Simple mind, simple life.
I never see failure as failure, but only as a learning
experience.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Learning Spanish

¡Hola, buenos dias. (Hello! Good day.)

I’ve been self-studying Spanish for quite a while. It’s not easy cos’ I’m not attending a class and I have no one to practise speaking the language. The reason I took up this language is that I love Salsa dancing; (not that I’m good at it, in fact I danced with two left feet), hence I want to understand the language in order to enjoy the salsa music.

In Spanish, all nouns are given a gender - masculine or feminine. And the gender also determines the adjectives. In fact, the noun’s gender affects the usage of other words. (Even articles are given a gender!).

For example: El professor de londres es muy alto. (The teacher from London is very tall). El is masculine; alto is also masculine. From the sentence, one will know that the teacher is a male. If it’s a she, then the sentence would be: La professor de londres es muy alta.

The spelling of the verbs changes according to the gender pronouns. For instance: Estudiar = to study

(yo) estudio = (I) study
(el, ella, usted) estudia = (he, she, you) studies/study
(nosotros, nosotras) estudiamos = (we in masculine/feminine) study
(ellos, ellas, ustedes) estudian = (plural of he, she, you) study

The pronouns are usually dropped out in a sentence since the verbs show the genders. I don’t know how else to learn the verbs but to learn them by heart.

Till then, ¡Adiós! Hasta luego. (Goodbye! See you again.) Oh, by the way, the alphabet H in Spanish is silent (you don’t pronounce it). Hence, Hola is pronounced as ‘o-la’; and Hasta is ‘us-ta’.

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