Archive for February, 2009
¡Átame! Posted by Adir on Feb 26, 2009
Antonio Banderas. You may not know this but this Málaga-born Spaniard heartthrob has more than 60 movies under his belt and is highly respected in the movie industry. Banderas started acting at the age of 19 with a series of movies by highly acclaimed Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. His first American movie was The Mambo…
Homophones II Posted by Adir on Feb 23, 2009
In English we have words called homophones (homo = same, phone = sound) like bear and bare, idle and idol, among many others. Spanish also has homophones and, for the untrained ear, it can be somewhat difficult at first. We give you now some examples of words that have the same sound but are written…
Lexical influences in Spanish Posted by Adir on Feb 20, 2009
Remember that story that John loved Mary, who loved Charles, who loved…? Well, learning languages is not different, because each language ends up influencing others. You must know already that you can express things differently in Spanish depending on which country you are in, right? Let’s take for example the word “bus”: if you’re in…
Un poco de arte Posted by Adir on Feb 17, 2009
¡Hola, mi gente! Today we’re going to learn a bit about art, en español, through an activity. I’m going to give you 5 styles: cubista expresionista dadaísta surrealista futurista you’ll have to match these styles to their description, ok? Below each description there’s a link to a painting from each style. Shall we go for…
Tongue twisters Posted by Adir on Feb 12, 2009
Los trabalenguas, tongue twisters, are present in every language, and Spanish is no different. Wanna try saying these? 1. Cansadas cargadas rapadas marchaban las chavas, calladas, calmadas bandadas de gatas las ratas cazaban, las ranas cantaban llamaban saltaban y al saltar sanaban de su mal astral. 2. Pepe Peña pela papa, pica piña, pita un…
The Subjunctive: Will You Resist? Posted by Adir on Feb 9, 2009
I have always used songs in my lessons because I think they’re a fun way to learn. When I teach the subjunctive I always use a song by a Spanish duo, el Dúo Dinámico. They come from a very poor Spanish family (Basque and Aragonese) and are famous all over Spain and South America. One…
Mujeres Alteradas Posted by Adir on Feb 5, 2009
Mujeres Alteradas is the title of a weekly comic strip where we get to know about women’s world and everything about it, focusing on men (husbands, boyfriends or lovers) and children. Married, single and widow women, teenagers, in their 20s, 30s or 40s, ugly, pretty, fat, thin, with or without boyfriend, successful in their jobs…