Useful Website - InstaSpanish.com

I have just revisited one site I used a lot when I began to learn Spanish, and it has been revamped and updated so that I barely recognised it. InstaSpanish.com is a site with a lot of information that has clearly been accumulated over a good period of time. There are 100 news letters, 11 podcasts, a forum, and a few recipes. In the past, the site was useful but looked a little dated, but now it has a clean modern look.

The biggest new addition is the Flash based eLearning programme. The sample lessons show the characteristic features of the newsletters - use of songs and lyrics, games and quizes to teach vocabulary. There is also quite a lot of emphasis on pronunciation and listening comprehension. All in all the programme seems similar in subject to the newsletters on the site but taking advantage of the interaction that a Flash application can provide to give a fun and rounded learning experience. The full package is available on a subscription basis, but there is plenty of free material to look at before deciding whether you want to subscribe.

If I were...

I promised to share some examples of the complicated sounding imperfect subjunctive. One common, and not particularly difficult usage is in sentences of the type 'if I were ... I would ...'.

In Spanish, the imperfect subjunctive is used for the first verb (were) and the conditional tense is used for the second verb (after the 'would').

A few examples to clarify:-

Si yo fuera tu, hablaría con ellos. - If I were you I would speak with them.
Si fuera un hombre rico, lo compraría. - If I were a rich man I would buy it.
Si fuéramos mas joven, iríamos a la fiesta. - If we were younger we would go to the party.
Si fueras mas listo, ya sabría - if you were smarter you would already know

The first verb does not have to be 'were'. 'If I had...' phrases are also common, such as this example from Mario Benedetti's 'Esta Mañana'

Si yo hubiera tenido padre et madre, todo habría sido diferente. - If I had had a father and mother, everything would have been different.

Notice that the two 'hads' in the English translation represent diferent verbs in Spanish - 'haber' to indicate the past (perfect) tense and 'tener' to show posession.

Ir and Ser

Yesterday's post covered the complicated sounding 'imperfect subjunctive' form of the verb 'ser' ('to be'). In fact this is also the imperfect subjunctive tense of 'ir' ('to go'). The verbs 'ser' and 'ir' share two other tenses as well - the preterite, or simple past, and the less commonly used future subjunctive. I like to think of this being similar to 'been' in English. 'I have been eating' or 'I have been a waiter' express the past tense of 'to be' but 'I have been to Spain' expresses the past tense of 'to go'.

More on imperfect subjunctives tomorrow. I just wanted to share that idiosyncracy of the language which I rediscovered whilst writing yesterday's post.

Conjugation of the week - 12. Imperfect subjunctive of 'ser' - 'to be'

Having covered a few of the more straightforward conjugations over the last few weeks, I think it is time to throw in a more advanced verb tense. Don't be put off by the name though, the imperfect subjunctive form is not uncommon, nor that difficult. Although it takes a long time to perfect exactly when to use it, knowing the form makes it easy to recognise in written text or conversation. In the next post I will give an easier example of when to use it. It can often be translated into English as 'was' or 'were'. See previous posts in this series for more about conjugations.

Ser - to be, imperfect subjunctive

yo fuera/fuese
tu fueras/fueses
el/ella/usted fuera/fuese
nosotros fuéramos/fuésemos
vosotros fuerais/fueseis
ellos/ellas/ustedes fueran/fuesen

Notice that there are two versions, with -ra and -se endings. The two versions are identical as far as I can tell (and I have asked a few Spanish speakers and teachers). Some dictionaries only show the first, which is probably more common, but you will find both used frequently in books, sometimes together e.g. 'fuera lo que fuese' (loosely - 'being whatever it was' or 'whatever it may have been').

Using other languages to help with Spanish

If you speak another foreign language already, especially a Latin based one, it can really help with learning Spanish. Like most people who grew up in the UK, I was taught French at school, and whilst at first listen it sounds nothing like Spanish, it is quite similar both in grammar and in the roots of a lot of words. The accent and pronunciation is very different, as are the spelling rules, but there are many words which are basically the same, just following the pronunciation rules of each language. Some words are spelt identically, but pronounced very differently - 'jardin' (garden) for example. This means that it is often possible to guess the meaning of an unfamiliar word from a similar word in another language. It is also quite often possible to guess how to say something, although this will probably work less of the time.

More on this, plus a few examples, in the next few days

What to wear

I have just spent a fortnight in Les Deux Alpes, in France, hence the sporadic posting and break from the blog recently. One thing I learnt is that it is still possible to practice Spanish in a French speaking country. As I was ski training, I was usually wearing either an Andorran ski club jacket, or an Andorran ski school soft shell. Because of this I found myself being spoken to in Spanish by the Spanish skiers in town who recognised the name 'Andorra'. This made it a lot easier to start conversations in Spanish, and I met a few Spanish skiers over the course of my visit.

Whilst on this occasion my choice of clothing was a complete accident, it made me realise that deliberately wearing something Spanish, particularly with the name of a Spanish speaking place on it, can be a great way to meet Spanish speakers who happen to be in the same part of the world. This obviously won't be a lot of use in Spain itself, but it might be quite useful in places where a lot of Spanish people go on holiday.

A short break

I'm away from home for a week or so and finding Internet access a bit harder to come by than I expected, so I'm going to apologise now and have a week long break from the Blog. Normal service will resume Monday 4th July (or earlier if the appartment I'm staying in gets its long overdue phone and internet connection).

Hasta lunes (until Monday)