Tune up your spanish

Introduc tion x cos. The adjectives usually go after the nouns, just the opposite of English order. Only when an adjective is considered an essential part of what you are describing do you put it before the noun, as in items 7 and 8: magnífica literatura, lindas canciones, exquisitas películas. This happens only about 1 percent of the time, so don’t worry about it. In common everyday conversation, put the descriptive word after what is being described. Nouns first, adjectives second. Information, Contexts, Words, and Phrases This is not a book that will teach you grammar. As it has become painfully obvious from the failure of many grammar-driven courses, studying the grammar of a language is not a guarantee of communicating well in it. Instead, you will see and hear patterns, then imitate and internalize them. That is what this book is all about. It gives you information (tips about Spanish and Spanishspeaking cultures), presents a context in which the language is spoken, and provides words, phrases, and key sentences that will open many doors for you. The Magic of Cognates Research shows that vocabulary is the single most important factor in language acquisition. You must acquire a critical mass of words and basic patterns to plug them into. Fortunately, many words in Spanish will seem like familiar friends to you because English and Spanish share a large number of cognates, words similar in form and meaning, and many of the most common and useful ones have been included in this book. So, tune up your Spanish by reading, repeating, listening to the MP3 recordings of Top Ten lists and the Review Program, and learning more about this fascinating language and its cultures! www.ATIBOOK.ir TUNE-UP 1 ¡Vamos a charlar! Getting the Spanish out of Your Mouth and into Conversation Preview 1. What do you say if your taxi driver takes off like James Bond in a car chase or someone is firing Spanish at you a mile a minute? 2. How can you get rid of “gringo” vowel sounds? 3. What Spanish sound does not exist at all in English? 1 www.ATIBOOK.ir TUNE UP YOUR SPANISH 2 4. Which Spanish letter is pronounced like the th in the word then? 5. How do you introduce yourself in Spanish? 6. What is meant by la buena educación? 7. How many ways can you say “thank you”? 8. When do you give the besito or the abrazo? 9. To get someone’s attention, when would you say ¡Oiga! and when would you say ¡Disculpe!? 10. What can you say to a stranger to start a conversation? Many English speakers say that they feel like a different person when they speak Spanish. This is not surprising. Every language has not only its own sounds, gestures, and cultural characteristics, but also its own unique rhythm (ritmo), and Spanish is no exception. English and Spanish are both international languages that are spoken by people from many cultures, but each of these languages has its own peculiar characteristics. Getting the Feel of Spanish To learn to speak Spanish well, try to imitate Spanish speakers: the way they look and move and sound. Watch ads or soap operas (telenovelas) on TV, go to a concert or salsa club, see a Spanish or Latin American movie. What do you notice about Spanish speakers? Do they stand still when they talk? What do they do with their hands and arms? Do their faces look the same as the faces of Englishspeaking actors and performers? Don’t be afraid that if you try to imitate Spanish speakers, you will lose your own English-speaking www.ATIBOOK.ir ¡Vamos a charlar! 3 identity. It will snap right back in place as soon as you speak English, like a comfortable set of clothes. A Word About the Different Kinds of Spanish As you may know from watching and listening to American, Australian, British, Canadian, and Irish movies, there are many types of English, each with its distinctive accent and vocabulary. The same is true of Spanish; these differences are explored in Chapter 9. In this book, you’ll be practicing standard Latin American Spanish, which you can use everywhere to make yourself understood. The Friendly Sounds of Spanish Almost all of the sounds in Spanish (except for the initial trilled r or the double r) also exist in English, so you already know how to say them. As an English speaker learning Spanish, you have a great advantage. This is not the same in reverse: English has many sounds that are not present in Spanish, and consequently Spanish speakers have a much harder time pronouncing English. Even though Spanish sounds are not so difficult for English speakers, the correlation between the sounds and the letters of the alphabet are somewhat different and can be tricky. Read the following with special care to pronounce the ll (the double l ) like the y in “yes,” the ñ like the ny in “canyon,” and the c before e or i like s. Open your mouth WIDE for all vowels. TOP TEN Spanish Phrases for a Tourist in Need 1. ¡Más despacio, por favor! Slow down, please! (Use this when someone fires Spanish at you like a machine gun or your taxi driver takes off like James Bond in a car chase.) www.ATIBOOK.ir TUNE UP YOUR SPANISH 4 2. ¿Cómo llego a la playa (al centro)? How do I get to the beach (downtown)? 3. No comprendo. I don’t understand. 4. ¿Cómo? What? 5. ¿Cómo se dice... en español? How do you say . . . in Spanish? 6. ¡Hay una enorme araña en mi cuarto! There’s an enormous spider in my room! 7. Necesito ayuda (un taxi, un banco). I need help (a taxi, a bank). (You don’t need yo with necesito, because the subject “I” is clear from the -o verb ending.) 8. ¿Dónde está la farmacia (el hospital)? Where is the pharmacy (the hospital)? (Notice that the ph combination is not used in Spanish at all. The letter f takes its place.) 9. ¿Dónde están los baños (sanitarios, aseos)? Where are the bathrooms (washrooms, restrooms)? (The word for “bathroom” has many variations, depending on the region.) 10. ¡Un momento, por favor! One moment, please! Getting the Rhythm Spanish, like English, is an emphatic language: every word has one stressed syllable that must be emphasized or pronounced more clearly than the others. Think how strange it would sound in English if you were to say “syl-LA-ble” instead of “SYL-la-ble.” How do you know which Spanish syllable to emphasize? Just by looking. There are two rules to follow in emphasizing syllables in Spanish. www.ATIBOOK.ir ¡Vamos a charlar! 5 1. If a Spanish word has a written accent mark, stress the syllable with the accent mark. 2. If a Spanish word ends in a vowel, n, or s, stress the secondto-last syllable. Otherwise, stress the last syllable. Let’s look at the rules more closely. Words That Have an Accent Mark The accent mark always occurs in the syllable that you should emphasize. Practice this by saying the following words to tell how wonderful something is. Move your hand (or slap the table) to the rhythm of the words. TOP TEN Expressive Ways to Say “Wonderful!” 1. ¡Fantástico! Fantastic! 2. ¡Magnífico! Magnificent! (used more frequently in Spanish) 3. ¡Chévere! Terrific! (carries a Caribbean flavor but is used in many other parts of Latin America) 4. ¡Bárbaro! Super! (either very good or very bad) 5. ¡Lindísimo! Lovely! (takes the common word lindo to the nth degree) 6. ¡Espléndido! Splendid! 7. ¡Buenísimo! Good! (takes bueno to the nth degree) 8. ¡Increíble! Incredible! Unbelievable! 9. ¡Bacán! Cool! (popular approval word in many parts of Latin America) www.ATIBOOK.ir