U3A Basic Spanish

Grupo Básico Español – lección diecisiete Buenos días señores y señoras. Bienvenidos a la lección diecisiete de la clase de español. Pronunciation of words Last week (la semana pasada) Eric got into trouble with Lucy for his pronunciation of verbs. Let’s have a quick recap on where the stress is on words. There are six simple rules : 1.      The NoS rule. If a word has no accent and ends with an N or S or a vowel (A,E,I,O U), the stress is on the penultimate syllable (the last but one syllable). zap a to, c a sas, re co rre, melocot o nes 2.     With words that have no accent and end in a consonant (other than N or S), the stress is on the last syllable: Madr i d, españ o l, Jer e z 3.     If the stress comes elsewhere it must be marked with a written accent: rep ú blica, lleg ó , quiz á s, polic í a, estaci ó n, pl á tano. 4.     When using a verb in the present tense, the stress is o...

Verb of the week: hacer Hacer means 'to do' or 'to make' and it is one of the essential Spanish verbs to learn. It is used in many everyday situations, idiomatic expressions and also to discuss the weather! In English, we have two separate verbs for doing and making, but the Spanish make do with one. Here is the verb conjugated in present, past and future:                                         Present e                 Pret é rit o                 Futuro          yo                    ...

Verb of the week: ir Ir means 'to go' and it is one of the most useful verbs in Spanish. It can also be used as a simple way to form sentences in the future tense. In English, we tend to use the appropriate conjugation of the verb 'to be' (I am, he is, they are, you are) plus the gerund 'going'. Rarely do we say “I go to the shops”, we say “I am going to the shops”. In English, there are only two conjugations in the present tense:                  he/she/it goes              I/you/we/they go In the past tense, there is only one form of the verb: went Of course, in Spanish, there's a full set:                                       ...

Conjugating regular verbs All verbs in Spanish end either in -er, -ir or -ar.  Regular verbs share the same rules for endings in the various conjugations, which is a big help when learning new verbs or knowing which ending to use – just memorise the way the endings work.  We have learned regular verbs with all three endings: Viv ir means ‘to live’ Habl ar means ‘to speak’ Ten er means ‘to have’ Let’s take a look at ir, ar and er verb endings in the present tense. -ir verbs - Vivir Knock off the ir ending and add o, es, e, imos, ís and en. viv o               I live viv es             you live (informal) viv e               he, she, you (formal) live(s) viv imos          we live viv ís     ...

Tener means 'to have' and the Spanish use it a lot – for all kinds of things! For example 'tengo que' means 'I have to' or 'Do I have to?' and it is also used where, in English, we would say 'I am'. For example 'tengo sed', which to translates to I have thirst, means 'I am thirsty'. You do not say 'estoy sed' . It works in lots of instances including being hungry and being hot. In English, there are only two conjugations:           He/she/it has                                                                       I/you/we/they have In Spanish, every group gets its own form of the verb an...