Una Palabra Sola Episode 19, respirar
Breathwork is needed del punto de vista of life, of language, and of mindfulness.
Song recommendations: Respirar por Bebe y Respira por Luis Fonsi.
respirar: (v) to breathe, to relax
Synonyms: inhalar / aspirar (to inhale), exhalar / espirar (to exhale), tranquilizarse (to calm down), descansar (relax), callar (shut up), respolar (pant, huff and puff), suspirar (to sigh)
Antonyms: fatiga (fatigue), el hipo (hiccup), estornudar (to sneeze), sofocación (suffocation), hiperventilar (to hyperventilate)
From the Latin “respirare”
For reflection:
What’s your relationship with your breath? Describe it in three words.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
What cues can you build into your day to remind you to breathe?
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
When would you use the following phrases:
No dejar respirar (who’s bothering you?)
Sin respirar (where can you slow down?)
No poder respirar (when can you rest?)
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Hello and welcome to Una Palabra Sola, where we get to learn Spanish one word at a time. I'm your host, Megan Miller, founder and teacher at Aprovechar Language Solutions. Empezamos and let's dive in. Hola, hola, mis queridos oyentes. Hello and welcome back to Una Palabra Sola, a place where you get to learn Spanish one verb, or one word, sorry, one word, una palabra a la vez, one word at a time.
And I jumped the gun because today we have a verb. This verb is important for speaking, for life. For language, for everything. This verb has been on my mind a lot, and I'm just going to come right out and say it. El verbo es respirar. This is our verb, respirar. And, as a verb, it means, literalmente, to breathe or relax.
It's used, it can be used as a command, for example, meditation, doctor's office, wherever. Respira profundamente, like breathe deeply. And it also it’s a verb, right? It's to breathe. What we all do as humans, but as you can tell, there are two parts. You have the inhalación, or the inhale, and you have the exhalación, or the exhale.
So, como el imperativo. In the imperative and the command, that can be inhala y exhala. So, wherever you are in the world, I hope that you just took a big, deep breath. If not, come with me in my 10-second meditation. E inhala la seguridad y la confianza, y exhala las dudas. Exhale all of your doubts. Inhale your confidence, inhale all of the security and all of that self-worth that you need to have.
2:40
This is, como todas las palabras en español, from the Latín respirare, respirare; I’m just going to say respirar because it’s very similar. Sinónimos for respirar, so you can have inhala or inhaler; which literally looks like inhale. Inhala, of course, it does end with the A because it is an -AR verb in Spanish. Como sinónimo or a synonym of to inhale is aspirer, to aspirate. You also have exhalar, o exhale. And that is espirar.
Alright, going into the power of breath. This is also tranquilizarse, so you might hear tranquíate, or tranquil, or tranquila. And that's basically to calm the fuck down; tranquila, tranquil. That's like, calm down. Or you can have, you can descansar, which is another -AR verb, descansa, that means to rest. So, you can calm down, you can rest, you can breathe. All very good things to do at any point in time. You also have, como sinónimo, callar, which is to shut up. You might hear cállete, which is shut up.
4:16
Resoplar, this is where we're getting into more of that español avanzado. This is like a Hufflepuff. This is to pant. Resoplar. Tuve que subir una montaña y resoplaba, resoplé todo el tiempo. I had to climb a mountain and I panted or huffed and puffed the entire way. Or cada vez que yo corro por el treadmill, resoplo. Every time that I run on the treadmill, I resoplo. I can't. I huff and puff. I do not breathe well. Resoplar, to breathe. Also, you can have suspirar. Una suspira, and that is a sigh. Suspirar means to sigh. That's your verb, your -AR verb. And then suspira is a sigh.
Antónimos, antonyms of respirar, to breathe. Of course, you can have like sofocación, which is like suffocation, I can't breathe, oh my god. , you can also have like fatiga. Fatiga, it looks like fatigue, it sounds like fatigue, it means fatigue. Ansiedad, or soy ansia, ansiosa, right, that's anxiety. Also fun fact when I was looking through Maria Moliner’s Diccionario del uso de español for antónimos, for antonyms, because I was like, what else is there is an antonym other than to not breathe.
There was hiperventilación, hyperventilation; or estornudo. which is a sneeze; and hipo, which is a hiccup. Because when you're hiccuping, you aren't breathing. You're kind of breathing; you're trying your best, but it's not a breath. And same with sneeze, right? When you sneeze, you're like, achoo. And that is estornudo.
6:26
Como palabras o dichos, in this realm, for this verb specifically, there are some kind of related phrases, like no poder respirar, of course you would conjugate poder, so por ejemplo, yo no puedo respirar. No puedo respirar. I can't breathe. That can mean literally, like, I can't breathe, or it also means like, I'm very tired. Estoy muy, muy cansada. No puedo respirar. I can't breathe. I can't stop. Got to go. And I'm tired as fuck.
You can also have sin respirar. Like, fuimos sin respirar cuatro días por todo Grecia. I have not been to Greece, but that was taken from my yoga teacher. We went without stopping, like, very hurriedly for four days through Greece.
Or, no dejar respirar. Dejar, it means, like, to leave. To leave, or set it aside. And this is like, essentially being very vigilant or bothering, like being annoying to somebody. Por ejemplo, algunos de esos trolls, some of these trolls on social media or in my email inbox, no me dejan respirar. They do not let me breathe. They do not allow me to breathe because they send me emails going, hello sir slash madam, I would love to tell you how to do Bitcoin or something like that. That is very, it's bothersome. And every time I block them, they come back. They're like cockroaches.
So no dejar respirar, that is if somebody is cockroaching, essentially. Sin respirar, it's very hurriedly, very rápidamente con mucha prisa. And then no poder respirar is like being so cansado or so cansada. You're just so tired you can't even breathe.
So, breathe, I kind of alluded to this that this was the best advice I've ever gotten in life. And I've gotten some pretty amazing advice, but honestly, I always go back to this one. So, when I was younger, como gringuita, when I was just a little itty bitty ginger child, I rode horses. I showed horses for other people, or I would lease and show that horse for that year, whatever. And at this point in time, I think I was like 16 or so. I was at Kentucky horse park at a really big Arabian horse show. It was a big deal to me. You know, this is where they have like big, big events. I was really nervous. The owner and trainer, we had gone down with her and, you know, when you show Arabian horses, you go in at a full fucking trot.
9:49
Like, it's a similar feeling to running without a sports bra. Everything is just bouncing, and you have to have a smile on your face, but you're kind of uncomfortable, and you're just like, and we're off! And that's how every single class starts. So, you basically like get a running start and then you go in and you're like, look at me. I was riding this amazing horse and we were going in and she just… She looks at me and she just shouts as I went in, breathe! And I did because I listened to her, and I was just like (big sigh) and ended up getting a wonderful, really long, marvelous, pretty ribbon from that.
And I always think about that story in that specific moment because it's so easy to get caught up in things, and you're thinking about where your feet are, or where your hands are, and do you have a smile on your face, and you have like all these thoughts in your head that sometimes you forget to do literally the only job that we have as humans, which is to breathe.
11:01
Respirar. You don't even have to do it profundamente. You don't even have to breathe deep. You just have to keep breathing. And I no longer am around horses at this point in time because I got poor, but this is very similar to real life now where, uh, just having this experience and having this company that is in IT and IT consulting and DevOps and things. At this point, I'm just throwing out words. I'm just throwing out word salad for you, but there's always a sprint in IT. You sprint, and then you rest. And there's always that rest period built in. Sometimes I forget to rest, and I'm like, well, I'm late, and so I already used up my rest period when I was working, and then that's when it leads to burnout in all of its forms.
So having this moment, it doesn't have to be a big thing. You don't have to go and rent a yurt for a month. You don't have to go take a vow of silence. Although, if you want to, go for it. But like, it can literally just be a moment of 30 seconds, or less, and just breathe in, and breathe out.
There's this certain peace or tranquility to breathing too, where currently I fall asleep and I do a lot of guided meditations. Calm was the best investment that I ever did as a human, as a business owner, as honestly as a language learner as well, because when you breathe, that is giving your entire body the fuel that it needs to get that sentence out.
And when you can't or don't have that breath, when you can't kind of catch your breath, either because you're nervous or you're caught up in whatever kind of emotion is there, your brain is going too fast and you might be tingling. This is what used to happen when I used to get panic attacks and anxiety attacks. Like, I couldn't keep up breathing. And especially for a guided meditation, it's nice to just have someone to tell you, Hey, feel the floor where you're sitting or laying down or standing, whatever. Breathe in, one, two, three, breathe out, two, three, and then you can kind of focus on that breath and that brings that tranquility, that tranquilidad, tranquilizarse, those related words back into your orbit, right?
14:03
From a brain perspective, this is very fun. From a brain perspective, when you are nervous, your amygdala just kind of takes the reins. And it is like a Pony Express rider. It's just going to fucking go. And you won't have control of where that is. When you breathe, you take that control back. You just kind of relinquish and surrender and say, hey, I'm just going to breathe right now, versus, oh my god, oh my god, I'm so nervous and I forget this is an irregular verb. And now we're talking in the preterite and I don't do the preterite. And what if they think that I'm stupid? And what if they… and it goes on and on. Right? I've been there.
So, breathing is also a very powerful tool when you are just out and about in the normal world trying to do your best in whatever language you're speaking and practicing.
And there's also the density of the language. We have Spanish and we have English. These are the two languages I live in. Spanish is a less dense language than English. English is denser as a language. And what this, the only thing that this means is that in English there's more meaning per syllable. So, it’s slowed down. When I looked it up on the internet, so you know it must be true, there was this average of 6.19 syllables per second spoken in English. Spanish, on the other hand, necesita más sílabos. So, Spanish needs more syllables to convey the same meaning. There's an average of 7.82 syllables per second.
The sentences are longer, and you can know this any time that you need to read anything out loud in Spanish. If you have a paragraph in English, usually it's like three to five sentences. That's what my primary school teacher taught me. That, that is a paragraph. If you have a párrafo en español, that could be a whole fucking sentence.
16:15
You won't know it. We go in at the same pace, or trying to read as fast as we can with whatever breath we have left in Spanish, and then we run out of steam in the middle. Instead, it's more about breathing profundamente, having that deep breath, making sure that your body has enough energy to get to where a natural stopping point is, take a breath, and continue on.
And that is going to help you sound more natural, more native, and, in general, just a more relaxed human. We don't need to be as strung out in life as we generally are. As I said earlier, when you breathe in, so that's reading out loud, but when you're in conversation and you have all of this cortisol, you have all these stress hormones and you have all of, you know, your amygdala is taken over at this point and it is doing the Dr. Evil spin around in the chair and you know, whatever, remember to breathe because this is a conversation. It's a verb tense. We don't need to get into this flight, fight, fright, freeze.
There's always a way to talk around something. There's always a way to get to where you need to go in language. That is the blessing and that is the absolute curse of it. For example, when I teach, any language I teach, if I'm teaching English, if I'm teaching Spanish, if I'm teaching Spanish; whatever language. There can be five different ways to say something and you can see this anywhere, right? You can see this in the news. For example, something happens and you go to one news source and they say, blah blah blah. And then you go to another news source and then they say, bleh bleh beh. They're reporting on the same thing, but they're using two different words… Two different biases, two different perspectives, two different optics, whatever that choice or elección is, they're using that to convey the same thing.
18:37
The event happened, that's a fact, no matter what. And then, you put the context, the nuance, the opinions, the loaded language, if it is very loaded, or the more formal language, or the informal language. So, no matter where you are in life, no matter what language you're in, you're amidst that anyways. When you're in a conversation, and you can't forget the word, or you can't remember the word for slipper, and you're like, ah, the fuzzy thing that you put on your feet. Ah, yeah, pantuflas. Like, whatever that is, and I just remember that because it's fun to say, but whatever that is that you're trying to think of, when you convey that context or meaning or tone, you may not choose exactly the word that you can't grasp, that you can't remember, but you can sure as shit circumlocute the fuck out of that.
And that is what circumlocution is. It sounds like something dolphins do; it is not. It's when you talk around something. You describe it. And you're like, ugh. What's that big clock over in London? It's brown and it's really historical and it's like by the parliament where they make all the laws. Oh yeah, Big Ben. That is an example of circumlocution.
20:09
How this translates back into respirar? Well, glad you asked. So, when you are in this conversation, you're circumlocuting, you're just trying your best; you're like, what are we talking about? How can I keep up? Breathing will help regulate all of those stress hormones, and it'll make sure that your body has that good engine of energy, so that you can get to wherever you need to go. And the fun fact about respirar, como verbo, I would be remiss if I didn't say this, and I'm sorry that I said it at the end. But this is a regular old -AR verb. It is very normal. So, what that means is it's conjugated to the same patterns that we are used to in el presente, respiro, respiras, respira, respiramos, respiráis, respiran.
So, there are no real irregularities and that to me is just magical because there should be no real irregularities when we breathe. If there are, make sure you get that shit checked out and go back to your breath, whatever that breath is. Your breath is going to be different after you have run a mile, after you have done an interview in Spanish, after you have, I don't know, studied the preterite; it's going to be different right when you wake up in the morning and right when you go to bed at night, and every moment in between.
21:53
The thing about life is that it's made up of these moments, and the moments are made up of nothing more than our breath. So, if you feel like life is passing you by, a la Ferris Bueller, sometimes it's good to just pause and breathe for a moment. Whether you are in conversation, you are in the middle of your work day, you're in a highly charged meeting, you're at work or after work, whatever it is.
It's nice to breathe. That can be shouted at you from the sidelines, which I will do at any point, just let me know. Or it can just be a nice, gentle reminder. It's good to pause and breathe. In life, in conversation, because these moments are going to pass us by. And then we're going to be like, oh, where the fuck did 2024 go? It just went by the same way that 2023 did, moment after moment. And it's all about the habits that we do and the activities that we do, the habits we create, the activities that we do, in order to aprovechar, or make the most of this pinche vida that we have.
23:10
So, if you are interested in habit work in español, check out my monthly program called Deseo at DeseoSpanishProgram.info. También, check out the show notes, transcript, request a word, and see that verb T chart at Aprovechar. me. Until next time, un abrazo fuerte.
Gracias otra vez, and thank you so much for coming along with me on this ride to Una Palabra Sola. Be sure to check out the show notes for additional worksheets and materials. If you have a word that you would like me to review, please feel free to let me know at aprovecharlanguagesolutions.com. Hasta la próxima vez; until next time. Hello and welcome to Una Palabra Sola, where we get to learn Spanish one word at a time. I'm your host, Megan Miller, founder and teacher at Aprovechar Language Solutions. Empezamos and let's dive in. Hola, hola, mis queridos oyentes. Hello and welcome back to Una Palabra Sola, a place where you get to learn Spanish one verb, or one word, sorry, one word, una palabra a la vez, one word at a time.
And I jumped the gun because today we have a verb. This verb is important for speaking, for life. For language, for everything. This verb has been on my mind a lot, and I'm just going to come right out and say it. El verbo es respirar. This is our verb, respirar. And, as a verb, it means, literalmente, to breathe or relax.
It's used, it can be used as a command, for example, meditation, doctor's office, wherever. Respira profundamente, like breathe deeply. And it also it’s a verb, right? It's to breathe. What we all do as humans, but as you can tell, there are two parts. You have the inhalación, or the inhale, and you have the exhalación, or the exhale.
So, como el imperativo. In the imperative and the command, that can be inhala y exhala. So, wherever you are in the world, I hope that you just took a big, deep breath. If not, come with me in my 10-second meditation. E inhala la seguridad y la confianza, y exhala las dudas. Exhale all of your doubts. Inhale your confidence, inhale all of the security and all of that self-worth that you need to have.
2:40
This is, como todas las palabras en español, from the Latín respirare, respirare; I’m just going to say respirar because it’s very similar. Sinónimos for respirar, so you can have inhala or inhaler; which literally looks like inhale. Inhala, of course, it does end with the A because it is an -AR verb in Spanish. Como sinónimo or a synonym of to inhale is aspirer, to aspirate. You also have exhalar, o exhale. And that is espirar.
Alright, going into the power of breath. This is also tranquilizarse, so you might hear tranquíate, or tranquil, or tranquila. And that's basically to calm the fuck down; tranquila, tranquil. That's like, calm down. Or you can have, you can descansar, which is another -AR verb, descansa, that means to rest. So, you can calm down, you can rest, you can breathe. All very good things to do at any point in time. You also have, como sinónimo, callar, which is to shut up. You might hear cállete, which is shut up.
4:16
Resoplar, this is where we're getting into more of that español avanzado. This is like a Hufflepuff. This is to pant. Resoplar. Tuve que subir una montaña y resoplaba, resoplé todo el tiempo. I had to climb a mountain and I panted or huffed and puffed the entire way. Or cada vez que yo corro por el treadmill, resoplo. Every time that I run on the treadmill, I resoplo. I can't. I huff and puff. I do not breathe well. Resoplar, to breathe. Also, you can have suspirar. Una suspira, and that is a sigh. Suspirar means to sigh. That's your verb, your -AR verb. And then suspira is a sigh.
Antónimos, antonyms of respirar, to breathe. Of course, you can have like sofocación, which is like suffocation, I can't breathe, oh my god. , you can also have like fatiga. Fatiga, it looks like fatigue, it sounds like fatigue, it means fatigue. Ansiedad, or soy ansia, ansiosa, right, that's anxiety. Also fun fact when I was looking through Maria Moliner’s Diccionario del uso de español for antónimos, for antonyms, because I was like, what else is there is an antonym other than to not breathe.
There was hiperventilación, hyperventilation; or estornudo. which is a sneeze; and hipo, which is a hiccup. Because when you're hiccuping, you aren't breathing. You're kind of breathing; you're trying your best, but it's not a breath. And same with sneeze, right? When you sneeze, you're like, achoo. And that is estornudo.
6:26
Como palabras o dichos, in this realm, for this verb specifically, there are some kind of related phrases, like no poder respirar, of course you would conjugate poder, so por ejemplo, yo no puedo respirar. No puedo respirar. I can't breathe. That can mean literally, like, I can't breathe, or it also means like, I'm very tired. Estoy muy, muy cansada. No puedo respirar. I can't breathe. I can't stop. Got to go. And I'm tired as fuck.
You can also have sin respirar. Like, fuimos sin respirar cuatro días por todo Grecia. I have not been to Greece, but that was taken from my yoga teacher. We went without stopping, like, very hurriedly for four days through Greece.
Or, no dejar respirar. Dejar, it means, like, to leave. To leave, or set it aside. And this is like, essentially being very vigilant or bothering, like being annoying to somebody. Por ejemplo, algunos de esos trolls, some of these trolls on social media or in my email inbox, no me dejan respirar. They do not let me breathe. They do not allow me to breathe because they send me emails going, hello sir slash madam, I would love to tell you how to do Bitcoin or something like that. That is very, it's bothersome. And every time I block them, they come back. They're like cockroaches.
So no dejar respirar, that is if somebody is cockroaching, essentially. Sin respirar, it's very hurriedly, very rápidamente con mucha prisa. And then no poder respirar is like being so cansado or so cansada. You're just so tired you can't even breathe.
So, breathe, I kind of alluded to this that this was the best advice I've ever gotten in life. And I've gotten some pretty amazing advice, but honestly, I always go back to this one. So, when I was younger, como gringuita, when I was just a little itty bitty ginger child, I rode horses. I showed horses for other people, or I would lease and show that horse for that year, whatever. And at this point in time, I think I was like 16 or so. I was at Kentucky horse park at a really big Arabian horse show. It was a big deal to me. You know, this is where they have like big, big events. I was really nervous. The owner and trainer, we had gone down with her and, you know, when you show Arabian horses, you go in at a full fucking trot.
9:49
Like, it's a similar feeling to running without a sports bra. Everything is just bouncing, and you have to have a smile on your face, but you're kind of uncomfortable, and you're just like, and we're off! And that's how every single class starts. So, you basically like get a running start and then you go in and you're like, look at me. I was riding this amazing horse and we were going in and she just… She looks at me and she just shouts as I went in, breathe! And I did because I listened to her, and I was just like (big sigh) and ended up getting a wonderful, really long, marvelous, pretty ribbon from that.
And I always think about that story in that specific moment because it's so easy to get caught up in things, and you're thinking about where your feet are, or where your hands are, and do you have a smile on your face, and you have like all these thoughts in your head that sometimes you forget to do literally the only job that we have as humans, which is to breathe.
11:01
Respirar. You don't even have to do it profundamente. You don't even have to breathe deep. You just have to keep breathing. And I no longer am around horses at this point in time because I got poor, but this is very similar to real life now where, uh, just having this experience and having this company that is in IT and IT consulting and DevOps and things. At this point, I'm just throwing out words. I'm just throwing out word salad for you, but there's always a sprint in IT. You sprint, and then you rest. And there's always that rest period built in. Sometimes I forget to rest, and I'm like, well, I'm late, and so I already used up my rest period when I was working, and then that's when it leads to burnout in all of its forms.
So having this moment, it doesn't have to be a big thing. You don't have to go and rent a yurt for a month. You don't have to go take a vow of silence. Although, if you want to, go for it. But like, it can literally just be a moment of 30 seconds, or less, and just breathe in, and breathe out.
There's this certain peace or tranquility to breathing too, where currently I fall asleep and I do a lot of guided meditations. Calm was the best investment that I ever did as a human, as a business owner, as honestly as a language learner as well, because when you breathe, that is giving your entire body the fuel that it needs to get that sentence out.
And when you can't or don't have that breath, when you can't kind of catch your breath, either because you're nervous or you're caught up in whatever kind of emotion is there, your brain is going too fast and you might be tingling. This is what used to happen when I used to get panic attacks and anxiety attacks. Like, I couldn't keep up breathing. And especially for a guided meditation, it's nice to just have someone to tell you, Hey, feel the floor where you're sitting or laying down or standing, whatever. Breathe in, one, two, three, breathe out, two, three, and then you can kind of focus on that breath and that brings that tranquility, that tranquilidad, tranquilizarse, those related words back into your orbit, right?
14:03
From a brain perspective, this is very fun. From a brain perspective, when you are nervous, your amygdala just kind of takes the reins. And it is like a Pony Express rider. It's just going to fucking go. And you won't have control of where that is. When you breathe, you take that control back. You just kind of relinquish and surrender and say, hey, I'm just going to breathe right now, versus, oh my god, oh my god, I'm so nervous and I forget this is an irregular verb. And now we're talking in the preterite and I don't do the preterite. And what if they think that I'm stupid? And what if they… and it goes on and on. Right? I've been there.
So, breathing is also a very powerful tool when you are just out and about in the normal world trying to do your best in whatever language you're speaking and practicing.
And there's also the density of the language. We have Spanish and we have English. These are the two languages I live in. Spanish is a less dense language than English. English is denser as a language. And what this, the only thing that this means is that in English there's more meaning per syllable. So, it’s slowed down. When I looked it up on the internet, so you know it must be true, there was this average of 6.19 syllables per second spoken in English. Spanish, on the other hand, necesita más sílabos. So, Spanish needs more syllables to convey the same meaning. There's an average of 7.82 syllables per second.
The sentences are longer, and you can know this any time that you need to read anything out loud in Spanish. If you have a paragraph in English, usually it's like three to five sentences. That's what my primary school teacher taught me. That, that is a paragraph. If you have a párrafo en español, that could be a whole fucking sentence.
16:15
You won't know it. We go in at the same pace, or trying to read as fast as we can with whatever breath we have left in Spanish, and then we run out of steam in the middle. Instead, it's more about breathing profundamente, having that deep breath, making sure that your body has enough energy to get to where a natural stopping point is, take a breath, and continue on.
And that is going to help you sound more natural, more native, and, in general, just a more relaxed human. We don't need to be as strung out in life as we generally are. As I said earlier, when you breathe in, so that's reading out loud, but when you're in conversation and you have all of this cortisol, you have all these stress hormones and you have all of, you know, your amygdala is taken over at this point and it is doing the Dr. Evil spin around in the chair and you know, whatever, remember to breathe because this is a conversation. It's a verb tense. We don't need to get into this flight, fight, fright, freeze.
There's always a way to talk around something. There's always a way to get to where you need to go in language. That is the blessing and that is the absolute curse of it. For example, when I teach, any language I teach, if I'm teaching English, if I'm teaching Spanish, if I'm teaching Spanish; whatever language. There can be five different ways to say something and you can see this anywhere, right? You can see this in the news. For example, something happens and you go to one news source and they say, blah blah blah. And then you go to another news source and then they say, bleh bleh beh. They're reporting on the same thing, but they're using two different words… Two different biases, two different perspectives, two different optics, whatever that choice or elección is, they're using that to convey the same thing.
18:37
The event happened, that's a fact, no matter what. And then, you put the context, the nuance, the opinions, the loaded language, if it is very loaded, or the more formal language, or the informal language. So, no matter where you are in life, no matter what language you're in, you're amidst that anyways. When you're in a conversation, and you can't forget the word, or you can't remember the word for slipper, and you're like, ah, the fuzzy thing that you put on your feet. Ah, yeah, pantuflas. Like, whatever that is, and I just remember that because it's fun to say, but whatever that is that you're trying to think of, when you convey that context or meaning or tone, you may not choose exactly the word that you can't grasp, that you can't remember, but you can sure as shit circumlocute the fuck out of that.
And that is what circumlocution is. It sounds like something dolphins do; it is not. It's when you talk around something. You describe it. And you're like, ugh. What's that big clock over in London? It's brown and it's really historical and it's like by the parliament where they make all the laws. Oh yeah, Big Ben. That is an example of circumlocution.
20:09
How this translates back into respirar? Well, glad you asked. So, when you are in this conversation, you're circumlocuting, you're just trying your best; you're like, what are we talking about? How can I keep up? Breathing will help regulate all of those stress hormones, and it'll make sure that your body has that good engine of energy, so that you can get to wherever you need to go. And the fun fact about respirar, como verbo, I would be remiss if I didn't say this, and I'm sorry that I said it at the end. But this is a regular old -AR verb. It is very normal. So, what that means is it's conjugated to the same patterns that we are used to in el presente, respiro, respiras, respira, respiramos, respiráis, respiran.
So, there are no real irregularities and that to me is just magical because there should be no real irregularities when we breathe. If there are, make sure you get that shit checked out and go back to your breath, whatever that breath is. Your breath is going to be different after you have run a mile, after you have done an interview in Spanish, after you have, I don't know, studied the preterite; it's going to be different right when you wake up in the morning and right when you go to bed at night, and every moment in between.
21:53
The thing about life is that it's made up of these moments, and the moments are made up of nothing more than our breath. So, if you feel like life is passing you by, a la Ferris Bueller, sometimes it's good to just pause and breathe for a moment. Whether you are in conversation, you are in the middle of your work day, you're in a highly charged meeting, you're at work or after work, whatever it is.
It's nice to breathe. That can be shouted at you from the sidelines, which I will do at any point, just let me know. Or it can just be a nice, gentle reminder. It's good to pause and breathe. In life, in conversation, because these moments are going to pass us by. And then we're going to be like, oh, where the fuck did 2024 go? It just went by the same way that 2023 did, moment after moment. And it's all about the habits that we do and the activities that we do, the habits we create, the activities that we do, in order to aprovechar, or make the most of this pinche vida that we have.
23:10
So, if you are interested in habit work in español, check out my monthly program called Deseo at DeseoSpanishProgram.info. También, check out the show notes, transcript, request a word, and see that verb T chart at Aprovechar. me. Until next time, un abrazo fuerte.
Gracias otra vez, and thank you so much for coming along with me on this ride to Una Palabra Sola. Be sure to check out the show notes for additional worksheets and materials. If you have a word that you would like me to review, please feel free to let me know at aprovecharlanguagesolutions.com. Hasta la próxima vez; until next time.