Monday, August 17, 2015

Ella es ...

After talking about he, let's talk about she.

Ella (She) es (is) ... (click on the link for sound)

So you can say

Ella es una niña (She is a girl).

Él es ...

We talked about 'you', how about a third person?

Él (He) es (is) ... (click on the link for sound)

So you can say

Él es un hombre (He is a man).

Of course, gender need to match, it would be crazy to say, or that maybe fine but I don't know?

Él es una mujer (He is a woman) ... what?

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Usted es ...

Last time we talk about Tú eres as an informal way of addressing you. Now we learn something different.

Usted (You, formal) es (are) ... (click on the link for sound)

So you can say

Usted es un hombre (You are a man).


Friday, August 14, 2015

Tú eres

Last time we talked about yo, it is all about me, now let's talk about you

(you, informal) eres (are) ...

Like it or not, there are many ways to talk about you in Spanish. T is an informal way of addressing 'you'.

So if you wanted to say "You are a man", you would say

Tú eres un hombre


Thursday, August 13, 2015

Yo soy ...

All the words involved so far in the Duolingo lesson one does not form a full sentence. Today we add these words in front of it to complete the sentence

Yo (I) soy (am) ... (click on the link for sound)

So if I wanted to say I am a man, I would say

Yo soy un hombre

Similarily, if I wanted to say I am a girl, I would say

Yo soy una niña

This concludes lesson 1 on Duolingo

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

una

So un niña is wrong, so how do we say about it?

una (a) niña (girl)

of course, you can also say "una mujer".

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

un

Just like in English we have "a" and "the", in Spanish

un is an indefinite article, meaning "a", for masculine nouns (click on the link for sound)

You can use it with the words we have already learn

un hombre (a man)
un niño (a boy)

un can only be used with masculine nouns, so un niña is not correct, because niña is feminine.

Disclaimer

Monday, August 10, 2015

la niña

The girl

la (The) niña (girl) (click on the link for sound)

Notice the similarilty between the boy (niño) and the girl (nina)? Yes, it is often the case that male and female only differs in the last alphabet, switching from 'o' to 'a'.

Disclaimer

Sunday, August 9, 2015

el niño

The boy

el (The) niño (boy) (click on the link for sound)

Note that we use el again, of course, a boy is male, and also be careful with the accent mark.

Disclaimer

Saturday, August 8, 2015

la mujer

This time we talk about woman.

La (The) mujer (woman) (click on the link for sound)

Note we said El hombre and La mujer. El is the "the" for masculine noun, and La is the "the" for feminine noun. In Spanish, we often need to use different words for different gender.

Disclaimer

Friday, August 7, 2015

el hombre

After learning a few phrases that we can use the greet people, I noticed busuu is now charging for doing the exercises. I didn't plan to pay for it, so I found something else, duolingo.

Duolingo has a different approach, it teaches word-by-word instead of sentences, and it gives sentences example from time to time. In fact,I spent only about a week with busuu and have spent my time mostly on Duolingo.

Without further ado, let's get started to our first word on Duolingo

el (The) hombre (man) (click on the link for sound)

The man, simple as that.

Disclaimer

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Tengo ... años

After asking the question, we should reply it!

Tengo (I have)... años (years) (click on the link for sound)

This is also simple, isn't it? Let's learn some grammar here. Do you notice 'Tengo' and 'Tienes' look similar? They mean the same too. Actually they are the variation of the same word.

I have is 'Tengo'.
You have is 'Tienes'

So verbs actually changes when the subject change, just like in English you add 's' when the subject is he/she/it. But Spanish is way more complicated than that, as we will see there will be more variations.

Well, I am 36 this year, but how do I say that in Spanish?

Disclaimer

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

¿Cuántos años tienes?

How old are you?

¿Cuántos (How many) años (years) tienes (you have)? (click on the link for sound)

If you ask this 'literally' in Chinese of English, this would be really impolite. It is would be asking how many more years you are going to live, but this is Spanish, this is simply asking how old are you.

Note the inverted question mark at the beginning of the question. It is an open question mark, it marks the starting of a question.

Disclaimer

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Soy de ...

After asking people where do they come from, should you go answer it?

Soy ([I] am) de (from) ... (click on the link for sound)

This one is easy, but where do you come from?

Disclaimer

Monday, August 3, 2015

De dónde eres?

Where do you from, a typical question that one would ask after meeting a new friend

De (of) dónde (where) eres ([you] are)? (click on the link for sound)

Another strange way of ordering words. Why do we put the preposition 'of' as the first word in the sentence? I don't know, that's the way it is. Let's ask again.

The reply was simple, preposition cannot end a sentence, so we have to put them in front.

Disclaimer

Sunday, August 2, 2015

Me llamo ...

After asking what is the other people's name, you would probably here this reply

Me (I) llamo  (call myself) ... (click on the link for sound)

With the help of the friend in discussion forum, this is trivial to understand now. An interesting question here is why we use Me (accusative pronoun) instead of Yo (personal pronoun). A little Googling solved the problem.

Accusative pronoun means it is being acted on.

In English, it would be wrong to say "Me called", but it is fine to say "call me", it is that second "me" thing that is the "Me" in our Spanish sentence, but in Spanish it is put in front.

Same reason applies to the previous post that we used "te" instead of "tú".

Edit: forget about the Accusative pronoun piece, that is wrong. It is a reflexive pronoun, and advanced concept that is too early to mention here yet, see the llamo becomes (call myself)? That's the reflexive part of the word.

Disclaimer

Saturday, August 1, 2015

Cómo te llamas?

So you make new friends, you need to ask about his/her name, wouldn't you?

Cómo (How) te (You) llamas (Name call youself)? (click on the link for sound)

Well ... um ... I don't really understand this。Why do we use (How, Cómo) to ask this question which should have been asked using (What, Qué)。

People told me that I should just memorize this. But this is just really strange ...

Edit: After writing this I decided to ask this question in the discussion group. Here is the answer.

llamas actually means (called) , so a more literal translation of the sentence is "How is you called", of course, asking it like this is rather awkward in English, I guess, similarly, asking the literal translation of "What is your name" in Spanish (as in Qué es tu nombre) would probably be equally awkward there.

Disclaimer

Adiós, hasta pronto

Goodbye, see you soon ... well this is not the last blog. I just want to tell you how to say good bye in Spanish,

Adiós  means good bye,hasta  means until,pronto soon (click on the link for sound)

So we say (good bye) (until) (soon), which basically means see you soon.

This is the first time we see an accent mark。Notice the ó on Adiós has a special mark。That is called an accent mark, let's take a good look at it。

ó

A word with exactly the same letters with different accent marks can means something different, so one must also remember the accent marks when remember the spelling!

Disclaimer

Friday, July 31, 2015

Encantado

Nice to meet you!

Encantado means "Nice to meet you" (click on the link for sound)

To be honest, I already forget about this phrase long time ago before I write this post. The much more popular way of saying this is Mucho Gusto. It is also what SpanishDict says.

Disclaimer

Thursday, July 30, 2015

Buenas tardes

Good evening everyone!

Buenas tardes means good evening (click on the link for sound)

In Chinese we don't usually say good evening, it is either good morning or good night. But western people do differentiate them. When you are off work, you say good evening to your colleagues, and when you are going to bed, you say good night to your families, you never mix them up.

Face it, learning a language is also about learning the culture behind the language. The higher context it is, the harder it is.

I used to just remember that, but now I know. Why do we have buenos dias and buenas tardes? It turns out that Spanish have genders. Dias (days) is a masculine noun, so it must be described using a masculine adjective, in this case, buenos. On the other hand, tardes (afternoon or evening) is a feminine noun, so it must be described using a feminine adjective, and in this case, buenas.

Edit: By the way, buenas tardes can also be used to mean good afternoon, so don't be surprised when someone say that to you in the middle of the day :)

Disclaimer

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Buenos dias

Good morning!

Buenos dias means good morning (click on the link for sound)

Yet another phrase that can be used on its own.

Now we have learnt a few words. It is time to look backward a little bit. I wish I did that but I didn't. There is a few things I need to be able to do.


  1. Given the Spanish word, what is the English word for it.
  2. Given an English word, what is the Spanish word for it.
  3. Given a Spanish sound, what is the Spanish word for it.
  4. Given a Spanish word, what is the Spanish sound for it.
Yes, it is that simple, to be good in Spanish, we must be able to do this, and I think it is an easy job so far (we only have four words right now), but it will get harder and harder as we proceed. 

The key to success for me is to keep doing exercises (it is okay for the exercise to be repeated) at regular interval. Doing 10 problems per day for 10 days is better than doing 100 problems a day and rest for the rest. 

Online services so far do a really poor job on giving 2 for now, which I really need, I will see what can I do about that.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Hola

This is the second word I learn in Spanish, or put it the other way, the 1st word I systematically learn.

Hola means Hello.  (click on the link for sound)

Hello, simple enough. You can say Hello to anyone.

This is the first time I started to use online services to start learning. I started with busuu. This website teach me a few phrases, and that's all. It offers mostly paid service, so I cannot really recommend it because I just tried a few free samples there, but it is a good start, isn't it?

Disclaimer

Gracias

Starting this post we actually talk about Spanish.

I don't know your experience, but the first Spanish word I ever heard and remember is this one.

Gracias (click on the link for sound)

Yes, I heard about that when watching prison break. A popular series here in America. I keep listening to this Sucre guy speaking this word in season two when they are locked in Panama. In some sense, it is this drama that get me started with Spanish, So, 'gracias', Paul Scheuring.

This word can be used alone, and basically it means the same thing as 'thanks' in English. So even if you don't know a single word in Spanish, just know this one and express your appreciation!

Disclaimer

Monday, July 27, 2015

Disclaimer

This blog is written by me and me only.

It is a journal of what I learn in the past few months.

I have been a lousy learner, never pay attention to details, used lot of free resources and potentially wrong ones ...

So in short, the content might be wrong, I am writing as accurate as I can, but that's it.

Corrections are more than welcome!

Why learn Spanish?

Numerous people ask me, why would you want to learn Spanish. Often, I would just say it is just for fun. Well, not really, let me analyze why would one want to learn Spanish for you.

First of all, Spanish is the world second most popular language. I am lucky that I know Chinese, the most popular one. You bet English is the second most popular. Well, it depends on what criterion you are using. We can see that in this website.

Second, as a second language in America. While I am there, why not learn the second language of the country? In South California, there are many people speaking Spanish, especially so for those Mexican immigrants. I bet knowing Spanish is going to increase my competitiveness in Silicon valley.

Third, as the world second popular language, there are tons of information written in Spanish on the web. Knowing Spanish means you will have more information at your finger tips.

So, I learn Spanish. I wish you, my readers, will also go learn Spanish.

Sunday, July 26, 2015

Learning Spanish

I have been learning Spanish for 4 months or more, but I never blogged about it. I thought, writing a blog to journal what I did is a good idea. So I will start blogging about my learning now.