Gerald's Spanish Language Blog May 2008 Archive

Name a unit of time, and if it's in common use you'll find it on this reference list of Spanish terms.

If you're playing a sports contest or buying a lottery ticket, one word you might want to be able to use afterward is ganar, as it's the most common Spanish ... Read More

I recently received an e-mail from a teacher asking how to explain the a in a sentence such as "¿Quieres aprender a jugar baloncesto?" What is it doing there? No, it's ... Read More

The verb form in Spanish that ends in -ando or -iendo is the present participle. English also has a present participle, but they are used differently in the two languages. ... Read More

In Spanish, a tabla is a board (among other things). By changing its ending, you can come up with new words and meanings: A tablado is a platform, a tablero ... Read More

If you take these two simple English sentences — "Well, then, what do you think?" and "Then we are leaving" — it's obvious that the word "then" doesn't have the ... Read More

Do you want to indicate why something is the way it is, or why it happened the way it did? If so, there are plenty of ways to do it ... Read More

From the forum: "I'm a Spanish teacher at an elementary school in Georgia, and I have many students who, no matter how hard they try, they can't trill the Spanish ... Read More

If you were asked to translate a sentence such as "I intend to study" to Spanish, you might be tempted to use the Spanish verb intentar. But, even though "intend" ... Read More

One way of picking up the finer points of Spanish grammar is to analyze Spanish sentences you come across while reading. Once in a while, though, a sentence may seem ... Read More

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 ... Read More

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 ... 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 ... Read More

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 ... Read More

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 ... Read More