Into the future's past

Learning Spanish with Michel Thomas. Disk 7. The future & conditional tense.

“Would. Say it. Would. Wood. Think of how you go for a walk into the wood. You walk into the wood and you see a river. Do you see the river? Have you ever heard of “rio”? River? Rio Grande? I bet you have. But this is another river. Another rio. It is a female one, a special one. Ria. You go into the wood, into the would, and there is the “ria”. So that is how it works. Take the verb and put the ria behind it. Ria with an accent. A special river. Ría. Let's try it.”

I try it.

To be. Ser. I am. Soy. I will. Seré.* I would be. (I go into the wood. I see the river. The special one. The ría. I add it.) Sería. It works!

And I practise my still barely existing Spanish, the conditional tense, I think about rivers and would be rivers and remember walking along the Danube for days, following the line the river made and how I embroidered it on my walking suit.  And I think of my last visit to Spain. How I travelled home with mountains in my head and this river in my suitcase:

(* And inbetween all of this there is a very beautiful moment when Michel Thomas asks the girl he is teaching on the Cd if she ever heard the phrase "Que sera, sera" and the girl says "yes" and he asks her if she knows who sang the song and the girl with her young voice says "no" and then his strict voice softens and you hear him smile and he says softly: "Doris Day. I taught her.")