Confusing verbs

Two verbs I tend to confuse in Spanish are amanecer (to dawn) and amenazar (to threaten). This is something that my Spanish friends can find highly amusing of course, but I have heard of many people having similar problems with certain pairs of words. Everyone has their own mental blocks when learning a language, and you will find your own problem words as you go along.

For me, the solution is to identify the problem words and come up with a way to remember or distinguish them. With my example above, I think of the verb 'to menace' as being similar to 'to threaten', and look for 'menace' with an 'a' in front becoming 'amenazar'.

Cooking Empanadas

I have just got to give a mention to the website Empanadas Criollas. I had decided to do an empanada dinner party, and invited a few guests, assuming it would be easy enough to find plenty of empanada recipes online. For those that haven't tried them, empanadas are small pasties or pies with a variety of fillings which are a common snack throughout South America. The most common fillings are based on minced beef (carne picada) but there are many different options - chicken, fish. vegetable, cheese, and even a few sweet versions as well. My intitial recipe research on Google last night produced page after page of recipes for minced beef empanadas but no alternatives. I really wanted to have five or six different recipes, including a couple of vegetarian options. Eventually I stumbled on the site I mentioned above which has absolutely loads of different empanada recipes - sweet and savoury, meat, fish or veggie. It is all in Spanish, so it is a good opportunity to practice. Unless you are really fluent you will have to look up a few words for ingredients or cooking techniques, but that just helps with the learning.

Have fun cooking

Whales and Wales

I have been asked a few times how to say 'Wales', the country, Spanish. The answer is 'Gales', or 'el país de Gales' (the country of the Welsh) but I am always tempted to say 'ballenas' meaning 'whales', the marine mammals. A childish pun I know, but I have been on the recieving end of plenty of similar ones before.

Pronunciation matters

How you pronounce words in Spanish can matter a lot. Speaking as if you are speaking English can make it difficult to be understood, and putting the stress on the wrong sylable can totally change the meaning of a word. The rules of Spanish pronunciation are consistent, so once you have learned them you can pronounce any word. I am not going to go into too much detail here, but I will throw in a few more pronunciation tips in future posts.

To start with, the stress in a word comes on the last sylable, unless it ends in 'n', 's', or a vowel, when it falls on the second last sylable. Words that do not follow this rule always have an accent over the stressed sylable.

For example -

inglés = English (stress on the 'é')
ingles = groins (stress on the 'i')
esta = this (femenine, stress on the 'e')
está = he/she/it is, you are (stress on the 'á')

So as you can see, putting the stress on the wrong part of a word can drastically change its meaning.

Watching the news - RTVE website

Watching the TV news is a good way to hone your Spanish listening skills. A great place to do this in manageable chunks is RTVE's Telediario en 4' (Daily news in 4 minutes). For one thing, four minutes is a good length - long enough to learn something but short enough to keep concentrating. There is also a good written summary of the report which really helps with understanding it. The newsreaders do speak pretty fast, so the extra help is welcome. There is a good mix of national and international news, sport and weather so it is a good way to keep up with what is happening in the Spanish world, whilst the big international stories will probably be familiar from news in English making them easier to follow. It is free to watch as well, so there is no excuse not to give it a go.

More on 'ser

Yesterday's conjugation of 'ser' ('to be') was only half the story. You don't have to study Spanish for long before you realise that there are two words for 'to be' in Spanish, and figuring out which one to use in a given situation can be pretty tricky for an English speaker. The other verb for 'to be' is 'estar' which we will cover in more detail next week. In general, 'ser' is used for more pernanent things and characteristics whilst 'estar' is used for more transient things, as well as for locations.

I will give a few examples here, and a few more with next week's post to help give you the idea.

soy inglés = I am English
es rubia = she is blonde
es alto = he is tall
las montañas son altas = the mountains are tall
somos profesores = we are teachers
eres muy inteligente = you are very clever

Conjugation of the Week - 6. Ser - To be

 

This week another essential and very irregular verb - 'ser', meaning 'to be'. Ser is actually one of two verbs in Spanish for 'to be' and the choice of which one to use can be quite subtle. More on that in future posts. See previous posts in this series for more about conjugations.

Ser - to be 

soy = I am

eres = you are (sing. fam.)

es = he/she/it is, you are (sing. pol.)

somos = we are

sois = you are (pl. fam.)

son = they are, you are (pl. pol.)