Visual Link Spanish Newsletter (V:2; I:12)

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

	English	Spanish
Monday	He likes	(A él) Le gusta
Tuesday	I can (am able)	(Yo) Puedo
Wednesday	to watch	mirar
Thursday	to see (watch)	ver
Friday	the T.V.	la televisión
Saturday	the T.V. (nickname)	la tele
Sunday	my favorite team	mi equipo favorito
Review Every Day!	Be sure to use these weekly newsletters to review the words you have learned from our complete Visual Link Spanish™ course! Click here to learn Spanish now with free Spanish lessons.

Spanish Culture ----- Visita personal

Spanish Vocabulary For the Newsletter

corrección editorial - editorial correction
palabras - words
boletín - newsletter
diferencias culturales - cultural differences
mencioné - I mentioned
amigos - friends
mujer - woman
hombre - man
besito - kiss
abrazo - hug
cortés - courteous
gente - people
amables - friendly (plural)
misionero - missionary
casas - homes
niño - child
mami (maw-mee) - child's word for "mother"
papi (paw-pee) - child's word for "father"
padres - parents
puerta - door
técnica - technique
-mente - -ly (this is a suffix or word ending; "mente" at the end of a word always means "ly" in English)

Before I start the newsletter this week, I need to make a corrección editorial to one of our palabras from last week. The word "serious" in English is "serio" or "seria" in Spanish - depending on if you are talking about a male or female. If you are talking about more than one person, you would say "serios". For example, "They are serious" would be "Ellos son serios"; whereas "She is serious" would be "Ella es seria".

In this week's boletín, I want to talk about some of the diferencias culturales when visiting someone in Latin America.

As I mencioné in previous boletines, if you are visiting a persona you are relatives or amigos with, and you are a mujer greeting another mujer or hombre, you would customarily give them a besito on the cheek. When hombres greet hombres, they will customarily give each other a handshake and often times an abrazo. The Latin culture is a very polite and cortés culture and the gente are usually very amables.

I had the opportunity to visit Latin America as a misionero for two years and visited literally thousands of gente in their casas in different countries. One of the things that really fascinated me is when we would knock on a puerta to visit a familia, generally a small niño would answer the door. We would then ask, "¿Se encuentra tu mami?" or "¿Se encuentra tu papi?" (Is your mom or dad home?). In every region I went to, the niño would always say "No está" (He or she isn't here). What got me, was that they would say this even if their "padres" WERE home.

In the beginning, this really frustrated me because in the U.S., for the most part, when someone comes to the puerta, if the padres are home and available, the child will say that they are home and get them. (Of course there are exceptions.)

I finally learned a técnica that was rather fun and worked well. Here's what I did. When a niño would answer the puerta, I would ask, "¿Se encuentra tu papi?" and the niño would say "No está". Then I would quickly say "¡Tráelo rápido!" (Hurry and get him!). The niño, sin pensar (without thinking) would automaticamente run and get his dad (or mom). After I learned this new técnica, getting in to visit people changed from drudgery to a juego divertido (fun game). I loved visiting the Latin people and being in their homes!

Moral of the historia: The Spanish culture is fun and interesting. It is great to get to know the culture and adapt yourself personalmente to it.

 

Click here to speak Spanish with free Spanish lessons.

Sneak peek at next week: Other funny things people say at the door.

¡Hasta la próxima semana! (Until Next Week!)



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

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Response from Last Week

Hey Dave,

Here in Europe, a lot of people also take soccer very serious. Also people were killed during encounters between fans of different teams, they even organize fights without a game being played, mostly an abandoned field or so. "Fans" of different (also cross border) clubs sometimes work together to bash the fans of the enemy team.

Greetings,
Christophe, Belgium