Homophones (sound alikes)

There is another common but false belief amongst Spanish speakers about their language. They say that unlike English, Spanish contains no homophones (words that sound the same but are spelt differently and have different meanings). Admittedly there are many times more homophones in English than Spanish, due to Spanish being a phonetic language, but I have still managed to find a few examples:-

hecho (done, fact) vs. echo (1^st person of echar - to throw, cast, put)

ha (2^nd person sing. of haber – to have) vs. a (to, at)

hola (hello, hi) vs. ola (wave)

These examples rely on the silent ‘h’, there are others which might depend on the regional accent, as in most places ‘v’ and ‘b’ sound alike, and in some places ‘ll’ and ‘y’ do as well. In Latin America the ‘z’ and soft ‘c’ both sound like ‘s’ rather than being lisped like in Spain, so there are words like ‘la olla’ and ‘la hoya’ (the pan and the river bed), tubo and tuvo (tube and 3^rd person past tense of tener – to have), or ‘la casa’ and ‘la caza’ (the house and the hunt) which might sound identical or merely similar depending where you are.

El murcielago – the bat

Image: luigi diamanti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Murcielago is a Spanish word that has appeared in English speaking culture more than once. It was the name of a Lamborghini supercar, which was in turn named after a famous fighting bull of the 19^th century. Since the word actually means 'bat' it must have been a confusing name for the bull in question – a bit like having a dog (perro) named 'cat' (gato).

Murcielago is also a well known word in the Spanish language because of a popular myth that it is the only Spanish word containing all five vowels. In fact, those who think that are equivocado (mistaken, wrong), and should perhaps blame their education (education). Other examples of words containing all the vowels include 'equitation' (horse riding) and 'arquitecto' (architect).

Useful website - About Spanish

About.com have sections on hundreds of topics – some good and some bad. The Spanish section, run by Gerald Erichson is a site I visit fairly regularly. There is a lesson section, with new articles posted regularly, and an active forum. Lessons are pitched at a variety of levels, and often aim to clear up areas of confusion such as multiple meanings in English for a Spanish word or vice versa. There are also good lessons explaining many of the finer points of Spanish grammar.

There are also some useful email lists to subscribe to, such as the Spanish Word of the Day list and a list to advise when new lessons are available (which is ofter).

There are some quirks to the site, such as the way example sentences seem to be taken from literature or newspapers – this gives an accurate usage, but taken out of context the phrases can sound a little strange. For example, to illustrate the verb 'nadar' (to swim) he uses a sentence about the discovery of a boy’s body who disappeared swimming in a river.

If the site has a downside, it is that it can feel a little dry and classroom like compared to the real everyday Spanish of Ben and Marina for example. Having said that, the nitty-gritty details of grammar and vocabulary are important if you want to master a language.

Conditional tense examples

The conditional tense shows how Spanish often changes the endings to verbs to form a phrase which would use extra words instead in English. In this case the conditional tense ending is equivalent to putting 'would' before a word in English.

me gustaría = I would like
nos hablarían = they would speak to us
lo haríamos pero... = we would do it but...
iría allí = he would go there

Conjugation of the week - conditional tense of hablar

Having covered the regular verbs in the present tense, as well as some of the most useful irregular verbs, this week we are going to look at the conditional tense. This can be recognised by the endings which contain -ría, and is equivalent to putting 'would' before a verb in English. Hablar is a regular verb, so all other regular -ar verbs form the conditional tense in the same way. See previous posts in this series for more about conjugations.

Hablar - to speak

hablaría - I would speak
hablarías - you would speak (sing. fam.)
hablaría - he/she/it/you (sing. pol.) would speak
hablaríamos - we would speak
hablaríais - you would speak (pl. fam.)
hablarían - they/you (pl. pol) would speak

Unusual (English word) - defenestrate

Sometimes learning Spanish can teach you new words in your own language. Yesterday I saw a Spanish Facebook post using the word 'defenestrando' from 'defenestrar. The dictionary translation of 'defenestrar' is 'defenestrate' which is not a word I have ever come across and certainly not one I would use on Facebook. I am sure it is a pretty rare word in English, but it doesn't appear to be so uncommon in Spanish.

For those who are wondering, the literal meaning is to throw somebody through a window. It can also be used figuratively as a swift dismissal (from a political party for example).

Interesting word - postre

Well, after 74 daily posts I finally slipped up and missed a couple of days posting. Apologies to regular readers wherever you are.

I have come across a couple of interesting Spanish words recently. Today's was 'postre' - a fairly familiar word meaning 'dessert' or 'pudding'. What I hadn't realised until today was that

el postre = desssert/pudding

but that

a la postre = in the end

So changing the gender of the noun from masculine (el) to femenine (la) changes its meaning. I'm sure there are a few other words like this, but I can't think of any off the top of my head so they can wait until a future post.