Part 2... (For Part 1 please click here)

Learning Spanish - It’s just like dieting!

If you have ever had to shed a few pounds you will understand this philosophy, if you have never had to shed a few pounds I am very envious and I hope you have a friend who has and will be able to help you understand the concept.

You have to do it every week – in fact you have to do it every day!  Think of it as the difference between having an apple every day for a year or a chocolate bar every day for a year.

Learning Spanish has to become a way of life!  If you have the discipline to do a little consistently you will speak Spanish!  This is why as I said last month a regular class can help you with the discipline.

And now to basics:  I was very lucky to have to learn Latin at school although I did not think so at the time!  At age 11, I had never been taught any grammar – 28 pupils and one Latin teacher later, he was pulling his hair out because noun, verb, pronoun, subject and object of a sentence could have been Latin let alone conjugation!  My vote to explain some of this goes to Michel Thomas who has recorded some excellent language tapes and for about €25 you can buy the first two introductory tapes to see if this way of learning is for you or you can look on his website as it offers a FREE introduction to the way he teaches.

Anyway, he explains a noun not as a naming word but one that you can put THE in front of.  A verb not as a doing word but one you can put TO in front of.

THE Lion	TO Do
THE Man	TO Make
THE Pride	TO Be
THE Test	TO Drink
THE Drink	TO Answer
THE Answer	TO Paint
THE Lesson
THE Warning
THE Paint

Be careful because sometimes the same word can be a noun and a verb.  You will find most dictionaries will help you with this.

When you first learn some Spanish KISS Keep it simple……..     Communicate with short sentences.

English people say can I have and do you and don’t you and will you and won’t you there is very little of this in Spanish. Instead I want is commonly used    

Querer is TO want	Quiero - I want	Quieres       - You want
Quieres?           Do you want?- is indicted just by the rise in your voice
Querer - TO want is called THE INFINITIVE and the present tense
Quiero     -  I want	Queremos    - We want
The infinitive is sometimes referred to as the ‘full verb’
Quieres   - You want	Queréis  - You pl want
Quiere -  He/she/it wants	Quieren  - They want

Try this exercise:

I want a book
Do you (one person) want a chair?
He wants a knife
We want three biscuits
Do you pl (more than one person) want some cakes?
They want six cups of coffee with milk

To do this exercise you will need your dictionary or a translator program on your computer.

You will also need to find out if book, chair, knife, biscuit, cake and coffee are masculine or feminine nouns

a masculine is un	example - un libro	a book
a  feminine is una	- una silla	a chair
some masculine is unos	- unos libros	some books
some femine is unas	- unas galletas	some biscuits

Take care not all these sentences need a or some – you also have numbers, three biscuits and six cups of coffee!

Well, at 578 words that’s all for this month – do look at the information at the end of this lesson to see how you can win a holiday in our FREE TO ENTER competition and also how to earn €500 just for recommending a friend!