December 02, 2006

Lesson 07
Notes
In this edition:
talking about
your job; saying
where you
work; saying if
you like your
work or not.

¿En qué trabajas?

Lesson 07
Programme Notes

Welcome to Coffee Break Spanish, the podcast
aimed at independent learners of Spanish. In
Coffee Break Spanish we’ll be guiding you
through the basics of the Spanish language and
helping you to learn to communicate in Spain
and Spanish-speaking countries.
In lesson 07 you’re going to be learning to talk
about your job. You’ll reuse a word we learned in
earlier lessons, soy, to say what your occupation
is. You’ll also learn how to describe your job by
saying where you work, and whether you like
your job or not.
Soy profesor...
To say “I am a ...” you use the same word you
used to talk about where you’re from. If soy de
España means “I am from Spain”, the word soy is
one way of saying “I am” in Spanish.
Look at the following phrase:
soy profesor
I am a teacher
One very important thing to consider when
talking about professions in Spanish is that you
don’t need the word for “a”, so note that you
don’t say soy UN profesor.
Many professions in Spanish have different
versions for masculine and feminine forms:
profesor
teacher (m)
profesora
teacher (f)
Some words, however, have only one form:
estudiante
student (m)
estudiante
student (f)
Here is a list of the words covered in the main
podcast for various occupations. Note that where
feminine and masculine forms exist they are
listed with o/a endings.

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 ingeniero/a
engineer
abogado/a
lawyer
fontanero/a
plumber
ama de casa
housewife
In all of the above examples you can combine
the word with soy to say “I am a...” eg.:
soy ingeniero
I am an engineer
See below in the “Bonus Vocabulary” section for
more words relating to occupations.
Asking the question
If you’ve been following Coffee Break Spanish
from the beginning you should now be in a
position to start creating your own sentences and
questions. You already know the word for “are
you” in both formal and informal versions:
¿eres...?
are you...? (informal)
¿es usted...?
are you...? (formal)
You could therefore ask someone if they are, for
example, a teacher:
¿es usted profesor?
are you a teacher? (for)
Or, using the informal version:
¿eres profesor?
are you a teacher (inf)
Note that in these phrases you also leave out the
word for “a”, just as you’ve been doing when
saying “I am a teacher”.
However, if you want to find out what someone
does for a living then you could spend rather a
long time trying to guess, using all the words you
know for occupations. It would be easier to ask
the person, “What do you do for a living?”
¿en qué trabajas?
what do you work as? (inf)
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There is also a formal version of this which
follows the same patterns as all other verbal
phrases we’ve learned so far:
¿en qué trabaja usted?
what do you work as? (for)
To answer the question you can use one of the
phrases above, eg. soy profesor; soy estudiante, etc.
I work in an office
It’s not possible to cover every possibility for
listeners in terms of occupations. There are some
bonus items of vocabulary listed at the end of
this podcast. Sometimes it may be easier to
describe where you work: translating “I am a
legal secretary” or “I am a consultant
neurologist” into Spanish may be quite
challenging, but you could alternatively say “I
work in an office” or “I work in a hospital”!
If trabajas means “you work”, then “I work” is
translated as:
trabajo
I work
So, let’s combine this with some places of work:
trabajo en una tienda
I work in a shop
trabajo en una fábrica
I work in a factory
trabajo en una oficina
I work in an office
trabajo en un restaurante
I work in a restaurant
trabajo en un hospital
I work in a hospital
Do you like your job?
It’s also useful to be able to say if you like or if
you don’t like your job. The phrase for “I like...”
is going to be very useful in future lessons.
me gusta...
I like...
 me gusta mi trabajo Jorge:
Hola. ¿Qué tal?
I like my job Eva: Bien, gracias. Me llamo Eva.
Jorge:
Soy Jorge. Soy de Barcelona.
¿Eres de aquí?
no me gusta mi trabajo
Eva:
No, no soy de aquí. Yo soy de
I don’t like my job
Burgos.
Jorge:
Muy bien. ¿En qué trabajas?
Remember you can combine this with the word Eva:
Soy ingeniera. Y tú, ¿en qué
for “yes”, sí or “no”, no: trabajas?
Jorge: Trabajo en una oficina. No me
gusta mi trabajo.
sí, me gusta mi trabajo Eva:
¡Qué pena!
yes, I like my job
no, no me gusta mi trabajo
Below is a translation of the above dialogue to
no, I don’t like my job help you.

Jorge: Hi. How are you doing?

To ask someone if they like their job, use: Eva: Well, thanks. I’m called Eva.
¿te gusta tu trabajo? Jorge: I’m Jorge. I’m from Barcelona. Are
do you like your job? (inf) you from here?
Eva: No, I’m not from here. I’m from
We’ll be covering the formal version of this
Burgos.
question in future lessons.
Jorge: Very good. What do you work as?
Eva: I’m an engineer. What about you?
What do you do?
And finally...
Jorge: I work in an office. I don’t like my
job.
Two final phrases we need to cover in this lesson.
Perhaps you don’t work. You can probably Eva: What a shame!
already work out how to say this, based on what
you’ve learned in previous lessons. To say “I
work”, you use the word trabajo. To change this to You’ll notice the phrase:
“I don’t work” you say:
qué pena
no trabajo what a shame
I don’t work
This is listed below in the vocabulary. Notice also
You may also be retired, in which case you use that in addition to upside down question marks,
the phrase: Spanish also uses upside down exclamation
marks.
estoy jubilado/a
I’m retired Bonus vocabulary
Pronunciation tip: Remember that the “j” at
the beginning of this word is not pronounced as In each edition of Coffee Break Spanish we
in English. It’s a guttural “j” and sounds cover the basic language you need to
something like the “ch” in the Scottish word communicate. However we also provide some
“loch”. additional vocabulary for our listeners who
download the extra materials. The bonus
Sample conversation vocabulary is covered in the top-up podcast each
week so you can improve your pronunciation of
these extra words and phrases!
Let’s look at a conversation which brings
together some of the language we’ve covered in
this unit and in previous lessons.

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 CoffeeBreakSpanish: Lesson 07 - Key Vocabulary
soy... I am...
profesor / profesora teacher
estudiante student
ingeniero / ingeniera engineer
abogado / abogada lawyer
fontanero / fontanera plumber
ama de casa housewife
¿eres profesor? are you a teacher? (informal)
¿es usted profesor? are you a teacher? (formal)
¿en qué trabajas? what do you work as? (inf)
¿en qué trabaja usted? what do you work as? (for)

trabajo I work
no trabajo I don’t work
trabajo en una tienda I work in a shop
una fábrica factory
una oficina office
un restaurante restaurant
un hospital hospital
me gusta... I like...
me gusta mi trabajo I like my job
no me gusta mi trabajo I don’t like my job
¿te gusta tu trabajo? do you like your job? (inf)
estoy jubilado/a I’m retired
¡qué pena! what a shame!

CoffeeBreakSpanish: Lesson 07 - Bonus Vocabulary

(un) actor / (una) actriz actor/actress
(un) arquitecto / (una) arquitecta architect
autor / autora author
camarero / camarera water, waitress
carnicero / carnicera butcher
carpintero / carpintera carpenter
cocinero / cocinera cook
(un) dentista* / (una) dentista* dentist (NB. no change in ending)
dependiente shop assistant

4
enfermero / enfermera nurse
granjero / granjera farmer
hombre de negocios business man
mujer de negocios business woman
mecánico / mecánica mechanic
médico / médica doctor
peluquero / peluquera hairdresser
piloto / pilota pilot
secretario / secretaria secretary
técnico / técnica technician
estoy desempleado / desempleada I’m unemployed / out of work

*dentista: this is one of those rare Spanish words which has a masculine form ending in -a. If you’re a
male dentist then you would say soy dentista. Exactly the same form is used for female dentists.

There are obviously lots more jobs we could list. This collection of words and phrases is intended to
provide a basic list of vocabulary. If you’d like some help describing your job, visit the Forum at http://
www.coffeebreakspanish.com and post a question. We’ll answer your question there and the other users
of CBS will benefit from the answer too!

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