It is only natural when you meet someone new to inquire about that person’s origins or to speak about your own.
In order to speak correctly about coming from, living in, or traveling to a country, city, state, or province, you need to learn these prepositions:
Here’s a great article about how to learn foreign languages with the least pain and the most gain.
The author discusses the apprehension a lot of native English speakers experience while learning a foreign language, and why many are turned off from it altogether. He believes that native English speakers actually find it much more difficult than others to learn foreign languages, for the following reasons:
When traveling in a foreign country, if you want to converse with a person whom you don’t know at all, a formal approach is mandatory. It is considered quite a mistake to address someone informally if a strong friendship or relationship has not been established.
Be sure to start and end your conversations correctly by using the appropriate greetings and goodbyes listed below.
A pronoun is a word that is used to replace a noun (that is, a person, place, thing, idea, or quality). A subject pronoun replaces a subject noun (the noun performing the action of the verb). Pronouns are extremely useful because they allow for fluidity by eliminating the need to constantly repeat the noun when speaking or writing.
Just as in English, the Spanish subject pronouns in the following table are given a person and a number (singular or plural).
The Daily Texan has an article up about Elaine Horwitz’s research into how foreign language anxiety can lead to hesitancy to practice the language, missed classes and lower grades.
Her findings mimic some of my own Spanish language learning experiences. I studied Spanish from 5th grade through 10th grade, and never became fluent. It wasn’t until I spent some time abroad that I was able to really communicate with others in Spanish.
Her research also seems to confirm some suspicions I’ve had about the inefficiency of learning Spanish, or any foreign language, in a formal educational setting.
Like English, all Spanish nouns have a number: singular (one), as in la familia, or plural (more than one), as in las familias. Unlike English, however, all Spanish nouns also have a gender: masculine or feminine. In some instances, the gender of the noun is blatantly obvious: un hombre (a man) is masculine, whereas una mujer (a woman) is feminine. In other cases, the gender of a noun is not in the least bit apparent and defies all rules of common sense or logic: una corbata (a tie) is feminine, while un vestido (a dress) is masculine.
Spanish syntax and grammar require that all words in a sentence agree in number and gender with the noun or pronoun they modify. For this reason, you must learn the gender of each noun you need or deem important. Special noun endings and markers, either articles or adjectives, indicate the gender and number of Spanish nouns.
A cognate is a Spanish word that is spelled exactly the same, or almost the same, as a word in English and that has the same meaning.
Sometimes the English word may have been appropriated from Spanish, letter for letter, and have been incorporated into our own vocabulary. The only real difference between the two words is in the pronunciation. The meanings of the Spanish cognates should be quite obvious to anyone who speaks English.
False friends are words that are spelled exactly or almost the same in both languages but have very different meanings in Spanish and English. These words might even be different parts of speech.
Do not allow yourself to become overconfident and think that every Spanish word that resembles an English one is automatically a cognate. The following table will give you some common false friends:
Each vowel in Spanish is represented by one phonetic sound, and accent marks are used only to determine the amount of stress needed. After each of the following vowel explanations you will have the opportunity to practice repeating sentences that reinforce the sounds presented.
Take advantage and practice your accent until you feel comfortable that you have mastered the material below.
The Condé Nast Traveler magazine has a travel blog up about Wendy Perrin’s travels through Spain.
She visits the Monasterio de Yuso in San Millán, an important pilgrimage site with many claims to fame, and finds the first words ever written in the Spanish language!
