Spanish Language: Learn Spanish grammar, vocabulary and culture

Must Reads

Guide since 1998

By Gerald Erichsen
Spanish Language Guide

Browse Topic

Gerald's Spanish Language Blog

Losing Something You Never Had

Wednesday July 16, 2008

Some of the sample sentences in our lesson on perder provide a good example of how you can't always translate a particular word in the same way, that you have to adjust to the context. Perder is the verb for "to lose," and that translation almost always works well. But here's one where it does not: Perdí el bus de las 3.30. Translate that literally, and you end up with "I lost the 3:30 bus."

It doesn't take too much thought to come up with something much better: "I missed the 3:30 bus." As you study Spanish, one way you can get more use out of the words you already know is to look for expanded meanings that words such as perder can have.

Comments (0)
Permalink

Using and Omitting the Definite Article

Wednesday July 16, 2008

You may have noticed that when some foreigners speak English, they use the word "the" when they shouldn't, and vice versa. And English speakers often do the equivalent when attempting Spanish. It's no wonder: The rules about when to use or not use the definite article often seem arbitrary. In this lesson, you can learn when the use the definite articles of Spanish — el, la, los and las — or leave them out.

Comments (1)
Permalink

See More Blog Entries

Discuss

Community Forum

New posts to the Spanish Language forums:

anyone/thing and nowhere the "rl" in "hacerlo"Idiomatic Expression?