Tell Me, When Are You Taking Your Holidays?

SCENARIO

Imagine you are talking to a relative, a friend or a colleague. Maybe you are talking about your holidays. Your relative/ friend/ colleague does not know when you are due to take your holidays and wants to find out. He/ she decides to say to you: "tell me, when you are taking your holidays?". 

He/ she could choose to be less formal and say to you:

Dime, ¿cuándo tienes las vacaciones?

Alternatively, he/ she could choose to be a little bit more formal and say:

Dígame, ¿cuándo tiene (usted) las vacaciones?
  

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OUR TIP

You DO NOT need be concerned about the degree of formality in what your relative/ friend/ colleague says to you. Whether the other person uses a more/ less formal register is irrelevant to your choice of reply.

Your answer depends only on what you want to say about when you are having your holidays. There are a variety of ways to reply. Maybe you want to say that you:

• Are taking your holidays in August
• Still undecided about when to take them

Here are a couple of examples which deal with those basic possibilities:

• Tengo las vacaciones en agosto (my holidays are in August)
• Todavía no he decidido cuando cogerlas*/ tomarlas (I have not decided yet when I am going to take them)

*NB In some specific countries in Latin America, "coger"  (verb) has a sexual connotation. That localisation does not extend to the whole of Latin America nor Spain, where "coger" is widely used. If in doubt, you could use "tomar" instead of "coger".


Now you should practice answering the question:

Dime, ¿cuándo tienes las vacaciones?

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