Botijos from La Rambla: the possessive nuestro (A1 Spanish)
A1 Spanish reading about a potter family in La Rambla, in the province of Córdoba, and why water stays cool in a clay botijo. All four forms of nuestro, plus su and sus. With cards and translation.
Nuestros botijos y su agua fresca
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Curro describes his family pottery in La Rambla, in the province of Córdoba, Andalusia, and explains how a botijo is built: a wide mouth, a narrow spout and a handle. Water passes slowly through the porous clay, the hot dry air dries it on the outside, and the water inside stays cool. The text is carried by the possessive nuestro in all four of its forms.
Nuestro trabajo principal es el botijo. Un botijo es una vasija de barro para el agua. Nuestros botijos tienen tres partes importantes: su boca, su pitorro y su asa.
La boca es ancha y por ahí entra el agua. El pitorro es estrecho y por ahí sale. Nuestras asas son fuertes, porque un botijo lleno pesa bastante.
Nuestro secreto no está en la forma. Está en el barro. Nuestro barro tiene poros muy pequeños, y el agua pasa poco a poco por las paredes del botijo y moja la cara de fuera.
Fuera, el aire caliente y seco seca esa agua. Así el agua de dentro está fresca. Nuestros botijos no llevan barniz por fuera: con barniz el agua no pasa, y el agua de dentro no está fresca.
Mi abuelo Rafael trabaja en nuestro torno. Sus manos levantan el barro muy despacio. Después nuestros botijos esperan unos días y nuestro horno termina el trabajo.
En nuestro pueblo el barro pasa de padres a hijos. Nuestros vecinos también tienen su alfarería y su horno.
En verano nuestros botijos van al campo con nuestros abuelos. Muchas personas beben a chorro, sin tocar el pitorro con los labios, y así un botijo sirve para todo el grupo.
Mi botijo es pequeño y no es perfecto. Su asa está un poco torcida y su barro tiene la marca de mi dedo. Pero es mi primer botijo, y su agua está fresca.
¿Y tú? ¿Cómo bebes agua fría en verano? ¿Tienes en tu casa algún objeto de barro? ¿De dónde es tu objeto y para qué sirve?
About this article
What you'll learn
Possessive adjectives nuestro/nuestra/nuestros/nuestras and su/sus, including su with a non-human owner; the article el before the feminine noun agua; pottery vocabulary: barro, botijo, alfarería, horno, pitorro, torno.
Curro describes his family pottery in La Rambla, in the province of Córdoba, Andalusia, and explains how a botijo is built: a wide mouth, a narrow spout and a handle. Water passes slowly through the porous clay, the hot dry air dries it on the outside, and the water inside stays cool. The text is carried by the possessive nuestro in all four of its forms.
After reading
Article learning block
Phrases, words, grammar, and quick practice from this text.
Phrases for training
Add useful phrases to SRS or mark them as already known.
beben a chorro
newto drink in a stream, without the lips touching
«A chorro» means in a jet or stream. Water from a botijo is poured into the mouth from a short distance, without the lips touching the spout. That way one botijo serves a whole group.
«Chorro» is the stream from a tap, a bottle or a botijo. Drinking a chorro is a familiar Spanish habit, shared with the porrón wine jug.
poco a poco
newlittle by little, gradually
«Poco a poco» means slowly and gradually. The pattern word + a + the same word produces many Spanish adverbial phrases: poco a poco, cara a cara, paso a paso.
One of the most common phrases in the language. In the text it is how the water crosses the clay: not at once, but gradually.
de padres a hijos
newfrom parents to children, down the generations
A set phrase for passing a craft, a habit or an object to the next generation: «el barro pasa de padres a hijos». The pattern «de X a Y» shows the direction of the handover.
It is one of the usual ways Spanish talks about something handed on to the next generation: una receta que pasa de padres a hijos, un oficio que pasa de padres a hijos.
el agua de dentro
newthe water inside / the outer face
«Dentro» and «fuera» are adverbs (inside, outside). To attach them to a noun, Spanish inserts «de»: el agua de dentro (the water that is inside), la cara de fuera (the side that is outside). Both are in the text.
A short pattern that saves a whole relative clause. The same shape gives el de arriba, la de abajo, el de al lado.
Key words
Vocabulary that carries the school-day topic.
el barro
barro
clay; mud
«Barro» is the wet clay you shape pots from, and also the mud on a road. «Trabajar el barro» means to work as a potter, and «de barro» names the material: una vasija de barro.
The key word of all pottery. «Arcilla» tends to name clay as a raw material, while «barro» is the clay in your hands, and the mud outdoors.
el botijo
botijo
botijo, a porous clay water jug
A botijo is a porous clay vessel for drinking water, traditional in Spain. It has a wide mouth for filling (la boca), a narrow spout for drinking (el pitorro) and a handle (el asa).
An object that comes up every Spanish summer: it keeps water cool with no fridge and no electricity.
la alfarería
alfarería
pottery: the craft and the workshop
The word covers both the craft of making clay vessels and the place where it is done. In the text it is the family workshop. The potter is «el alfarero» or «la alfarera».
One of the many Spanish words of Arabic origin that begin with al-: almohada, alcalde, algodón.
el horno
horno
kiln; oven
One word for the kitchen oven and for the large furnace where pottery is fired or bread is baked. The initial h is silent.
It gives hornear (to bake) and horno de leña (wood-fired oven). In the text it is the kiln that finishes the botijo.
el pitorro
pitorro
spout
The narrow spout you drink from on a botijo. It is not «la boca»: the wide mouth is for filling, the pitorro is for drinking.
A concrete, memorable word, and the pair boca / pitorro explains how the whole vessel works.
el torno
torno
potter's wheel
«El torno» is the potter's wheel that spins while the hands raise the clay. The same word means a lathe, and «en torno a» means around or approximately.
Two workshops in one word, plus the very common phrase en torno a: en torno a las ocho, en torno a este tema.
Grammar in context
Patterns from the text worth noticing after reading.
nuestro, nuestra, nuestros, nuestras
Nuestros botijos tienen tres partes importantes
our
«Nuestro» is the only possessive in this text that changes for both the gender and the number of the thing owned. All four forms appear here: nuestro barro, nuestra casa, nuestros botijos, nuestras asas.
The ending describes the object, not how many owners there are: «nuestros botijos» is several jugs, and the owners could be two people or twenty.
su with a non-human owner
su boca, su pitorro y su asa
its, as well as his, her and their
Here the owner is not a person but the jug itself: «su boca», «su pitorro» and «su asa» are the mouth, the spout and the handle of the botijo. Spanish uses «su» freely for objects, animals and places, not only for people.
It is shorter than «la boca del botijo» and sounds just as natural.
mi or nuestro: who the owner is
Mi botijo es pequeño
my / our
The choice between «mi» and «nuestro» depends on who owns the thing: one person or a group. «Mi botijo» is Curro's own jug, «nuestros botijos» are the whole family's. The ending, on the other hand, is dictated by the noun that follows.
One word carries two things: the stem points at the owner, the ending at the object. Separating them removes most possessive errors.
el agua, but fresca
el agua
a feminine noun that takes el
«Agua» is feminine, but in the singular it takes «el» because it begins with a stressed a. The gender does not change: the text has «el agua ... está fresca», «agua fría» and «Nuestras asas», all with feminine endings. The plural goes back to «las»: las aguas, las asas.
Seeing «el agua» does not make the noun masculine: the adjective stays feminine. And the swap does not happen with possessives: su agua, nuestra agua.
primero → primer
mi primer botijo
first
Before a masculine singular noun, «primero» drops its final -o: mi primer botijo, el primer día. The feminine keeps the full form: mi primera pieza. Tercero, bueno and uno shorten the same way: tercer, buen, un.
«Primer» needs a noun after it; standing alone you say «el primero». It is one of the first irregular shapes a reader meets.
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