¿Cómo Te Llamas?

by Mike Wilson

"What's your name?" It's an easy enough question in English. In Spanish, however, we have the option of saying it formally or informally. The formal approach would be "¿Cómo se llama usted?" This song is titled with the informal approach, "¿Cómo te llamas?"

This is a VERY easy song to sing. The form is AABAABA, so there is not a lot to learn. The focus is on pronouncing the words correctly and hamming up the dialog. It would be fun to make a little game out of it by designating a student (or the teacher) to point to a student as the choir sings "¿Cómo te llamas?" just in the nick of time for them to respond with their name. We have written out the spoken dialog that we used in the session, but you can let kids improvise or mix up the English and Spanish as you wish. Feel free to paraphrase the interpretations of "Mucho gusto" as well.

"Mucho gusto" seems to have many uses. For our context, the use is "pleased to meet you" or "glad to meet you." So "¿Como te llamas tú?" and "Mucho gusto" is all the Spanish you need to learn for this song. If you can't pick out the pronunciation from the demo singers, feel free to listen to the pronunciation guide on our web site.

Musically, this song is percussion driven and has two vocal parts. Part 2 isn't really very optional, even though we label it as such on the music in case you just can't do it. But, if you can manage, you need both parts to give it the proper flare. On the Music K-8 web site, you can listen to the separate mixes we made of each part. Talk about making it easy!

Text is taken from Music K-8 magazine.