Gerald's Spanish Language Blog June 2005 Archive

To fully understand and appreciate a language involves an understanding of the culture behind it, a writer for a newspaper in Trinidad and Tobago, a small Caribbean country, says. The ... Read More

Here's a vocabulary trivia question for you: Name a Spanish word with two common translations that we think of as opposites in English. Hint: The word has something to do ... Read More

Today I return to my normal routine of life in the United States after having spent the last week in Ecuador. I could write dozens of pages about what I've ... Read More

From what I've been told by those who know, many Ecuadoreans are skeptical, to say the least, of U.S. politics, and many of them believe that the crime-ridden portrait that ... Read More

I tend not to one who harps about things, but if there is one issue I have done exactly that on this site it has been to emphasize the principle ... Read More

If you're familiar with using the Windows operating system, you won't have much difficulty understanding how to use the Internet cafés common in many areas of the Spanish-speaking world if ... Read More

What is it about carbonated soft drinks that makes them the subject of language differences? I don't know, but I certainly find it interesting that just as there are different ... Read More

Ecuador is often promoted as a good place to learn Spanish, in part because Ecuadoreans speak something quite close to "neutral" Spanish, one that would be easily understood everywhere and ... Read More

Even if you have a large Spanish vocabulary, you may not understand what's on the menu if you're eating out in a Spanish speaking country, I have been reminded the ... Read More

It's no secret that much English vocabulary is sneaking into the Spanish language. Even where I am today, just south of the equator in Ecuador, English words can be found ... Read More

I have long found it interesting how people learn things in different ways. For me (and this is not what I would recommend), learning Spanish has been a matter of ... Read More

The question comes up often: I learned Mexican Spanish, but I'm traveling to Spain. Will people understand me? Fortunately, the answer comes in the affirmative. If you speak with a ... Read More

If English is your first language, chances are that your last name comes from your father and that your mother didn't pass on her family name to you. But if ... Read More

Where do you like to relax? For many people, the beach is the place to go. If you're headed to a Spanish-speaking country and plan to be lounging on the ... Read More

In some parts of the Spanish-speaking world, you could go for the rest of your life never having to use the pronoun vos. But that wouldn't very likely happen in ... Read More

Many of the prefixes we use regularly are derived from Latin, so most of the Spanish ones are easy to learn. What's a prefix? you may ask. Learn more...

If you're learning Spanish, you're using conjugation every time you utter a sentence. And even if you speak English, you use conjugation every day, although conjugation is less of a ... Read More

It's the start of a new month, and for those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, summer is almost upon us. You can celebrate with a new set of ... Read More