Archive for 'Spanish Vocabulary'
Cuban Spanish Posted by Adir on Mar 12, 2009
Today we’ll have a look at some typical vocabulary used in Cuba. Check them out! Amarillo – a coward person. Aquel hombre es un amarillo. (That man is a coward.) Caballo – friend. ¿Cómo estás, caballo? (How are you, my friend?) Curralo – work. Voy pa’l curralo. (I’m going to work.) Embori – a snitch…
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…
Similarities between Spanish words Posted by Adir on Jan 22, 2009
Paronyms are pairs and sets of words in a language that may be easily confused because they are similar in form. Sometimes they are related in meaning and sometimes they are quite unrelated. Check them out! 1. abertura / apertura / obertura Abertura = hole, gap, orifice. Hay una abertura en la pared. (There’s a…
You’re in my way! Los obstáculos en español. Posted by Adir on Jan 19, 2009
One of the greatest things in learning a language is learning new vocabulary. I just get a major kick out of it and not so long ago I was thinking about how many synonyms there are for the word “obstáculo”, an obstacle. Check them out! 1. escollo – pitfall, stumbling block. 2. impedimento – impediment…
La Bolsa – Stock Market vocabulary Posted by Adir on Dec 27, 2008
A lot has been said and written about the world’s economic crisis, mostly concerning the Stock Exchage. Here’s some useful vocabulary to talk about it. la Bolsa – the Stock Exchange parqué – floor (in Stock Exchange) sala de la Bolsa – Stock Exchange hall tablón con las cotizaciones bursátiles – (Stock Exchange) prices board…
Idioms with Numbers Posted by Adir on Dec 23, 2008
There are several idioms formed with numbers. Check them out! Cero ser un cero a la izquierda – to be useless Uno una y no más, Santo Tomás – once is enough Dos cada dos por tres – very frequently estar entre dos fuegos – to be caught in the crossfire estar entre dos aguas…