It’s almost the weekend again and I’ve got a Friday Song for you.

La canción de viernes: Vivir Mi Vida by Marc Anthony

This New York native proudly claims his Puerto Rican heritage and has produced songs in both English and Spanish.  Vivir Mi Vida was released in July 2013.

This next video shows you the lyrics in both Spanish and English as the song plays.

Letras/ Lyrics

I dare you to not feel to dance while listening to this song!  If you had to guess, which Latin dance style do you think Vivir Mi Vida is best suited to?

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Did you guess Salsa???  I hope you did!  Salsa dancing became popular in New York in the 1960s but the music and dance styles arose from Puerto Rico and (like many others) Cuba. Check out this video from Strictly Come Dancing of the competitors dancing Salsa to Vivir Mi Vida.

Grammatical Note

We’ve listened to the music.  We’ve looked at the dance.  Now we’ll pop in some grammar!  I like this song for its use of the infinitive forms of verbs.  There are a lot of examples in this song!

In Spanish, there are several expressions and verbs which require the use of the infinitive form of the verb.

In Vivir Mi Vida the following rules are observed:

• The verbs IR and PODER are almost always followed by the infinitive.
• Para + infinitive =  In order to do something

Listening Exercise 

Let’s do a little listening exercise to pick out the infinitives.

• Ignore the letras above
• Play Vivir Mi Vida
• Fill in the gaps in the song using verbs from the supplied list.

Verbs: bailar gozar vivir encontrar entender escuchar limpiar llorar reí­r soñar sufrir vencer

Check your answers against the lyrics!  How did you do?

 

Pa’ qué

Para qué means for what reason/ for what/ why

Pa’ qué is considered to be a colloquial contracted version of Para qué

While the shortened colloquial Pa’ qué is hardly used in formal written Spanish, it is frequently heard in informal speech (and song)!

Alright, enough with the lessons!  It’s Friday. Turn the music up and dance into your weekend!

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