19 January 2010

A song with 17 verbs in past subjunctive

Past subjunctive is not the easiest thing to find in a song, much less several repetitions of it.  I blogged a bit about a couple of songs that do it, but I this song just crossed my radar and wow, what a gem for past subjunctive.  It has 17 verbs in the past subjunctive, 8 of them unique.  They're almost all part of unreal if clauses, and the cool thing is that you can see the use of the concept without the actual word 'if,' something that's not taught in textbooks. (Again, textbooks fail us.)

As an added benefit, you have 'quiera' as  subjunctive by reason of indefinite antecedent (for a better song for that, see this post).  Thanks Carlos Vives (@carlosylaprovin on Twitter) for injecting some fun in one of the hardest concepts in the Spanish language.

Como Tú
Carlos Vives

Tú no sabes lo que diera
si me vieras y dijeras tú,
que no sabes que yo quiero
que mi vida la quisieras tú,
si supieras que me gustan
son las cosas que prefieres tú,
que quisiera que los hijos
que tengamos fueran como tú.

Como tú, la primavera.
Como tú, la vez primera.
No haya nadie que me quiera.
Como tú, mi vida entera.

Tú, tú, tú, mi vida entera.
Tú, tú, tú, mi vida entera.

Me perdonas si yo insisto,
que mi vida la quisieras tú.
Que de todas las estrellas
que yo he visto, la más linda, tú.
Si supieras que me gustan
son las cosas que prefieres tú.
Que quisiera que los hijos
que tengamos fueran como tú.

(coro otra vez)

Si las noticias fueran como tú.
Y las ciudades fueran como tú.
Y si las calles fueran como tú.
Y si mi jefe fuera como tú.
Y si mi vida fuera como tú.
Y mis canciones fueran como tú.
Y si la guerra fuera como tú,
No habría problema todos como tú

(coro y tag otra vez)

3 comments:

Maestra Jen said...

I couldn't agree more! When I taught high school Spanish we used music daily as a means of teaching grammar. It is a great way for learners to make a connection and to hear it used correctly. This song by Carlos Vives is great!

Srta. Laursen said...

I am a new teacher and would love to use more songs, but I don't think I'm using them to teach effectively. How do you teach songs so that the kids really learn from them? Specifically, how many times do you play the song, and what do you do with it besides listen? Thanks for any help you can give me!

Sra Cottrell said...

Heidi, I'm sorry it took me so long to catch this comment! I wrote a post recently answering this same question for someone else, and it's quickly become one of my most popular.

Using music in the classroom