Una Palabra Sola Episode 20, volver
La vida funciona en ciclos: life cycles through seasons, sprints, quarters, and moments. It’s what you do with that time that matters.
Song recommendations: Quiero que vuelvas por Alejandro Fernández and Volverte a ver por Juanes.
volver: (v) to return, to come back to
(Cambiar la posición de una cosa haciéndola girar en cualquier sentido o dirección)
volverse: (v) to become, turn, get (angry, sad, sick), go bad, wrong
(Adquirir una característica)
volver + adjective: to make (adjective)
volver a + verb: to return to (verb); to (verb) again
Synonyms: invertir (flip, switch), cambiarse (change self), regresar (return), revertir (reverse, revert to)
Antonyms: quedarse (to stay), pausar / dar pausa (to pause), suspender (to suspend), cesar / terminar (to stop), acabar (to end), dejar, detener, parar de (v) (to stop [verb])
From the Latin “volvĕre”, to return
For reflection:
What thought, hobby, pattern, or activity do you keep coming back to? What feelings does this evoke?
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How would you use volver: with an adjective, as a reflexive verb, with another verb, or on its own? Practice below.
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What do you - or would you like to - return to in the realm of learning Spanish? What topics are worth revisiting for you?
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Una PS has been a labor of love from the beginning. If you’d like to join our lil’ love fest via the Deseo program, click here to sign up! We all have our own wishes and desires when it comes to language, and with some resources and accountability, I can help make yours come true.
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, otra vez, hello, and welcome back to Una Palabra Sola, a podcast where we get to learn Spanish una palabra a la vez, one word at a time.
And today's word has been brought to you by drumroll, therapy. Yay! I was recently talking with my therapist, who I absolutely adore about cycles. Specifically, it just feels like I keep moving around and moving around and not doing anything like not getting anywhere, right? Like spinning my wheels, chasing my tail, whatever analogy or metaphor you want to use.
Where some recent changes in business have me thinking back to 2020. And for those that don't know, that is when I went freelance and started my own thing. I said, screw you corporate. And I hung up my blazer and COVID happened. And it was a big thing. We were all just trying our best. And being a new business owner, I had decided to open Aprovechar way beforehand, like, did a whole six-month plan; it was a thing and COVID was just like, well, watch this, challenge accepted. And as a new business owner, there were a lot of mistakes. There were a lot of missteps. I still continue to this day to do a lot of yoga, because I put my foot in my mouth so much, I need the flexibility that yoga gives me.
2:03
It's just, for someone that teaches words, I don't use words well a lot of times. And so, all of these recent changes, I'm like, ugh, I'm thinking back to the beginning. It's so easy for me to go back into a scarcity mindset and look at everything that I don't have versus looking at everything that I do have and all of that is to say, queridos, life is very cyclical. And that brings us to our word today, which kind of inhabits the sentido, the sense, of this phenomenon that I'm sure everyone else has felt too. And our palabra, our word, is volver. Volver is a verb, and it is an irregular verb. It's an irregular diphthong verb and you know, anytime that I get to say diphthong, I will, because it's just fun to say. And all that means is that in the present tense that, O in volver changes to UE.
So, to conjugate it's vuelvo, vuelves, vuelve. Volvemos. Vuelven.
And this verb, what it means, is to return or to come back to. You can also make it reflexive, so, volverse. And that means to become. Now, when you look at the dictionary at Volver, you will get a whole list. And just trying to not make this podcast episode an hour and 20 minutes long, because I didn't bring enough snacks for that. I will let you look at that long list, but I'm going to hit the main points. And those main points are, volver, it can be used as a normal, regular, like, volver, yo vuelvo, I return. Vuelves, you return, you come back to. It can be used like that.
It can also be used with an adjective like, vuelvo loca cada vez que hablo sin alimentación. I become crazy or hangry every time I speak without appropriate snackage.
4:33
You can also have, like I said, that reflexive, so volverse, and that means to become, to turn, to get angry, to get sad, to get sick or to go bad or wrong. So as you can hear, volverse has kind of this negative matiz in it.
And you can volver a verb, which just means to kind of return or verb again, like vuelves a verme. Come back to see me. Como ejemplo. Or you can say, like, Vuelven a estar sentados frente a la tienda. Alright, there's always going to be guys that are sat in front of the store. I don't know. It's a hanging place. Hanging out place. Sorry. Phrasal verb. Quiero que vuelvas. Alejandro Fernández has this lovely song, Quiero que vuelvas. And this is in the subjunctive, vuelvas, because he wants you to come back. Quiero que vuelvas.
Se volvió a ser lobo durante la luna llena. That is essentially the trama or the plot of Twilight. Somebody became a werewolf, right? Somebody became a werewolf? Wasn't it vampire…? Anyways, he became a werewolf. He turned into a werewolf during the full moon. Right, you can use se volvió, he became, he turned, a ser lobo, turned into a wolf.
El césped, grass, right now we went from spring one day and summer the next week, month, year, ever. El césped se vuelve seco con el calor. We, had green, lush grass, and now it is just dry as shit.
6:17
Alright, so, basically, as I said, the main points, volver, to return, to come back to. You can use that with an adjective, you can use that with a verb, that basically means like, otra vez, repetición, do it again. Volverse, when it's become that reflexive, that expresses el cambio, it expresses change in a person or situation. So that can be both with a person or a situation, and that is what volver can also be. You can have a person do something again, or be something again, or kind of return back, or you can have a situation. Like, as much as we like to plan, life is like, nah, hold my beer, just you wait. And that is the sentido, that is the sense of volver.
Como todas las palabras en español. It is from Latín, it is from Latin. Volvere, to return. Como sinónimos, is synonyms. We have invertir, which is to flip or switch. If you are reading the news, watching the news, whatever. Involucrando, involving yourself with the news in whatever sense. You might hear invertir dinero, invertir cambio, invertir fondos, invertir dinero. That means to invest. So invertir in the sense, in the realm of money, is to invest that money. Any other situation, any other context, it means to flip or switch. Think of Busta Rhymes and his flip mode. You can also have cambiarse. And this is, once again, a reflexive verb. Me cambio. I change myself. Right? Anytime that you have that reflexive verb, it means it's done to you or to that person, to the subject. You have regresar, to return. And you also have revertir, to revert or reverse. I've been mowing the grass quite a bit, and I go into places and I don't feel confident and comfortable, so I just back away slowly. That works in a lawnmower, in a car, and just in general life. It's good to just back away slowly.
8:44
Como antónimos, as antonyms, you have quedarse, to stay. Me quedo aquí. I stay here. Quedarse. You have pausar, or dar pausa. And if you look at this, it literally looks like pause. And that's what it means, which is lovely. Suspender, to suspend. Cesar o terminar, which is to stop, to cease. You can also have to stop, como dejar, or parar de, with your verb. So, paro de hablar. I stop talking. You can also have dejar. Dejar is a lovely verb because it means to end, to leave, to quit, essentially.
And the reason why I have these two kind of camps of “to stop”. You have cesar, terminar, and then you also have dejar or parar. It depends on who's doing the stopping. So, como antónimo, as an antonym for volver, if you have kind of an active, like, I'm actively stopping, you can have parar de, with your verb, you can have dejar, right, déjalo, leave it, stop it, right there. If the thing has stopped itself, that can be, like a lot of times I see and hear terminar in IT functions, like está terminado, it's done. It stopped. The thing was running and then cesó, it stopped.
10:26
Volver, it's kind of this active, like you're actively kind of, going back to, you're actively returning. It's that cycle, kind of cyclical moment. Your antónimos, your antonyms, everything is static. It's still. Because, as you think about it, stillness is the opposite of movement.
Como palabras relacionadas, related words. You can have dar vuelta, which is to turn around. Danza Kuduro from Don Omar, I believe he has the dar vuelta in his instructions. You can also have torcer, which is to twist. So if you have like, I don't know, un palo torcido, it's like a twisted stick or something. Something kind of twisted. Torcido is twisted. Revolver is like to turn, to mess up, to stir, to toss. I always think of like mussing hair or like a salad. For revolver. You can also have devolver with a D. So revolver looks like revolver. It is not that violent. To turn, to stir, to toss. Devolver is like to return or give back clothing.
So, you have dar vuelta, otra vez. You can turn around. You can have torcer. You can twist. You can bop it. You can twist it. You can pull it. You have revolver, to stir up or toss, devolver. No gracias, these pants are too long, story of my life. I would like to devolverlos. You also have girar, and girar means to turn around. Una gira is like a musical tour. So, if you're touring with the circus or a musician, you go on una gira. But girar, como verbo, is to turn around. And the really interesting part of this is, when I was looking at my Maria Moliner's Diccionario de Uso de Español, that diccionario, that dictionary, it gives the Spanish definition for every single word I think that exists. I don't know. It's very big. It's two volumes. It's a hundred dollars of books, and it feels like a hundred dollars of books.
12:53
But the thing of it is, is when I looked up volver in my diccionario, it said cambiar la posición de una cosa haciéndola girar en cualquier sentido o dirección. So this was the interesting part, and I'm going to say that again slower so that you can actually understand, because I blatted that.
Cambiar, to change. La posición de una cosa, to change the position of a thing. Haciéndola girar. Basically, making it turn, making it turn around, in cualquier sentido o dirección. So, making it turn around in whatever or whichever sense or direction. So volver is like this change, it's this active verb, you're actively changing the position of a thing, turning it around in whatever sense or direction. It's like when you pin the tail on a donkey and you have to cover your eyes and spin around and then figure out como pegar, how to put a tail on a donkey. So it totally and utterly confuses you. It prevents you from getting any sense of direction or like, it uproots you. Volver. So not only does it mean to return or come back to, but it means this in somewhat of an aggressive way.
And the thing is that life is cyclical. It feels like we're constantly volviendo, right? We're constantly, like, turning and churning and coming back to or returning to something. We're starting over, we're repeating, we're growing. Like, la semilla está pero la planta cambia. The seeds are always there, but the plant changes depending on what we need and what we want and what our metas, what our big life goals are, what our objetivos, what our small short-term goals are.
15:07
Like, and then we get used to doing something, but then, before stasis can kick in, like, life is just like, nah. Ya es la hora de volver. It really makes me think of this scene from Across the Universe, which is una película. It is a movie that is just kind of this culmination of all these Beatles songs with an actual plot behind it. Some people love it, some people hate it. But I keep going back to this scene because these words, they mean something. So let's, this is basically setting the tone here. A hippie is arguing with his very square family.
Like, is it what you do, who you are, what is it that you become? And when I say square, I mean very clean-cut, you know, goes to the office, puts in their time, gets their pension in 401k, and then retires and plays golf, like that kind of picket fence, 2. 5 kids, organic food; those kind of folks. So, his dad is like, goddamn it, get serious, what are you going to do with your life?
And Max, the hippie, in this scene, is like, why is it always, what will I do? What will he do? What will he do? Oh my god, what will he do? Do do do do do. Why isn't the issue here who I am? And his uncle, Uncle Teddy. “Because, Maxwell, what you do defines who you are”. And he's like, no, Uncle Teddy, who you are defines what you do, right?
And this, like, vagabundo that he's just kind of adopted from the Princeton janitor's closet is like, well, surely it's not what you do, but the way that you do it.
And quite honestly, I feel this in my soul because our devices, the things that we use, that I use to run business, the things that I use to like read my horoscope, they are so ubiquitous. I could be sending an email, I could be sending a job application, a partnership agreement, I could be completing a work project, or I could be reading a fashion blog or be looking at my horoscope. Or doing a breathing exercise.
17:39
Like, is one more important than the other? Because if you don't have my perspective, you just see me on my phone or see me on my computer, you just have a bunch of different opinions. From your perspective, I'm at a computer, that much is fact. What you think I'm doing, what I think I'm doing, two totally different things. Because the world is no longer black and white. We're not wearing suits to the office, we're not home by five. It hasn't been like that for a while. And more and more, it's difficult to tell who people are or what they do based on these external factors, based on these external biases, based on these, quite honestly, wrong-ass tools that we have always used at our disposal, like, Hmm, friend or foe, should I pass judgment on them, or do I want to get to know them? Not only is all of this change, this volver, this sense of volver, happening inside of us, it's also happening all around us. And it makes sense why humans want to make sense of this, and also why we can't, because there's too much change, there's too much noise, there's too much news.
It's hard to judge someone when you don't know them. And it's also really easy to judge someone because you don't know them. And when we talk and make this back to volver. Bringing it back to nuestra palabra. Is this volverse? Me vuelvo. Me vuelvo loca. Like, am I becoming insane? Is this a reflexive verb? Am I using that because I'm becoming or I'm turning or I'm changing in some way? Or, is this outward facing, and la vida vuelve. Life just kind of returns, life is cyclical. The trends that we see repeat decade after decade. The overall trends that we see. I've been using two different types of mascara pretty much ever since I read in Teen Vogue, or whatever I stole from my sister's room, that that's how you make your eyelashes look bigger. TikTok, it's called Mascara Cocktail, or Cocktailing Mascara. Something. The thing itself has not really changed. What we call it or our relationship to it has. So, that can be an example of volviendo. Of returning back to. Of. Cycling. Of having the cyclical motion. So that's one option. The other option is what's happening inside.
20:50
Because at the end of the day, life can happen to us. It can happen with us. It can happen because of us. And whatever you call life, that's, that's valid. Right, that can be passing your exam, that can be getting that job app, or getting that job offer, that can be getting a marriage proposal. Whatever it is, whatever life event, maybe it's just getting through a fucking Tuesday, that is also a big life event.
Whatever you consider that life to be, it can happen to us, with us, because of us, that defining preposition, that's la clave. That is the key. That's what you're in charge of. Come back to your breath. Be cognizant of who and what and how you're becoming and developing. And más que nada, take charge of your own development. Own it. And that is as much a battle cry for me as it is for you. So, take charge of that development. Whatever it is, whatever you want to have happen in life, the first step is to just do something about it. Yeah, we can sit here with our lists and our annotations and our social media or we can just go out and try it.
22:13
Because this volver, this sentido de volver, this verb, it's just one of those verbs. It's so nested within language learning and it's so active that it needs action. So even though it feels this cyclical motion, we are different. We're different every single time that we go through that cycle. And that's why life is not that boring, because every time we go through that cycle, we're a little bit different. We're a little bit more wise. We're a little bit older. We're a little bit smarter. We kind of know what's up, at least enough. And then we can continue to get through all the murk and shit and muck that life continues to throw at us, because we need that. I just started a garden and that is called compost. So, we need that compost. You need the shitty part in order to get those good seeds.
And within language learning, you're becoming, you're coming back to, you're returning. For example, yes, you can go through and you can learn a language, but you're never going to be done. You are going to get back to that place of confianza, of confidence, of trust in yourself. And then you get to the sabiaduría, you get back to the wisdom. You feel a little bit more sabio or sabia, you learn, you live with it. You come back to it. Oh, that's how the subjunctive is. Oh, this is another nuance for the preterite. Oh, they used imperfect here. I wonder why. Oh yeah. Because they're setting the tone. And here's the preterite.
24:11
The lovely part is that we can be whatever we choose to be. It's all about how you want to use volver. Do you want to use it con adjetivo? Do you want to use it as in you're making that adjective? Do you want to use it como reflexivo? That you're becoming, you're turning, you're changing inside. Do you want to use it con la vida? Where life is just like this cyclical motion, haciéndola girar, turning, constantly churning through the seasons and how that growth and how that life and how that joy is. And if you would like to become more confident and better, however you define that better, in español, check out my monthly program, Deseo at DeseoSpanishProgram.info. También check out show notes, transcript, request a word at Aprovechar.me.
Les dejo con esa idea. I'll leave you with this idea. Language is a tool. It is a tool that we use to make sense of our feelings, make sense of our emotions, and make sense of our surroundings. What is both inside and outside of our bodies. It's up to you on how you want to wield that tool. Do you want to, which kind of preposition would you like to use with it? Is life happening to you? Is it happening with you? Is it happening for you?
Play around with it, because as with all tools, it's good when you start to juggle it a little bit. Play around with it, and if you're still curious, come check us out with Deseo. Hasta la próxima vez y 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. Until next time.