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Today’s Vine is by SrDeLaPera from Panama.

It’s a fantastically simple concept and you might be able to understand this one fully before reading any description!  Give it a try:

The Vine

Transcript

• Girl: ¿Cómo te fue?
• Guy: Bien.
• …
• Guy: ¿Cómo te fue?
• Girl: [talks sin parar (without stopping) all night]

Explanation

• Girl: How did it go?
  • Literally, How for you did it go?
  • You could also loosely translate this in English as “How was it?”
• Guy: Well.
  • As in “it went well”
  • You could also loosely translate this in English as “good” or “fine”

• Guy: How did it go?
• Girl: [talks sin parar (without stopping) all night]

Slow-Mo Version

Useful Phrases

• ¿Cómo te fue? = How did it go? / How did it go for you?
• ¿Cómo? = How?
  • Note: This is also the word to use when you didn’t hear someone and them to repeat.  It’s like saying “what?” or “come again?” in English.
  • Just like ¿Cuándo? we use an accent when como is part of a question.
• ¿Cómo te fue en  _____ ? = How did ______ go for you?
  • Literally, “how did it go for you in _____”
  • ¿Cómo te fue en el trabajo?  = How did work go for you?
    • (literally, how it went for you at work?)
  • ¿Cómo te fue en el viaje?  = How did your trip go?
    • (literally, how it went for you on the trip?)
• ¿Cómo te fue con _____? = How did it go [for you] with ______?  Whatever happened with ______?
  • ¿Cómo te fue con Maria? = How did it go with Maria? (presumably, referring to a conversation or interaction you had)
• Bien. = fine/good/well
  • This is also an appropriate answer to ¿cómo estás? (how are you?)

Going Deeper

 SENTENCE BREAKDOWN

• “¿cómo te fue?” = “how for you it went?” (in practice: “how’d it go?”)
  • Pronunciation: “COH-moh teh FWEH?”

• “bien” = “fine/good/well”
  • Pronunciation: “biehn”

VERBS

There’s only one verb in this Vine – and we’ve seen it before, in different forms.

ir = to go

Pronunciation: “EER”

In this Vine, ir was conjugated in the past tense: fue.

fue = he/she/it went.

• Q: The translation says “it went”… how do we know “it” is in the sentence?
• A: It’s kind of like saying me gusta.  That means “I like it” but we don’t see “it” in the Spanish sentence, for the same reason.  The word gustar is conjugated to the 3rd person, gusta, so we know we’re talking about he/she/it, and we use context to decide between those three options.  In the phrase te fue (“it went for you”), “it” is the subject of the sentence, the thing that went.  The verb fue is specifically conjugated to the 3rd person, which means, in most instances of this phrase, that “it” is the subject.

OBJECTS

In this Vine we’ve got the IO (indirect object), te.

• In the question ¿Cómo te fue? you are affected by how the day/the event went.
• That little word te expresses that it affected you.

We can replace te with other words to ask how it went for different people.

• ¿Cómo le fue a tu hermano?  ¿Cómo le fue? = How did it go for your brother?  How did it go for him?

• Nos fue bien. = It went well for us.

• Les fue bien = It went well for them / it went well for you guys.
  • depends on context because les is used for ellos (them) as well as ustedes (you guys)

If you’re talking to a stranger or to someone in a formal context, you would speak to them as usted (formal “you”) instead of tú (informal “you”):

• ¿Cómo le fue? = How did it go for you? (formal)
  • Note: this looks the same as “how did it go for him?” because usted has the same pronouns and conjugations as he/she/it.  We use context to tell the difference.

UNDERSTANDING THE CAPTION OF THE VINE

Cuando te preguntan “Cómo te fue?” = When they ask you “How did it go?”

Hombres vs Mujeres = Men vs Women

#vinesenespañol = “Vines en español” = “Vines in Spanish”

(this is a great hashtag to use if you’re looking for more Spanish-speaking Viners to follow!)

VOCABULARY

See if you can identify these words/phrases in English.

• ¿cómo?
• ¿cómo te fue?
• ¿cómo te va? (we didn’t mention this, but I’ll give you a clue: va = he/she/it goes)
• bien
• me fue bien.
• nos fue bien en el examen.
• ¿cómo te fue con el profesor?
• ¿cómo les fue en el viaje?

Bonus for advanced speakers: if you found this lesson too easy, consider the Santana song “Oye Como Va” (written by Tito Puente and popularized by Carlos Santana).  The first two lines are oye como va and then mi ritmo.

• why doesn’t como have an accent in this case?
• can you sense the sort of doble sentido here?  what does oye cómo va mean alone?  What does oye como va mi ritmo mean, as one sentence?
• Hint: the word oye, which is often used for “hey,” comes from the verb oír, to hear.  So oye is actually an informal command: “hear!”
• Answer: here.

If you’re still reading this, watch the Vine again!  Then try to speak the words of the Vine out loud again, as slowly as you need to.