Love-Spanish.com: Is The Coast Far Away?

Wednesday, 18 September 2013

Is The Coast Far Away?

Introduction

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

SCENARIO

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

In Spanish, the other person could choose to say:

¿Queda lejos la costa?

OUR TIP

The question is an invitation for you to say how far away the coast 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 costa queda lejos (the coast is far away)
La costa queda bastante lejos (the coast is quite far away)
La costa queda muy lejos (the coast is very far away)
La costa queda cerca (the coast is near)
La costa queda bastante cerca (the coast is quite near)
La costa queda muy cerca (the coast is very near)
La costa no queda lejos (the coast is not far away)
La costa queda a tres kilómetros^* (the coast is 3 kilometres away)
La costa queda a veinte kilómetros^* (the coast is 20 kilometres away)
La costa queda a doscientos kilómetros^* (the coast is 200 kilometres away)

Now you should practise answering the question:

¿Queda lejos la costa?

*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