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…
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…
Latin music: Luis Fonsi, from Puerto Rico Posted by Adir on Jan 30, 2009
Luis Fonsi was born in Puerto Rico, but spent most of his childhood in Florida. He went to the Florida State University to study vocal techniques. While in FLU he was overheard singing by a music department president, who offered him his first contract with a large disquera (recording company). Below is a video of…
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…
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…