Una Palabra Sola Episode 3, enseguida
AHORITA is one of my favorite Spanish words, because depending on the culture and context, it can mean “10 seconds ago”, “right now”, or “2 weeks from now”. Time can be weird in Spanish, and it’s a good practice to look at your own expectations within the cultural constraints. While the overall Spanish culture has a slower way of life and accompanying stereotype *eye roll*, there’s something to be said of savoring moments, meals, comunidad, and people. Especially with the continuation of hustle culture and then impending burnout, it’d be a good practice to take a page from el mundo hispanohablante’s page and slow down… enseguida.
Enseguida: (adv) Immediately
Related words: ahora (now), ahorita (immediately OR soon-ish), ahora mismo (right now), de inmediato (immediately)
Related verbs: seguir (to follow, continue)
Related noun and adjective: siguiente (next)
From the Latin “insequor”, to follow or go on. From Spanish “en” (within) and “seguir” (to follow).
Time moves differently in Spanish. You can still get shit done without stressing out every minute about deadlines, priorities, and/or expectations.
2:16: An adverb changes how a verb is “verbed”. Very important to know! Enseguida is one example of an adverb.
6:09: There can be a balance between “rat race” Western culture and “Latino time” culture where life is meant to not be taken so seriously.
15:18: Time always comes back to priority and expectation. Where is there a lull and space to just be?
19:30: Stop the victim mindset that life is “crazy busy”. Take a breath and take charge of whatever verbs you want to use the adverb enseguida with.
For reflection:
pronto (soon) enseguida (immediately) ahora mismo (right now)
De inmediato (immediately) ahora, ahorita (now)
I’m going to rest _________________.
Ahora mismo, _________________ is important to me.
I’m looking forward to ____________ pronto.
The top three priorities to do ____________ are: _______________________.
The bottom three priorities para luego are: _______________________________.
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TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
0:09
Hola y bienvenidos, hello and welcome to Una Palabra Sala 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 mi gente, if a white person can say mi gente. Hello and welcome back to Una Palabra Sola. I'm Megan, I'm your host. And let me tell you today we're going to be talking about timing. Specifically, I work with two tutoras, I have two Spanish tutors myself. And they have given me the very welcome feedback that when I write in Spanish, anything that I write related to time is shit. Anything in that español elevado is absolute shit. So it just goes to show that when you do this as a job, when you have your own company, and you help people learn Spanish, and you speak Spanish, and you study Spanish every pinche day, you still can have a lot to work on. And I am so so grateful to my tutors, shout out to Romance Language Centre in the UK because they are helping me get ready for the biggest deal in my little vida española, which is DELE, the Diploma de español como lengua, lenguaje, I think extranjero. Basically it's a Spanish diploma that says hey, I speak Spanish. So this whole thing around timing words has got me really looking forward to today's word, which is related to time you do have that right, and today's word is enseguida. So I'm gonna say that one more time, enseguida. And the cool thing about enseguida, is that it means immediately or right away or even beside something but enseguida is an adverb. And for those non-grammar folks out there, an adverb is basically, it changes how a verb is "verbed". So for example, if we were going to serve something enseguida, we would serve immediately, if you wanted to go somewhere enseguida, you would go immediately. So it is immediate. The funny thing, especially as a gringa, from the States, is that it just it got me thinking to time, especially as I try to not be shit with timing words. But it got me thinking too. When I was in college, I hung out with a bunch of Dominicans, and they would have (they they called it this, this is not me), they called it Island time, Dominican time. They said, You know, we're gonna be there at 7:00, I would show up at 7:20, they would show up at 7:25. The States is, and just kind of the Western world, we have a different perception of time. We have a different definition of time. And we have a lot of different priorities around time. For example, even the word "deadline" has "dead" in the start of it, like who wants that? Right? Who wants to be you know, driven by all these deadlines? Like if you don't make the line, you'll be dead. It's a lot of unnecessary drama. I think. So I'ma side with all of the Latinos out there on the island time, Dominican time, Latino time, whatever, however you want to call it. I'm right there with you because it is a different perception priority and just thought process behind time. So diving into enseguida, um, there's there's a lot of cool things with enseguida as an adverb. Adverbs personally, if I can have a favorite grammar part, I think it would be adverbs because, I mean, you you can do anything with them. Like it completely changes the tone. Yeah, you can change the verb and say, you know, "he rushed to the doctor's" versus "he walked briskly to the doctor's" (or better yet, bathroom). You can do that, but like the adverb, it just completely changes the vibe of a sentence, of a story, of whatever. So I think adverbs at least right now, they're my favorite. I don't know what your favorite point is. All right. I know I'm a nerd, but whatever.
4:51
So we're talking about, you know, deadlines and starting into that. Um, just basically going, diving into that a little bit more that time moves differently in Spanish. I remember my first ever email where I got NLT, like, "have this to me NLT 3pm." And I was like, What the fuck does that mean? It means no later than. So like we throw out, especially in the corporate world, we'll throw out you know, EOB, end of business and NLT, no later than, it's like a rush. It's a rat race. Everything is just hustle, hustle, hustle. Versus if you take a step back and listen to episode dos around disfrutar. Right and in the Latino culture, and I know that I'm just lumping everyone together into one big hug. I'm aware they're different cultures, they're different customs, they're different countries. Again, it, lumping you all together into one big hug. Life is about enjoying. It's about savoring. It's about having good food, good wine, good dance, good times, right? It's not this whole, like rushing rat race until you die. The thing is, I think that there is un equilibrio, there is a bit of a balance, you can still get shit done without losing your mind about it. And not to say that the whole Latino culture, if there can be one Latino culture is just you know, like, well, whatever, man, I know, it's Tuesday, but you might get this by next Thursday, whatever, like, you still get shit done. You just are not bending over backwards to meet everybody else's expectations and or your own. And this is why I wanted to dive into enseguida because it immediately makes me think of ahorita. So fun storytime, ahora, AHORA, ahora is like now, ahorita is like right now. However, if you speak to some Latinos, or Latinas, or just some cultures, and you say something is ahorita that means like maybe in 20 minutes. So it has this totally different kind of spectrum of an answer. Because ahorita is basically, like immediately, it's right now, but it could also not be and it's just it's known, right. It is. It's just inferred. It is assumed, it's just known, like oh, yeah, necesito eso ahorita, like, I need that right now. Um, you know, maybe that's right now, or maybe that is two weeks from now. Enseguida is a little bit more like immediately. And that is like immediately or right away. So there's really no spectrum with enseguida. I always thought that enseguida was a little bit more formal, like you would say enseguida in the workplace, or something. All of the online kind of references that I've seen, and the people that I've talked to are basically like, yeah, it's total synonyms. You can use it whenever you want, which is both a good thing and a bad thing about language. Right, I'm not gonna pressure you to use one word over the other, but they are pretty synonymous like ahorita versus enseguida. However, enseguida does have that like immediacy of a tone to it. Kind of nuance. Enseguida comes from the verb seguir, if you had not already known that, seguir is one of my favorite verbs because it means to continue or to follow. So you can seguir adelante, you can you know, move forward. You can seguir directo, you can go straight. Or you can seguir el ejemplo de, you can follow the example of. So seguir is just really that continue or follow. Enseguida, it comes from the Latin verb insequor. Latin people, please correct me (not Latino people but Latin people).
9:10
Insequor? I don't know. This is why it's a dead language. Basically, in Latin means to follow, go on, proceed, succeed. All the "eedes," right. In Spanish, enseguida is really from "en", the preposition in, and then "seguir", which is like to follow, right, immediately. That is how that adverb works. It's pretty, pretty straightforward. So synonyms for enseguida, the synonyms for immediately. I already went over, ahorita. You can also say al instante, which is like the instant, or the instance. You could also say- and this is a good one, especially for all you intermediate folks out there, this is definitely going to elevate you a little bit when you say like ahora mismo, like right now. Ahora mismo. And of course, all of this is going to be in the show notes, as well. So just follow those links, and you can see how they're spelled. I cannot read something in Spanish and spell it in English because my brain is a little silly. Um, there is a false friend. So when you think of enseguida, you might think like, oh, immediately, inmediato. Inmediato is really like, kind of, next to or adjacent. And remember, enseguida, that can also mean beside something. But to get to that immediately with inmediato, just add a de in front of it, so "de inmediato". So para resumir, to just give you a little resumen or a summary, enseguida is your adverb. It means immediately. You can also use ahorita, al instante, ahora mismo, or de inmediato. And it comes from the verb seguir. The related noun is kind of both a noun and an adjective, which is where we're getting a little loopy. And that is siguiente. So you can have el siguiente, which is like the next person, the next thing, or you can have la persona siguiente, which is like the next person. So it's both a noun and an adjective. And just otro recordatorio that an adjective goes with a noun, and it- same adverb with a verb, adjective goes with a noun, and it tells you a little bit more detail about that. So fun fact, and if you can see the word, you will know that there's a U in there. A lot of times people want to say ensegweeda. And that is incorrect. And I will tell you why. Damn, I should have looked this up before, but there is there's a little accent mark, en espanol around the U. And like if you are looking at über in German, it'll have the two little dots. Spanish has that same ü, which just goes to show you that sharing is caring. And that U with the two little dots that tells you that the GÜ, for example, pingüino or billingüe has "gwa" sound to it. That's the only time that you will hear the "gwa" sound. So like pingüino, penguin; one of my favorite words, one of my favorite animals. Billingüe. Bilingual. Versus seguir, or enseguida, which is a G and a U. Why is that? Well, I'm so glad you asked. That is because there are two different types of G's. In Spanish, remember, there's no J (I meant H here) sound. Right? So there's a soft G like gente. And there's a hard G like, seguir. The U is there to make sure that you know that it is a hard G, it's a "gah" sound, instead of a soft g or "huh" sound. So for example, soft G is like recoger, to collect or to gather. Gente, people. Girasol, a sunflower, I can go on and on and on. I will not because we're here to talk about one word, that's kind of the brief. So that GU is just to make sure that it's enseguiiiida, versus ensegweeda. As we're talking about time, as we're talking about the words, I also want you to think about the meaning behind the word. So where can you give yourself some space to just fucking be? Like, just be? I'm not saying meditate,
13:44
I'm not saying be mindful. Although it is wonderful if you do those things. I'm not saying like, write a manifesto, or create a rap career, whatever you want, but just to be with yourself; with your thoughts. And for me recently, that has been like reading more, actually taking lunch breaks instead of just shoveling food into my face, while simultaneously typing. It is walks during the day. Because if you're listening to this when it drops, it is October and now the sun is no longer setting at 7 or 8pm, so we have to walk during the day. In the past, it was the commute. Like I can't make this train go faster. I'm just going to sit here and listen to music and just be. So chill, zen, zone out- whatever you want to call it. Where is that space? How are you giving yourself the time and space for that? Because yeah, I can sit here and talk about Latino time or Latin time or just time in general between two cultures. However, it comes back to priority and it comes back to expectation. So is your priority to just get through the next sprint? That is totally fine. Get through that next sprint, get to the season, whatever you need to do, go do it. During those sprints, even in agile project management, there are breaks during those sprintswhere is there a lull, where is there space to just fucking be? The other point that I want to make is that it also comes down to expectations. So we have all these unnecessary expectations that I'm going to call them unnecessary because I believe in the word "unnecessary" to think about all of these expectations. Right, like, okay, there's family, there's work, there's kids, there's pets, there's holidays, there's events, like, do you have to be on the board of something? Do you have to do all of it? Or can you just let a couple things drop, and you're just gonna ghost them? I've ghosted a couple of expectations lately. And it feels fucking phenomenal. Like, part of me is a little bit like the Hamburglar from the old McDonald's commercials, just like "hoo hoo hoo," and then I run away, and Irish goodbye the fuck out of that place. And some of it is also there's a little bit of guilt associated with it, because society tells us especially especially women, like, we have to have it all, do it all, all the ALLS right, it's an all-or-nothing kind of thing. And if you don't, then you're just shit. Well, there's, there's some gray space, right? Give yourself a little bit of space, to just fucking be, to not expect yourself to go so hard all the time. To really just listen to yourself, listen to your body, listen to your thoughts, listen to your brain. And, and give yourself a moment to be like, Okay, well, there's this big thing coming up. What's gonna fall off of my plate to make room for that big thing? And let me tell you, that is uncomfortable shit. I still don't like to do it. I just have done it. Where I'm like, I'm not doing anything until DELE. Right? That is no travel, no trips. No, nothing. Studying every day, like, DELE is super important. It is a priority. I know how big of a thing it is. Because I've already taken it and failed once. Like, I need to give it all of my energy. So what else is gonna fall off that plate? So what is the DELE in your life? What is the thing that's kind of freaking you out? It needs your priority. It needs your energy. It's a big investment, it's going to move you forward. And how can you make space for that? And what is also going to fall off that plate? Because, yes, you can run your life being run down by all these deadlines, right? And be like, Oh, well, I'm late. Blah, blah, blah, and you can hype yourself up. You're gonna fucking fall down once in a while. Even puppies will fall down when they have played too much. So what is your play? What is your work? And where can you just be?
18:27
The ironic part is, is you don't have to take action on this enseguida.You don't have to take action on this immediately. I would just encourage you to start to discern and start to find when and where and how you're honestly causing unnecessary stress for yourself. What can wait? Where can you just give yourself space? Where can you enjoy? Where can you savor life amidst all these rat races and deadlines and all the other shitty analogies I have for Western life. Start to discern, start to identify, and start to think, and and maybe encourage yourself to give yourself space. But you are the only one in charge of that. I'm not. I'm staying out of it. That is off my plate. You are in charge of your own destiny. So stop the victim mindset stop saying life is crazy busy. Stop, stop, stop all the unnecessary bullshit and mental drama that you have created. And just take a breath. Take a breath with me. Alright, in... and out. One more time, that was a shitty breath. In, and out. All right. So only you are in charge of whatever verbs you want to use the adverb enseguida with. I hope that you do that with clarity, with control, with hardcore prioritization, and of course, check out the show notes, transcript, request the word, be on the show. Also get all of these different soft G's and hard G's and everything else. It doesn't have to be immediately, whenever you want. Check that out at Aprovechar.me or AprovecharLanguageSolutions.com. All right, 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.