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Song: Muchacho Malo, by Olga Tañón Posted by Adir on Jan 19, 2012
I just love Olga Tañón! This Puerto Rican merengue singer is a burst of energy on the stage and she’s called La Mujer de Fuego (The Woman of Fire). Olga has won several music awards and her music always talks about love and relationships. Let’s check out her live performance of Muchacho Malo (Bad Boy)…
Idioms with the verb “llevar” Posted by Adir on Jan 17, 2012
Llevar means “to take” or “to carry” and has several interesting idioms related to it. Let’s learn some of them today, shall we? llevar adelante – to carry something through El Gobierno llevó adelante su proyecto de ley. – The government carried through with its draft bill. Su novio la dejó pero llevó su embarazo…
Do you believe you can speak Spanish? Posted by Adir on Jan 16, 2012
Hey, there! How is it going? I’d like to talk to you a bit today about beliefs. Like me, you must have been brought up with the phrase “seeing is believing”, right? It always sounded very skeptical to me but now I believe that “believing is seeing”. Yes, “believing is seeing”. Some people call it…
Interrogative Pronouns Posted by Adir on Jan 13, 2012
Interrogative pronouns, also used as exclamative pronouns, can be variable or invariable. Take a look: Invariables: qué (what/which) – cuándo (when) – cómo (how) – dónde (where) Variables: cuál – cuáles (which one/s) – quién – quiénes (who) – cuánto/a – cuántos/as (how much/many) Here are some examples of how they’re used: Qué + noun…
Las conjunciones coordinadas – Part 02 Posted by Adir on Jan 12, 2012
Let’s continue studying today the coordinate conjunctions, las conjunciones coordinadas, in Spanish. 1. bien… bien – uno… otro – ora… ora – ya… ya These conjunction pairs usually express an idea of exclusion or alternation of the elements that they link and indicate that these ideas don’t occur simultaneously. Here are some examples: Bien a…
Las conjunciones coordinadas – Part 01 Posted by Adir on Jan 10, 2012
Conjunctions are words that are used to link two terms in a clause or two clauses. Here are two examples: Juan y María son primos. (Juan and Maria are cousins.) Lo encontramos por la calle y lo invitamos a cenar. (We run into him on the street and we invited him to dinner.) In the…
Chilean Spanish Posted by Adir on Jan 7, 2012
I started learning Spanish in 1991 with two friends from high school, Ximena and Ivo. They were from Chile. They had been living in my town for some time and I was amazed that at home they spoke Spanish and in other situations they would speak Portuguese, perfectly! That got me very interested in learning…