Visual Link Learn Spanish Newsletter (V:2; I:14)

New Paid Learn Spanish Newsletter Coming April 19th!-----

Many of you have enjoyed the new style of our newsletter each week with Spanish words "sprinkled" throughout the culture section. You will get this style of newsletter free next week, but on April 19th it will only be available if you purchase our complete Visual Link Spanish™ course, or at the introductory price of $9.95 for a six-month subscription. This will cost only .38 cents per issue! This new paid newsletter will also have double the amount of Learn Spanish Words of the Week, and as always our culture section will be heavily sprinkled with Spanish words. Also, as suggested by a newsletter subscriber, we may have a paragraph of current Latin news in Spanish as well as the translation in English. For those of you who don't want to subscribe to the paid newsletter, the free weekly newsletter will still continue with seven Learn Spanish Words of the Week and our culture section completely in English. To pre-order your newsletter for only $8.95 for 26 issues, click here. (Starts April 19th) or go to: www.spanishprograms.com/orderform/newsletter.htm

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Learn Spanish Words of the Week -----
Words are taken from the Becoming Acquainted section of our Visual Link Spanish™ Course

	English	Spanish
Monday	I know (how)	(Yo) Sé
Tuesday	She knows (how)	(Ella) Sabe
Wednesday	to play	jugar
Thursday	to teach	enseñar
Friday	basketball	básquetbol
Saturday	volleyball	vólibol
Sunday	golf	golf
Daily Review!	Be sure to use these weekly newsletters to review the words you have learned from our complete Visual Link Spanish™ course!

Learn Spanish Culture ----- ¡Salud a tu mami [maw-mee]!

Learn Spanish Vocabulary this Week
esta semana - this week
un aspecto - an aspect
cultura - culture
disfruto - I enjoy
familiarizado - familiar
esta parte - this part
cuando - when
familias - families
amigo - friend
hogares - homes
padres - parents
puerta - door
algo muy interesante - something very interesting
cultura diferente - different culture
gente - people
unos meses después - a few months later
diferencia - difference
palabras - words
esto representa - this represents
cortés - courteous
alguien - someone
muchas veces - many times
cienes - hundreds
a veces - sometimes
la semana pasada - last week
años - years
mandarme saludos - to send me greetings (say hi to me)
nuevo idioma - new language
español - Spanish
amistades - friendships
crece - grows

Esta semana we are going to talk about un aspecto of the Latin cultura that I admire and disfruto.

I first became familiarizado with esta parte of the cultura cuando I was visiting familias in Latin America with a native Spanish amigo. When we visited hogares where we realized that the padres weren't home, and children had opened the puerta, before leaving, my native amigo would always say what sounded like, "Salud a tu mami [maw-mee]" or "Salud a tu papi [paw-pea]". This means "Health to your mom", or "Health to your dad". I thought this was algo muy interesante to say but realized that I was in a cultura diferente where gente must go around wishing each other good "health" all the time.

I had to laugh at myself unos meses después, cuando I finally realized that he was saying " Saluda a tu mami" instead of " Salud a tu mami". There is a very small diferencia in spelling but a big diferencia in meaning between these two palabras. " Salud " means "health" and " Saluda a tu mami" means "Say hello to your mom".

Esto representa one of the many things that the Latin gente do that I really admire. They are a very polite and cortés people and generally a little more formal than many Americans. In Latin America if you tell alguien to say "hi" to someone else, they will usually do it. Not only that, muchas veces they will actually go out of their way to do it. There were cienes of times when I heard alguien say to someone else "Say hi to Juan" or "Maria", and later I actually heard them go out of their way to go up and tell them HI.

In America, my experience has usually been that if alguien tells you to say "hi" to someone else, a veces it gets back to them and a veces it doesn't; usually gente don't go out of their way to say "hi" to someone else like they do in Latin America.

La semana pasada I wrote about some Latin amigos I hadn't seen for a few años who recently came to visit me in the U.S. The first thing they did, after telling me I was "gordo", was to "mandarme saludos" from all of the gente who knew they were coming and wanted to say "hi" to me. They said, "Fernando te manda saludos", etc. etc. etc.

Moral of the historia: When learning a nuevo idioma, a veces you hear palabras that you think mean one thing, and you later find out that they mean something completely diferente. This happened to me muchas veces while learning and becoming fluent in español.

Also, I am so impressed with how polite gente are with each other in the Latin cultura. Amistades mean a lot to them and if you ever tell alguien to say "hi" to someone else, you can almost guarantee that it will happen.

Sneak peek at next week: ¡Con Permiso! How to politely leave a social situation

¡Nos vemos! (We'll see you!)


David S. Clark -- President
U.S. Institute of Languages
dave@spanishprograms.com
http://www.spanishprograms.com

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