Gerald's Spanish Language Blog July 2006 Archive

Quick — what do the Spanish words affeción, experimentar and estupor mean? If you guessed "affection," "to experiment" and "stupor," you're probably right. However, these words have other common meanings ... Read More

These days, the Spanish term gringo is usually used to refer to a resident of the United States or Great Britain, and not always in a complimentary manner. However, at ... Read More

YouTube, a site that encourages users to share videos, many of them homemade, has become the most popular Web site of its type in not much more than a year ... Read More

If you're new to Spanish, you've probably been told that descriptive adjectives are placed after the nouns they modify. That's often true — but not always. Placing a descriptive adjective ... Read More

Do you have questions about how to use the Spanish language? Are you interested in things Spanish or Latin American? Or do you simply like virtually hanging out with a ... Read More

One way of translating a sentence from one language to another is to get out the dictionary and substitute words. But that method — in essence the one used in ... Read More

Of course, most Spanish words came originally from Latin. But many of them, 7,000 by one count, came originally from Arabic as a legacy of the Moorish invasion of 711 ... Read More

Logically, it would seem that the correct word to use for "let's go away" would be vayámonos, a conjugated form of irse. In fact, there are even some older grammar ... Read More

Although cuando is the most common word for "when," it also extremely common to use the contraction al followed by an infinitive to indicate when something happens. Here's an example: ... Read More

It's not good to treat people like things, but the opposite is frequently done in language. The practice is known as personification, one of the many entries in our grammar ... Read More

Few of us who speak English as a first language follow all the rules of grammar, especially in everyday conversation. So it shouldn't be surprising if Spanish speakers often break ... Read More

If you remember your high school grammar class, you know that a compound verb is made up of an auxiliary verb and a main verb. The principle is the same ... Read More

In you're thinking in Spanish, you may think of yourself as having hunger rather than being thirsty, or having sleepiness rather than being sleepy. That is because Spanish has many ... Read More

Does a phrase such as un grupo de personas (a group of persons) as the subject of a sentence take a singular verb or a plural one? In English, the ... Read More

See how the word "eating" is used in these sentences: She is eating potato chips. He is an eating boy. Eating is good for you. The word is the same, but in the first ... Read More

One of the most popular features on this site has been the Word of the Day: Each day, you can learn a new word. These mini-lessons include a definition and ... Read More

The Spanish verb rodear typically means "to surround," and a word derived from it, rodeo, came to mean an area surrounded by a fence, and specifically a corral for horses ... Read More

Will Mexicans follow the trend set by Latin American countries such as Venezuela and Bolivia and elect a leftist leader? Or will more well-to-do voters rule the day and elect ... Read More

There are several different was of classifying verbs in Spanish. We might talk about passive and active verbs, for example, or personal and impersonal verbs. One other way is to ... Read More