The Everything Essential Spanish Book: All You Need to Learn Spanish in No Time
By Julie Gutin and Fernanda Ferreira
4.5/5
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About this ebook
Hola! If you've always wanted to learn Spanish, here's a quick and easy way to get started. Whether you're planning a vacation in Mexico or adding a valuable second language to your resume, The Everything Essential Spanish Book will help you order the right dish in a restaurant, answer customer's questions, or converse with locals when traveling.
With easy-to-follow instructions and simple explanations, this portable guide covers the most important Spanish basics, including:
- The Spanish alphabet and translation
- Greetings and conversation starters
- Common questions and answers
- Verb tenses and sentence structure
Don't just learn to repeat words and key phrases--learn to understand them on your own terms and at your own speed. The simple step-by-step approach and lively examples will have you speaking--and understanding--Spanish in no time!
Julie Gutin
An Adams Media author.
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The Everything Essential Spanish Book - Julie Gutin
Introduction
Welcome to The Everything® Essential Spanish Book and the exciting and diverse world of the Spanish language! Maybe you chose to pick up this book because you want to be able to communicate with some of your Spanish-speaking coworkers, neighbors, or clients. Perhaps you want to feel more comfortable traveling in countries where Spanish is the national language. Maybe you just want to brush up on what you learned in your high school Spanish class. Whatever your reasons for learning this popular language, you’ve come to the right place.
While it might seem like a daunting task to take on learning a new language, just imagine the sense of accomplishment you will feel when you find yourself in Mexico City and need to ask for directions, and you approach the first person you see and say confidently, ¡Perdón! ¿Dónde está la calle San José?
(Excuse me, where is San Jose Street?). And imagine your feelings when the person answers in Spanish and you are able to understand the directions!
Learning the Spanish essentials will expand your intellectual horizons. You will be in a position to learn about Hispanic cultures from the inside—by listening to Latin music, reading books in Spanish, and conversing with native speakers. You will have more personal opportunities to witness how other people live day by day in your own neighborhood, on their own terms. Not only will you be able to listen to their opinions on family, life, work, and society in general, but you will be able to come to a mutual understanding by sharing your own.
Knowing basic Spanish might even help you in your career. Given the trend toward globalization, you will not only be able to take advantage of many opportunities that already exist, but that you currently know nothing about. The business opportunities are obvious—a larger market for sales or employment.
Learning any new language can be a difficult undertaking, but if you persevere, the results will be worth your effort. And there’s more good news—Spanish isn’t as foreign a language as you might think. Take a quick look at the chapters of this book. I’m sure you’ll recognize a few words or phrases here and there. If you ever studied Spanish or another Romance language, something did stick, even if you don’t realize it. Even if you’ve never studied a foreign language before, you’ll discover that you already know a few things. Don’t worry if you are starting from scratch. You’ll see that even those years of studying English grammar will be helpful.
Whatever your interests are in learning Spanish, this book will help you achieve the goals that you have set for yourself. Buena suerte (good luck) in your endeavor!
CHAPTER 1
Starting with the Basics
Before you begin reading this book, it is important to remember that learning a new language should always be enjoyable. Of course you’ll need to dedicate a certain amount of time and attention in order for you to make progress, but above all, this endeavor should be fun and stress-free!
Developing Basic Language Skills
If you are full of enthusiasm to sit down and learn español (Spanish) at one go—¡relájate!—stop and relax. Learning a language is not like crash dieting; it’s a gradual process that requires planning and concentration. Here is what you should know as you incorporate learning Spanish into your everyday life.
Things to Remember
Avoid negative thinking—that you can never master a foreign language, or that it’s impossible for you to pronounce certain words correctly. Relax, and concentrate on what you do know and can do, and then keep adding on to that. If you can’t think of a particular word, choose another one to help you explain yourself. If you can’t understand what someone is saying to you, ask him to repeat.
The expressive potential of a sentence is often more than the sum of its parts. Don’t just concentrate on memorizing words—you also need to know how to put these words together to make meaningful statements. Learning whole phrases will help you make your point quicker.
To really have Spanish vocabulary available to you at your fingertips, invest in an English-to-Spanish and Spanish-to-English dictionary. Choose the one that best suits you, the one you will have completely dog-eared within a month.
Use new phrases as soon as you have learned them and as many times as possible. Don’t wait until you have everything down perfectly before you begin using Spanish in conversation. When it comes to languages, perfect fluency and pronunciation are myths. Your goal should be to get out there and start talking as soon as possible.
Get online. You’re just a click of a mouse away from finding free instruction, opportunities to practice, reference materials, and cultural information, as well as online Spanish courses.
Immerse yourself in the world of Spanish. Eat at Spanish and Latin American restaurants. Listen to music from Spanish-speaking countries: boleros, cumbias, flamenco, merengue, pasillos, pasodoble, salsas, sevillanas, el son, tango, rancheras, and rock. Go out to Latin dance clubs. Seek out movies in Spanish playing at international film festivals, and rent Spanish films on video or DVD—most will offer subtitles or dubbed tracks in Spanish. Read bilingual books and magazines. Try watching Spanish television—at first you won’t understand it, but it might be fun to guess what is happening.
There are at least four major Spanish-language networks available in the United States: Galavisión (cable), TeleFutura, Telemundo, and Univision. Check your local listings for these and other offerings.
Combine your hobbies and interests with the study of Spanish. If you love playing tennis, learn how to say everything you know about the game in Spanish. Religion, politics, work, and recreation all have their Spanish vocabulary.
Don’t panic. Take your time to learn new material, find somebody to answer your questions, look up words in the dictionary, and don’t allow yourself to be intimidated by anything. Make mistakes and learn from them. When you goof up, you can either look mortified or just laugh about it—the choice is up to you.
Making the Most of the Spanish-Language Environment
Focus your attention on all things Spanish that you find in your daily life. Put yourself in situations where you have no choice but to use your Spanish. Begin to think in Spanish.
When you are in the thick of things, listen for key words. Try to identify the verb. Are there any pronouns you recognize? Does the word vaguely remind you of a word in English? Forget about trying to decode every single word—getting the main ideas first will help you fill in the details.
Listen for familiar intonation patterns and pay attention to the speaker’s gestures. When you speak, don’t be afraid to gesture as well. Nod your head and smile when you understand or agree. Twist your flat, horizontal palm back and forth for so-so.
Use your thumb and forefinger to indicate a little bit.
To ask someone to clarify or repeat something, use the following phrases:
Perdón. ¿Cómo?
Excuse me. What?
¿Me lo repite más despacio, por favor?
Can you repeat it (what you said) for me more slowly, please?
Remember to relax and smile. Your audience is having as much trouble understanding you as you are having speaking. They want you to succeed. Take a deep breath and have a sense of humor about your mistakes. A smile goes a long way.
What You Already Know
In many places around the United States, Spanish is encountered at every turn—on street signs, on buses, at banks, and at restaurants. As soon as people begin learning Spanish, they discover that they know more Spanish than they had originally thought. In fact, Spanish is all over the world. Given the number of countries where Spanish is the official language, it most certainly ranks as one of the most widely spoken languages.
Recognizing Spanish-Sounding Words
To prove that you know more Spanish than you think you do, take a little quiz. Take a look at the following list, and see how many words you can understand.
accidente
actor
adorable
animal
asistir
atractivo
auto
autor
catedral
central
cereal
ciclista
color
conductor
convertible
criminal
cruel
doctor
elefante
error
famoso
favor
fútbol
honorable
hospital
hotel
humor
idea
importante
información
inventor
local
motor
musical
natural
plan
popular
potente
presidente
radio
respetable
simple
taxi
teléfono
usual
visible
Although you might not yet know how to pronounce these words in Spanish, you should be able to figure out what they mean, because all of these words are cognates. Cognates are words in different languages that share similar meaning and spelling because they originated from the same word. True cognates share the same meaning. Pure cognates are spelled identically in both languages. False cognates share a common origin and spelling but have completely different meanings.
Words such as actor, animal, central, error, hospital, idea, natural, radio, and taxi are pure cognates. (Note that even though these words are spelled the same way in English and in Spanish, the pronunciations are different.) Words like accidente, autor, elefante, presidente, and teléfono are true cognates—they share meaning but are only similar, not identical, in spelling.
But some cognates are false—although the pairs may look similar, they carry different meanings in different languages. Here’s why: Many cognates between English and Spanish originated from Latin—hence the words Latino
and Latin America.
Over time, these words gained new meanings in each language, and ended up evolving in completely different ways:
asistir: to attend
(not to assist
)
anciano: elderly
(not ancient
)
carta: letter,
when referring to a form of written correspondence (not cart
or card
)
chanza: joke
(not chance
)
constipado: congested,
as when suffering from a cold (not constipated
)
delito: crime
(not delight
)
embarazada: pregnant
(not embarrassed
—though misusing this word could certainly lead to embarrassment!)
fútbol: soccer
(not football
)
recordar: to remember
(not to record
)
Learning the Common Suffixes
From the true pure cognates, you may notice a one-to-one correspondence in Spanish and English of the following suffixes: –al, –ble, and –or.
Suffixes often clue you in on the meanings of the words that use them. A complete list of examples would be rather lengthy. Here are a few:
SPANISH COGNATES WITH SUFFIXES –BLE, –AL, AND –OR
From the other cognates, you see various suffixes that are familiar but just a little off:
Other suffixes to remember include those in the following tables: