Español básico - lección dos
Español básico - lección dos
Hay is the most useful word in the Spanish
language. It means there is or there are.
No hay means there are not.
No hay means there are not.
How was last week’s class? Have you all be studying your
alphabet? Let’s have a quick recap and then try some words in Spanish.
C G
A k g cava gato
E seh h cena gente
I seh h cielo ginebra
O k g comida gota
U k g culpa gusano
Let’s try these words:
Mujer (que significa) woman
Huevos (que significa) eggs – fritas o
revueltos. Huevos rancheros en México
Queso (que significa) cheese
Coche (que significa) car
Guapo (que significa) attractive
Guardia (que significa) police
And some place names …
Zamora
Gijón
Tenerife
Jerez
Almería
Last week, we learned how to say hello, goodbye, please, thank
you, sorry and excuse me. We also learned how to ask “how are you?” and to tell
someone how we are.
We’re going to have a 10-minute video to recap on those basics
…
VIDEO: https://youtu.be/lB-NMGXgPaY
So, that was easy. In Spain, they would say: Fue pan comido.
The literal
translation is “it was eaten bread”, but don’t do a literal translation
Fue pan
comido – it was a piece of
cake (it was easy).
Es pan comido – it’s easy.
One reason why Spanish is an easy language to learn is that we
have so many words that are the same or almost the same. A word that’s the same
in two languages is called a cognate, if it’s exactly the same it’s called a
perfect cognate, it it’s similar enough to guess it’s called a close cognate.
Xisca explains this very well …
VIDEO: https://youtu.be/pFMYzFipQCs
We’ve talked about why Spanish is easy, let’s look at why it
might be difficult?
Well I find that at my age, sometimes remembering where I left
my car keys is difficult, so learning a new language is very hard. Things don't
stick like they did when I was 10, so it's important to practise as often as
possible.
Talk to your partner or, if your partner doesn't want to listen,
talk to your dog or cat. Try to think in Spanish, listen to Spanish TV, watch a
Spanish film with subtitles or read a Spanish book or newspaper (you can get
lots online). Go to Spain on holiday.
Other complications:
There is no such thing as Spanish. Even in Spain there are
huge regional differences and when you go to Latin America, they just make up
their own words. In Spain car is coche, in LA it is carro. Don’t worry, once
you have the basics of the language, you soon pick up the local speak.
Nouns have a gender – masculine or feminine. We say 'the book'
and 'the table'. The Spanish definite article 'the' changes to reflect the
gender, so they say 'el libro' (masculine) and 'la mesa' (feminine). It's the
same with the indefinite article: a changes to either 'un' or 'una'.
It seems hard, but you get used to it (although I still get it
wrong). At the beginning, I found it useful to say if a word ended in 'a' or
'e' it was feminine and in an 'o' it was masculine. That's not a bad start, but
there are exceptions – for example día (day – and one of the first words we
learned), is masculine even though it ends in an a.
There is also a different way to use adjectives. We say 'the
red car' and 'the red apple'. In Spanish you would say ‘the car red’ el coche rojo and ‘the apple red’ la manzana roja, so adjectives generally (not always)
come after the noun and have to agree with the gender of the noun.
Now we come to the really hard bit - rolling the R. This
terrifies the British, but it is an essential part of Spanish pronunciation.
The R is always rolled at the beginning or end of a word and when you get two
Rs together, it is rrreally rrrolled. I am not very good, but you get better
with practice. In a word such as perro (dog), try pausing between the two Rs –
per-ro.
There are other tricks: I asked my Spanish teacher if there
was a way to practice and she told me to look in the mirror every morning and
say ‘burro’ (I found out later that means donkey – I have no idea what point
she was making).
You can practise rolling your Rs in the showerrr. In the bar,
you can have anotherrr.
The best way to learn is to say “sort of” in an
English accent. Now let’s try that in an American accent. What’s your tongue
doing? That’s the action you need to make.
What’s your name?
In Spain, women do not change their name when they are
married, everyone keeps their name throughout their life. Children, both boys
and girls, are given a surname which is the surname of their father and the
surname of their mother.
So when Lucía married my son, she didn't become Lucía Rayner,
she kept her name Lucía Rojas Rodriguez.
Their children's surnames are Rayner Rojas. My Spanish surname would be Rayner
Little from my dad (Eric Rayner) and my mum (Nellie Little). The man's surname
always comes first. Nick Clegg's wife is called Miriam
González Durántez, what would her mother's name be?
What are your Spanish surnames?
Checking into a Spanish hotel might cause some confusion.
Spanish pronunciation of my name and how an English speaker would say it are
quite different. You may be asked: ¿Cómo se escribe tu nombre? Or ¿Cómo se escribe tu apellido?
Spell out surnames in Spanish.
Asking a name:
There are several ways of asking someone their name:
¿Cómo
te llamas? - informal
¿Cómo
se llama? - formal
To which the response is: me llamo … Eric
You could also say:
¿Cuál es tu nombre? - informal
¿Cuál es su nombre? - formal
To which the response is: Mi nombre es Eric Rayner
Or you could say: Yo soy Eric Rayner
The word for surname is apellido,
so you could also say: ¿Cómo te llamas? And then
¿Cuál es tu apellido?
On meeting someone, you can say mucho gusto (a pleasure) or encantado
(charmed)
Espero verte pronto, chao.
I hope to see you soon, bye.
Números uno a diez
0 cero
1 uno o una (depending upon gender)
2 dos
3 tres
4 cuatro
5 cinco
6 seis
7 siete
8 ocho
9 nueve
10 diez
Los días de la
semana
lunes
martes
miércoles
jueves
viernes
sábado
domingo
NB: when writing the days of the week, there is no capital.
There is also a distinct way of writing “on”:
“I am going to the cinema on Saturday” would be: voy al
cine el sábado.
“I go to the cinema every Saturday” would be: voy al cine
todos los sábados.
Los meses del año Las cuatro estaciones del año
enero el invierno
(Winter)
febrero la primavera (Spring)
marzo el verano (summer)
abril el otoño
(autumn)
mayo
junio
julio
agosto
septiembre
octubre
noviembre
diciembre
Today – hoy
Tomorrow –
mañana
Morning -
mañana
Tomorrow morning – mañana por la mañana
Tomorrow afternoon – mañana por la tarde
Tomorrow evening – mañana por la noche
Yesterday –
ayer
Yesterday
afternoon – ayer por la tarde
Last night –
anoche
The week – la semana
Weekend – el fin de semana
Last week – la semana pasada
Next week – la próxima semana o la semana que viene
The month – el
mes
The year – el
año
A dog – un perro
A cat – un gato
A house – una casa
A car – un coche
A plane – un avión
A train – un tren
A bus – un autobús
A taxi – un taxi
A restaurant – un restaurante
A table – una mesa
A café – una cafetería
A museum – un museo
A theatre – un teatro
A coffee – un
cafe
A cup of tea – una taza de té
A beer – una
cerveza
A bottle of wine – una botella de vino (tinto,
rosado o blanco)
A glass of wine
– una copa de vino
A glass of milk – un vaso de leche
The water – el agua
The sugar - el
azúcar
The butter - la
mantequilla
The bread – el pan (pan rebanado = sliced)
The salad - la ensalada (mixta or verde)
An egg – un huevo (huevos fritas = fried, huevos
revueltos = scrambled)
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