Monday April 25, 2011
Demonstrative adjectives are
adjectives that point to specific objects or people. Unlike English, which has two groups of demonstrative adjectives distinguished by how far away the object or person is, Spanish has three.
Sunday April 24, 2011
The Spanish word for Easter, Pascua (usually, but not always, capitalized), is interesting for the fact that it doesn't always refer to the Christian holy day commemorating the Resurrection of Christ. As a word derived from the Hebrew pesah, it originally referred to the Jewish Passover, a commemoration of the exodus from Egypt — and still does. Over the centuries, it came to refer to various religious festival days in general, and thus can refer as well to Easter, Christmas, Epiphany (the appearance of the Magi, traditionally celebrated January 6) and Pentecost (commemorating the dramatic appearance of the Holy Spirit to the early Christians, a day observed seven Sundays after Easter).
Pascua can stand alone to mean any one of those days when the context makes its meaning clear. Read More...
Saturday April 23, 2011
Because of the Roman Catholic heritage of nearly every area where Spanish is spoken, various religious festivals dominate the holiday calendar. Our newest article lists the
holidays that are common throughout Spain and Latin America and provides their Spanish names.
Saturday April 23, 2011
If you're brand-new to learning Spanish, the two first things you may have noticed when reading it are the accented letters and upside-down question marks. While written accents are common in many languages, the inverted question marks (and exclamation points, too) are a Spanish original — and copied apparently only by some of the minority languages of Spain. Read More...
Wednesday April 20, 2011
Prepositions are probably the hardest
part of speech to learn, and that's true in both English and Spanish. Among the Spanish prepositions that cause English speakers difficulty are
por and
para, since both of them frequently are translated as "for." As explained in today's featured
lesson on por vs. para, the key to distinguishing between the two words is to think of their meanings, not their translations — but even then they can be a challenge.
Monday April 18, 2011
Chances are you're heard that nouns are a
part of speech that stands for a person,
place or thing. But nouns can also stand for things that don't fit very well in those categories, as explained in our updated page
defining nouns from our
grammar glossary.
Sunday April 17, 2011
If you're thinking about spending the Northern Hemisphere's summer studying Spanish in Spain or Latin America, it's not too early to start planning. Our
FAQ on immersion study tells you what you need to know to begin your planning: cost, sources of information, what to expect and more.
Need help finding a school? Check out or
user reviews of immersion schools.
Saturday April 16, 2011
De is almost certainly the most common
preposition in Spanish. It usually means "of" or "from" and is also used in a wide range of verbal and adjectival phrases. One reason it's so common is that Spanish, unlike English, doesn't allow the willy-nilly use of
nouns as
adjectives. So de fills that void, letting you use nouns to form descriptive phrases. De also is used to indicate possession, origin and other characteristics.
Friday April 15, 2011
The trailer for Casa de mi padre, Will Ferrell's most recent movie, one in which he speaks Spanish throughout, has begun making the rounds of the Web's movie sites.
It actually looks promising as a comedy — it has been described as a spoof of telenovelas, Spanish-language serial dramas — and Ferrell's Spanish pronunciation, at least in the trailer, isn't bad at all.
Read More...Thursday April 14, 2011
If you've already learned the
demonstrative adjectives of Spanish, you'll find it quite easy to learn the
demonstrative pronouns. (The demonstrative pronouns are pronouns that point to a person or thing. In English, the demonstrative pronouns are "this," "that," "these" and "those.") The main difference is one that matters only in writing — some demonstrative pronouns use an
orthographic accent. But thanks to various
spelling reforms, even those accents are optional unless needed for clarity.
