Inglés para viajar I: 10/09/2017

1. Este texto es un poco largo. Simplemente vamos a ver formas del verbo to be e intentaremos comprender las frases en que aparece.

I wrote this book in 1946. Many people bought it and said kind things about it. I was surprised and pleased but I was also unhappy that they liked it.

I will explain.

It is very nice when a lot of people buy a book by a new writer. I’m sorry, ‘very nice’ is not an English thing to say. It is not unpleasant when a lot of readers like a new book.

Why was I unhappy? I wrote this book to tell the English what I thought about them, or ‘where to get off as they say. I thought I was brave. I thought, ‘This book is going to make the English angry!’ But no storm came! The English only said that my book was ‘quite amusing’. I was very unhappy.

Then, a few weeks later, I heard about a woman who gave this book to her husband because she thought it was ‘quite amusing’. The man sat down, put his feet up, and read the book. His face became darker and darker. When he finished the book, he stood up and said, ‘Rude! Very, very rude!’ He threw the book into the fire.

What a good Englishman! He said just the right thing, and I felt much better. I hoped to meet more men like him, but I never found another Englishman who did not like the book.

I have written many more books since then but nobody remembers them. Everybody thinks How to be an Alien is the only book that I have ever written. This is a problem. I am now in the middle of writing a very large and serious book, 750 pages long. about old Sumeria. I will win the Nobel Prize for it. It will make no difference; people will still think How to be an Alien is the only book that I have ever written.

People ask me, ‘When are you going to write another How to be an Alien?’ I am sure they mean to be kind, but they cannot quite understand my quiet reply: ‘Never, I hope.’

I think I am the right person to write about ‘how to be an alien’. I am an alien. I have been an alien all my life. I first understood that I was an alien when I was twenty-six years old. In my country, Hungary, everybody was an alien so I did not think I was very different or unusual. Then I came to England and learned that I was different. This was an unpleasant surprise.

I learned immediately that I was an alien. People learn all important things in a few seconds. A long time ago I spent a lot of time with a young woman who was very proud of being English. One day, to my great surprise, she asked me to marry her.

‘No,’ I replied, ‘I cannot marry you. My mother does not want me to marry a foreigner.’

She looked surprised and replied, ‘Me, a foreigner? What a funny thing to say. I’m English. You are the foreigner! And your mother is a foreigner, too!’

I did not agree. ‘Am I a foreigner in Budapest, too?’ I asked.

‘Everywhere,’ she said. ‘If it’s true that you’re an alien in England, it’s also true in Hungary and North Borneo and Venezuela and everywhere.’

She was right, of course, and I was quite unhappy about it. There is no way out of it. Other people can change. A criminal can perhaps change his ways and become a better person but a foreigner cannot change. A foreigner is always a foreigner. He can become British, perhaps; he can never become truly English.

So it is better to understand that you are always a foreigner. Maybe some English people will forgive you. They will be polite to you. They will ask you into their homes and they will be kind to you. The English keep dogs and cats and they are happy to keep a few foreigners, too. This book offers you some rules about being an alien in England. Study them carefully. They will help you to be more like the English. If you are like the English, they think you are funny. If you are not like them, they think you are even funnier.

2. Let us talk about a different country,

3. And now a song. What does Frank say?

5. Recapitulemos.

Tenemos el presente simple y el pasado simple del verbo to be.

Presente simple
I am
you are
he/she/it is
we are
you are
they are

Pasado simple
I was
you were
he/she/it was
we were
you were
they were

Cuatro ejemplos:

It was very nice
We are not tired
Are you tired?  (Yes/no question)
Wheres is my book? (Wh-question)

Ahora, se trata de hacer, escribir y leer, frases similares. Siempre tiene que haber sujeto.
Necesitamos una forma del verbo to be. Un pronombre o una frase nominal que haga de sujeto y un adjetivo o un nombre que haga de predicado.
Atención al orden de las palabras.