How to use LO QUE in Spanish

probably the most fascinating two-word combination in the spanish language i'm fascinated by this phrase and that's because there are situations where we have to use it there are situations where we could use it but don't have to and the difference here is not obvious even to spanish natives plus loke in spanish is almost always translated to one word in english also as a spanish teacher this phrase is part of a handful of phrases that we see spanish students regularly having trouble with regardless of how advanced they are and this last point is even more intriguing given how often this phrase occurs in the spanish language now i'm going to explain what lokei means and how to use it but first i need to tell you a story that highlights why this phrase is so problematic and how we can learn it and other similar phrases it's a story that starts in the field of linguistics and involves computers and probability something known as n-gram analysis [Music] now the way engram analysis works is we take a huge body of content that could include movies books newspapers radio television magazines etc and then we analyze the language and look for patterns specifically we're looking for patterns of consecutive words and this leads to the n in n-gram which represents the number of consecutive words we're looking at so for example for three gram analysis we're looking for patterns of three words that occur next to each other frequently in the language now when we do this for english we find that one of the most frequent three word combinations in english is one of the one of the one of the men one of the one of the most now for two gram analysis can you guess what the most frequent two word combination in the english language is and as a hint it was already in one of the three gram combinations i just showed you and this sentence and that is of the the next few two grams in english are in the to the on thee for thee and the 2b is now if we do the same analysis can you guess what the most frequent 2 gram in spanish is and as a hint it's actually a translation of the most frequent 2 gram in english and that is de la noting of course that the masculine de el collapses into one word del and so it doesn't make the two gram list then we have en el de los en now of course this means that le que appears a lot in spanish when we look at any content if we take books for example there are two books that i've read more than any other in spanish because i like reading them to relax and that's elbira lindos manolido gafotas and in this book the phrase loke appears 81 times on 157 pages the other book is palo cualos el alchemista in this book the phrase loke appears 178 times on 244 pages so it's on one out of every two to three out of every four pages of these two books then to see if this applies to other content i picked two random videos sitting at the top of my youtube feed in this first video here lokei appears nine times in ten minutes [Music] now what is the point of this story why did i have to share this with you [Music] well here we have a phrase that students make a lot of mistakes with including advanced students some that have been learning the language for 10 years or more yet this phrase occurs so frequently that most students have been exposed to it probably a lot so what does this say well in the language learning world you'll often hear this advice if you want to learn a language just immerse yourself in it read a lot listen a lot and watch a lot this is sometimes known as the immersion method or sometimes the natural method with the main argument being that it works because it mirrors the way that children learn well i want to be really clear here and say that i'm not against learning using native immersive content as a learning tool in fact we do encourage students in real fast spanish in our spanish school to do exactly this but every language learning method has its strengths and its weaknesses including immersion and if there is any evidence that we see that suggests that immersion methods are not a panacea and don't solve every language learning problem then locate is right at the top of the list in addition we do see some students that tend to use locate correctly including some beginners and this is mainly because they have specifically taken the time to study it maybe in one of our spanish classes or in a class with another spanish school that dedicates time to these important and difficult phrases therefore and the point of this story is that if you want to master phrases like these the ones that don't tend to get as absorbed well through immersive methods the key is to focus on them study them and practice them which is what we'll do for l'hoque right now [Music] all right so how should we think about lo lo que is a relative pronoun and connects two relative clauses this means that it links two short phrases that each have a conjugated verb in english lokei can be translated as either what whatever or that now the best place to start thinking about this phrase is when we say what in the middle of a sentence in english for example this is not what i want here we have two clauses this is not and i want and whenever we have sentences like this where what connects two clauses in english this will likely result in le que in spanish so this sentence becomes esto no es lo que quiero esto no es lo que quiero all right let's look at some more examples imagine you wanted to sort of talk about how sometimes we have these feelings to want to do something but we don't actually have to do them you could say i don't have to do what i want to do this in spanish is no tengo que hacer lo que quiero hacer no tengo que hacer lo que quiero a ser all right here again we've got these two clauses no tengo que acer and we've got quiero acer we've got these two conjugated verbs tengo and quiero and then the whole thing is connected with lokei just like the way we would use what in english all right for the next example i used this in a recent video on den and versus abed because it's a really good example to improve your knowledge of spanish i'll leave a link up here and in the description if you want to go and watch that video in this video i'll give the shorter version which is in english because disorder is what there is or because disorder is what they will be this in spanish is porque de sorden es lo que ai all right in this next example the speaker is talking about wanting to achieve what he has seen other successful people achieve and it's really important to remember that in spanish people gente is singular so in english we say that people are in spanish you say the people is so you really need to say i want to achieve what they has achieved like he has achieved we need to treat it as singular so i want to achieve what they have achieved or i want to achieve what they has achieved this in spanish is yo quiero lo grar lo que ya lo grado yo quiero lo grar lo que lla lo grado yo quiero lo que yeah all right for this next example we want to say i'm afraid of what comes next or i'm afraid of what follows and when we say i'm afraid of in spanish sometimes it's better to use this construction with the verb dad we actually want to say it gives me fear so it gives me fear what follows or it gives me fear what comes next this in spanish is meda all right and another really good example one that i'm sure a lot of people would like to use is whenever they're referring to say language skills or language ability someone might want to say i understand more than what i speak or in this case the example is someone saying referring to someone else she understands more than what she speaks this in spanish is entiende mas de lo que habla entiende maste lo que habla de mas now the first question that students often ask on this topic is i thought that care meant what and not looking and yes that is true in certain sentences especially questions care means what so for example what do you want que quieres what do you have que tienes what are you going to do does mean what but just try to keep in mind that for all of the examples we've seen so far we're not talking about questions we're talking about statements with two conjugated verbs on either side of what the next thing we're going to look at is when lo que can mean that or whatever to understand this it really helps to start by rearranging sentences with lo care by putting the loca at the start of the sentence which is also really common in spanish so we could say what i want is this in spanish is lo que quiero es or what i need is lo que necesito es so for example if someone asks you que necesitas what do you need you could respond and say well what i need is something to eat lo que necesito es comer algo lo que necesito es comer algo then the next step is once you're comfortable with using lo que at the start of the sentence what we can do next is simply throw todo in front of these sentences to get all that i want is toro lo que quiero es all that i need is todo lo que necesito es all that i can do is toro lo que puedo hacer es so let's turn that into an example all that i can do in these situations is laugh this in spanish is toro lo que puedo hacer en esta situaciones es toro lo que puedo hacer en esta situaciones es all right another example where todo lo que appears in the middle of a sentence we could say in spanish i need to process everything that is happening this in spanish is necesito procesar toro lo que esta necesito procesar toro lo que esta pasando now again here we've got todo lo que which translates into english as everything that is happening so again in this sentence loke can almost be translated as that but i think it's really important to think of the whole phrase as everything that all right let's look at another example imagine someone was explaining to their partner all the bad things that happened to them that day and they could say i explained to him everything that happened to me this in spanish would be le explice all right next let's consider some exceptions where does this fall down where do students make mistakes after they have learned how to properly use logee well i mentioned earlier that in general whenever what appears in the middle of a sentence in english we need to say lo que in spanish but the exception is when what is followed by an infinitive non-conjugated verb remember i said earlier that when we connect what in the middle of a sentence with two conjugated verbs on either side then we're generally going to need lokei in spanish well this is true except if the second verb is not conjugated then loke doesn't work and we need to simply say so for example i don't know what to say i don't know what to say this in spanish i can't decide what to eat again in all of these examples what follows ke is a verb in infinity form non-conjugated this is the key here for avoiding this leuke trap once you're really comfortable with it now another example imagine someone was having say a mid-life crisis they want to say to you i just don't know what to do with my life and you want to try to spin it around and make it a positive you could say well not knowing what to do with your life is something positive this in spanish is no saber con positivo no saber que hacer con tu vida es algo pogo okay so there are three things for you to practice now number one when what appears in the middle of the sentence this is not what i want i don't want what you want i don't have what you need and one of my favorite examples to do with students if you walk into a restaurant you get something that you ordered that wasn't yours you could say this is not what i ordered the question is how would you translate these into spanish the hint is for this first group we need lo que and then the second situation is in sentences like all that i want is all that i need is i did all that i could in that situation in all of these sentences we need dodo lo que and then the last group is when we don't have a conjugated verb after what so i don't know what to do i don't know what to say i want to know what to eat in all of these situations where we don't have two conjugated verbs but only one and then an infinity verb on the other side of what in all these situations we need to stick with care and avoid looking alright so do you have any questions is there anything else you would like to know on this topic please leave a comment or question below to let me know if you enjoyed this video then give it a like and if you're not already subscribed then please subscribe also if you want more tips like this we have a weekly newsletter called espanol de la semana to sign up for the weekly newsletter i'll leave a link below in the description so on that note thanks so much for watching gracias porver and until next time habla mejor [Music] entiendemas you

Channel: Real Fast Spanish

Views: 163,122

Keywords: lo que in Spanish, lo que, todo lo que, spanish phrase, learn spanish, lo que in english

Id: 4URFWAOaL64

Length: 15min 15sec (915 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 08 2020