Love-Spanish.com: Is The Cathedral Near?

Sunday, 28 July 2013

Is The Cathedral Near?

Introduction

This post deals with indicating how near/ far the cathedral is in Spanish, and the distance from where you are to the cathedral.

SCENARIO

Imagine you are with a relative, a friend, a work colleague or even a complete stranger who is looking for the cathedral and asks you: "is the cathedral near?"

In Spanish, the other person could choose to say:

¿Queda cerca la catedral?

OUR TIP

The question is an invitation for you to say how far away the cathedral is. A yes/no answer may be strictly sufficient. However, with little effort, your answer could be a lot more informative.

Here are some examples of how you could reply:

La catedral queda lejos (the cathedral is far away)
La catedral queda bastante lejos (the cathedral is quite far away)
La catedral queda muy lejos (the cathedral is very far away)
La catedral queda cerca (the cathedral is near)
La catedral queda bastante cerca (the cathedral is quite near)
La catedral queda muy cerca (the cathedral is very near)
La catedral queda a la vuelta de la esquina (the cathedral is around the corner)
La catedral queda al final de la calle a la izquierda (the cathedral is at the end of the street/ road on the left)
La catedral queda a dos manzanas (the cathedral is two blocks away)
La catedral queda a dos cuadras (the cathedral is two blocks away)
La catedral queda a cinco minutos a pie (the cathedral is five minutes away on foot)
La catedral queda en el centro (the cathedral is in the town centre/ downtown)
La catedral no queda cerca (the cathedral is not near)
La catedral queda a doscientosmetros^* (the cathedral is 200 meters away)
La catedral queda a trescientos metros^* (the cathedral is 300 meters away)

Now you should practise answering the question:

¿Queda cerca la catedral?

*See some commonly used length in Spanish below

*Spanish Lengths

Some expressions of length/ distance commonly used in Spanish are shown below:

	Metros	Kilómetros
cien metros	100m
doscientos metros	200m
trescientos metros	300m
cuatrocientos metros	400m
quinientos metros	500m	1/2km
seiscientos metros	600m
setecientos metros	700m
ochocientos metros	800m
novecientos metros	900m
mil metros/ un kilómetro	1000m	1km