Archive for 'Spanish Grammar'
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…
Time expressions in the past Posted by Adir on Feb 2, 2009
Spanish has several verb tenses to express the past; two of them are Pretérito Perfecto Compuesto (present perfect simple) and Pretérito Perfecto Simple (simple past). This is how to distinguish them: Pretérito Perfecto Compuesto is normally accompanied by expressions that refer to the present time. The reason for this is that this tense describes a…
Punctuation marks. Posted by Adir on Jan 26, 2009
Today we’re going to learn about “signos de puntuación” (punctuation marks). Let’s see what they’re called in Spanish. el punto final – period/full stop el punto y aparte – period/full stop (and new paragraph) el asterisco – asterisk la coma – comma el punto y coma – semicolon las comillas – quotation marks las comillas…
¿Gorra o gorro? Posted by Adir on Dec 12, 2008
Because of its distinctive gender endings, Spanish does not have many words with the same form but different meanings (true homonyms). However, there are many pairs of words distinguished only by the –o and -a (and sometimes also -e) endings which are easily confused. These are known as gender paronyms. Here are some examples: el…
Why oh why? Posted by Adir on Dec 1, 2008
All right, you go to your Spanish class, learn a thousand verb forms but still think you’re not learning enough just because you watched an Almodóvar movie and got stuck when the actor said something translated as “because” and it was not “porque”? Let’s take a look at some other “becauses” in Spanish. 1. Por…
Special adjectives Posted by Adir on Nov 20, 2008
The following list of adjectives is special because they don’t follow the regular “-o” and “-a” endings for masculine and feminine forms, respectively; they have only one form for both genders. Check it out. egoísta – selfish materialista – materialistic optimista – optimistic pesimista – pessimistic realista – realistic alegre – happy amable – kind…
The Subjunctive II: Irregular Verbs Forms Posted by Adir on Nov 17, 2008
These are the most common irregular verb forms in the Present Subjunctive. The stems are derived from the present tense first person “yo” form. caber (to fit) – quepa, quepas, quepa, quepamos, quepáis, quepan caer (to fall) – caiga, caigas, caiga, caigamos, caigáis, caigan decir (to say) – diga, digas, diga, digamos, digáis, digan hacer…