Visual Link Learn Spanish Newsletter (V:2; I:16)

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This is the Free-Basic Newsletter. The Enhanced-Paid Newsletter contains 14 Learn Spanish Words of the Week from our course, a current Latin news paragraph in English that is translated to Spanish, and our culture section with Spanish words in context sprinkled throughout the story with a glossary to help you learn. If you would like to order a 6 month's subscription today for only 9.95 click here . Or, go to: www.spanishprograms.com/orderform/newsletter.htm Remember, this is only costs .38 cents per issue!

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Learn Spanish Words of the Week -----
Taken from our complete CD-ROM course

	English	Spanish
Monday	I have to	Yo tengo que
Tuesday	You have to	Usted tiene que
Wednesday	He has to	El tiene que
Thursday	She has to	Ella tiene que
Friday	to run	correr
Saturday	to the post office	al correo
Sunday	to the bank	al banco

Learn Spanish Culture ----- How to Instantly Learn Hundreds of Spanish Words!

Before we get into this week's topic, I just wanted to talk about some observations I received from a few of you on last week's newsletter. I talked about a few words like "parabrisas" and "parachoques" which start with the word "para". The word "para" has more than one meaning in English. It can mean "for", as I mentioned last week, but it can also mean "stop" or "stops". In other words, the word "windshield" ("parabrisas") could be translated as "for breezes" and/or "stops breezes". A few native speakers e-mailed me last week to let me know that the later is preferred. This concept is the same for the word "parachoques" as well as for the word "paraguas" (new word not covered last week) which means "umbrella". The translation of "paraguas" is "stops water".

This week I want to talk about a myth about speaking Spanish as well as some techniques to instantly learn hundreds of Spanish words.

Many Americans mistakenly think you can just add the letter "o" to English words and they'll instantly become Spanish. Although this does work once in a blue moon, more often than not it doesn't work at all and just causes confusion. I have heard many Americans in Latin America use this flawed technique and suffer from a large communication gap.

Here are a few techniques that will work for you if you don't know the Spanish word you need to use. These work a lot of the time, but there are still exceptions. These techniques all involve suffixes (word endings):

1. "-ty" = "-dad": university (universidad), activity (actividad), intensity (intensidad), ability (abilidad)
2. "-tion" = "-ción":  activation (activación), penetration (penetración), station (estación), vacation (vacación)
3. "-ssion" = "-sión":  session (sesión), passion (pasión), depression (depresión), aggression (agresión)
4. "-ction" = "-cción":  action (acción), attraction (attracción), fiction (ficción), reaction (reacción)
5. "-ive" = "-ivo":  active (activo), passive (pasivo), relative (relativo), intensive (intensivo), massive (masivo). Partly because of this "ivo/ive" technique, people try to ineffectively put an "o" on the end of any English word to turn it into Spanish
   
6. "-ly" = "-mente":  recently (recientemente), actively (activamente), relatively (relativamente), effectively (efectivamente). This technique ("ly/mente") isn't as reliable in taking words from English into Spanish but can help you better decipher the meaning of written Spanish words.

Moral of the Story: When you really need to guess a Spanish word, these techniques can come in handy. They can also be very useful in helping you decipher written messages. However, you must remember that that are many exceptions to these techniques. Unfortunately they aren't fool-proof.

Sneak peek at next week: "El sarcasmo"

¡Hasta luego! (Until later!)


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

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