school, mayores are defined as anyone 55 or older, but mayores can also simply mean "adults." You'll have to listen for the context to discern if mayores refers to ancianos, viejos y/o abuelos -- that is to say, the elderly -- or simply someone who's an adult, or of legal age.



If in doubt about the meaning of mayores (as a description or a comparison), heed this expression:

¡Más respeto con los mayores!

"Be more respectful to your elders (and betters)!"

All this talk about commands brought us back to Shaila Dúrcal's wistful song, Vuélvete la luna. ("Become the moon"). Yup: here's another song title that's an order, if a somewhat abstract one. Some of you may know that Volver (the title of a recent Almodóvar film) means "to return." But did you know that "volverse" is one of many ways to say "to become"? For example:

Acaricia mi alma, vuélvete la luna
"Caress my soul, become the moon"
[Caption 14, Shaila Dúrcal > Vuélvete Luna]

Se volvió loco.
"He went [became] crazy."

A few other ways to say "to become" are hacerse, convertirse, and ponerse. Here are examples of how these "becoming" verbs work:

Hazte doctor.
"Become a doctor."

La librería se ha convertido en un McDonald's.
"The book store has become a McDonald's."

Se puso colorado.
"He turned red in the face."

A veces la vida se pone difícil.
"Sometimes life gets hard."

If you want to read more ways to say "become" in Spanish: Haz clic aquí (Click here).

In Mexico City, our Amigos D.F. return to tell us something about arquitectura (architecture) in el D.F. (in Mexico City, that is). Indicating a nearby building, we hear:

...abajo es una zona comercial, todo lo que vendría a ser la planta baja... y arriba, allá, son este... departamentos... residenciales.
"...below it's a commercial area, everything that would be the ground level... and above, there, are... apartments... residential."
[Captions 17-19, Amigos D.F. > Arquitectura]

Despite the rambling nature of this unscripted dialogue, it's easy enough to understand that there are commercial businesses on the ground floor of this building and residential apartments above. If the building has an elevator, pressing the p.b. (planta baja) button will take you to street level.

Push "1" in the same elevator and you'll end up on what's referred to as the "second floor" in New York or Miami.  You see, in Spain and in Latin America, "l primer piso is "the first floor *above* the ground level."

So, let's take this language lesson up a step. Say you want to visit your Mexican friend in his apartment up on "2." That's el segundo piso ("the second floor"). You see, you rarely hear la segunda planta or la primera planta outside of architectural drawings. In everyday speech, you'll usually hear pisos"instead of plantas describe floors 1 through, well, the sky's the limit.
A final note on arquitectura: Departamento is the word of choice for Latin American apartments. Meanwhile, over in Spain, you'll typically hear apartamento.