Work Unit Fourteen: El hombre más viejo del mundo
I don't remember the details of the first time I noticed I was actually thinking in Spanish rather than simply translating words into English in my head. But I do remember that I was dealing in numbers while making a purchase.| Read, listen and learn in the About
virtual Spanish classroom:
1. You're free to join the class at any time and study on your own schedule. For textbook and other organizational information, see the class introduction.
4. Feel free to email the instructor, although answers to questions of interest to others in the class will probably be posted on the board rather than be sent individually. |
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I don't know how common my realization was, but it shouldn't be surprising that numbers would be one of the first parts of a second language to master, or at least to become familiar enough with not to have to think about it. For other than the some of the social niceties such as saying por favor and gracias and introducing oneself, dealing with numbers is one of the things you're most likely to do with your language skills.
Assignment
Before studying this lesson, be sure to review the material in Work Unit 7 on the numbers 1 through 30. What you learn in this lesson will build on what you learned then.Complete the lesson on pages 151-8 of the textbook. To hear the story in the lesson read, please listen to the audio lesson.
Be sure to complete the exercises. Although copyright rules and fairness to other students using this book prevent me from publishing all the answers, you can check the answer page to see an answer to the first question in each section to help get you started. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them on the bulletin board.
Background
The textbook covers many of the rules about using numbers. Here some other details that could come in handy sometime:- In most Spanish-speaking countries, the numbers are written with the commas and periods reversed from the the way we use them in English. Thus, gana $123.456,78 por año, she earns $123,456.78 per year. Mexicans usually follow the same notation used in American English.
- Un million is one million or 1,000,000. But larger numbers can get confusing. That's because you might suspect that un billón would be a billion or 1,000,000,000 as it is in American English. But it's not. un billón is 1,000,000,000,000, or a trillion in American English. In this regard, Spanish is similar to traditional British English. For more details, see the lesson on false cognates.
- A thousand is un mil. In numbers, the mil isn't made plural in numbers, just as we often don't pluralize "thousand." Thus, 2,300 would be stated as dos mil, trescientos, the equivalent of two thousand, threee hundred in English.
- Note that the word for 500 is quinientos, differing from the pattern of the others in the hundreds series.
Coming up:
In the next lesson, we will continue our study of numbers.
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