Gerald's Spanish Language Blog

Although it may not be immediately obvious, the "became" in a sentence such as "I became angry" doesn't have exactly the same meaning as the "became" in "I became a writer." So if you were wanting to express the above thoughts in Spanish, you'd want to use different verbs — one way would be to translate the above sentences as "Me enojó" and "Llegué a ser escritor."

As this week's new lesson explains, "become" can be one of the trickier verbs to express in Spanish. In fact, there's no single verb that means "become" that expresses most of the ways it is used in English. "Becoming" suggests change, and the factors you use in deciding which Spanish word to use often include why the change comes about and how quickly.

As discussed in an earlier post, some users of this site have wondered how a slogan used by Barack Obama among Spanish-speaking audiences, "Sí, se puede" can mean "Yes, we can" when it doesn't even use the "we" verb form.

The answer involves the idea of translating for understanding rather than word for word, but the political junkies among us may be interested to know something else: that "Sí, se puede," commonly used in Obama campaign materials on the U.S. mainland, is no longer the Spanish slogan of choice as Obama takes his campaign to Puerto Rico. Read more...

Even many very simple sentences can't be translated word for word into English.

If someone were to tell you, "Soy de Guatemala" and you knew that that soy is a form of the verb ser or "to be" and that de usually means "from" or "of," you wouldn't have a hard time figuring out that the sentence means "I am from Guatemala."

However, understanding ser when followed by de isn't always that straightforward. For example, try translating a sentence such as "La casa es de dos pisos" word for word and it won't make a lot of sense. You can learn more in this lesson; if you have questions, feel free to ask them by following the Comments link below.

John McCain, the expected Republican presidential nominee, has become the last of the major U.S. presidential candidates to launch a Spanish campaign website.

"Estamos Unidos con McCain," reads the dominant headline on the home page. "¡Mántengamos la esperanza! ¡Mantengamos la unidad! ¡No nos dobleguemos ... ¡ Nunca nos rendiremos! !Estamos Unidos!" Translated: "We Are United with McCain. Let's support hope! Let's support unity! Let's not give up! We'll never surrender! We Are United!"

Other than a blog, McCain's Spanish-language site includes everything you'd expect on a campaign site these days: videos (some in Spanish, some in subtitled English), campaign news, position papers and a means to make donations.

The two leading Democratic candidates, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, have had Spanish-language sites since early in the primary season.

If you have trouble understanding the political terminology on any of the Spanish sites, be sure to check out our Spanish-English glossary of political terms.

Cinco de Mayo, a Mexican fiesta that's celebrated on May 5 is an oddity: Although it's clearly of Mexican origin, it is probably celebrated more in the United States than it is in most of Mexico outside of the Puebla area, where the battle commemorated by the day occurred.

Go to any U.S. city with a large Mexican-heritage population today, and chances are there'll be some sort of a Cinco de Mayo celebration. That's not true everywhere in Mexico. And even in smaller U.S. communities without a Hispanic population, you'll find supermarket promotions and the like with a Cinco de Mayo theme.

Cinco de Mayo is often promoted as something like the Mexican independence day — but it's not, as independence is celebrated on Sept. 16. Read more...

As those familiar with the plays of Shakespeare or the King James Version of the Bible know, the English verb "prove" at one time often meant "to test," not just "to show or demonstrate." The same is still true of the Spanish cognate probar, which comes from the same Latin verb. (Remember that in Spanish the b and v are closely related, and in fact are pronounced identically.)

Like almost any word you learn in Spanish (or any other foreign language), how you say it in English will depend on context. It may not seem logical that a verb that means "to prove" can also be translated as "to taste," but it's the case. When probar refers to the "testing" of food, probar can be translated as "to taste." Thus, for example, "No he probado los caracoles a la francesa" can mean "I haven't tasted escargot." Of course, "I haven't tried escargot" gets the same idea across.

Argentina is about to join the ranks of countries that allow the full Spanish alphabet character set — including the ñ, accented vowels and the ü — in its Internet domain names.

Domain names are what are commonly thought of as Internet or Web addresses; for example, the domain name of this site is about.com. (Technically, the "com" part of the address is the upper-level domain, while "about" is the second-level domain.) The system for domain names was developed at a time when few websites existed in languages other than English, and as a result it wasn't even possible until a few years ago to have a domain name in anything other than the English alphabet.

That's slowly changing. The United States, Spain and Chile were among the first to permit the use of Spanish spelling in domain names, although its use has been slow to catch on. Among the popular sites to take advantage of the system is the Royal Spanish Academy at http://realacademiaespañola.es, although a shorter version, http://www.rae.es, is easier to type.

As one of the most-wired Spanish-speaking countries, Argentina's use of Internationalized Domain Names, known as IDNs, could make them more familiar. Read more...

One of the problems with trying to understand slang in a foreign language is that you may not be able to use a dictionary to find out what it means. That's true even for extremely popular terms.

Some excellent examples of that can be found in a list released this week by SpinVox, a company that has designed software to convert the spoken word into text, such as for sending email or cell phone text messages. It compiled a list of the top 10 slang words used in email, text messages and blogs in Spain. Tops on the list is one I wasn't able to find in any mainstream dictionary is fistro, a term of contempt popularized by the comedian Chiquito de la Calzada. You won't find the second and third top slang words in the dictionary either.

A few of the top 10 can be found in the Diccionario de la Lengua Española of the Royal Spanish Academy, however. They are No. 4, canijo, which comes from a Latin American term for a small dog and means a small or weak person; No. 7, quinqui (spelled kinki in popular usage), referring to people belonging to groups that have been marginalized; No. 9, petardo, another term of contempt (it also is also a nonslang word for "firecracker" and has the same origin as the English word "petard"); and No. 10, pasmarote, sometimes translated as twit, often a person who is overly interested in trivial things. Read more...

Every once in a while as you study Spanish you'll come across a sentence construction that doesn't make a lot of sense — and that may be difficult to figure out if you haven't studied it before. One of them is the forma reduplicativa, the doubled verb, in a sentence such as this, taken from a love song: Pase lo que pase estoy a tu lado. The forma reduplicativa there is the pase lo que pase, which is a way of saying "whatever happens." The double use of a verb here is a special use of the subjunctive mood.

If you want to know more about the subjunctive mood, be sure to check our overview of verb moods.

If you need help deciphering a menu while traveling where Spanish is spoken, our new list of vegetable names is here to help. You'll find the names of all the common vegetables (zanahoria for carrot and cebolla for onion, for example) and some less common ones as well (I'm not sure I'd be able to distinguish bok choy if I saw it, but la col china is what it's called is Spanish). Read more...