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Spanish for Beginners Spanish can be called the second international language, for it is widely spoken. Even in the southern United States many people speak Spanish, and most countries in South- and Central America use Spanish, such as Mexico, Chile and Argentina. And of course, it is also spoken in Spain, where it originated. It's not very hard to learn Spanish. It has an easy pronunciation and grammar. It's very similar to Portuguese but quite different from French, which is also a romance language. Part one of this course is only intended for absolute beginners. Part One - The Basics Lesson 1: To Be Welcome to the Spanish course here at UniLang. We want to help you learn foreign languages and we hope this little course can help. Of course, we also have a big grammar reference and a list of vocabulary available for you to study. These courses in part one are intended for absolute beginners who need a little assistance with starting to learn some basics, so this is not a complete course. When we've shown you the most important basics we'll let go you and then you can explore our grammar reference all by yourself. Before you continue you must do two things. First of all, make sure you are familiar with all the basic grammar terms, do you know what a noun is? What a verb is? What an adverb is? The second thing you should do is learn how to pronounce things in Spanish. We'll start by teaching you how to introduce yourself in Spanish. Take a look at the following Spanish sentence and it's English translation. All Spanish text will be written in blue and the English translation in green.
Here we see your very first Spanish sentence where you introduce yourself as Roberto, a fictional person. You should of course replace the name with your own name. Although the sentence consists of only three words we are going to carefully examine each word. The first word "Yo" is the Spanish equivalent of the English word "I", also referred to as 1st person singular. It's a subject pronoun. The second word "soy" is a verb. It's a conjugation of the irregular Spanish verb "ser", which is one of the two Spanish equivalents of "to be". Note that in Spanish, the subject pronoun is optional. It's usually omitted, so you could also say: "Soy Roberto", because the verb "soy" already indicates that it is "I" who's saying it. So remember, only use a subject pronoun such as "Yo" when you really want to imply that it's absolutely that person who's doing something. Now we've seen how to introduce yourself using "soy" , but we can also introduce other people. Take a look at the following examples. We've put the subject pronouns between brackets because they are usually omitted:
Those are a lot of new words! But it's all very easy. Now you've seen all subject pronouns in Spanish, which are omitted, and you know how to refer to people. And besides that, you've also learned your first Spanish verb, an irregular verb: "Ser", in English "To be". There is also a small new word that appeared in this lesson, the Spanish words "y", which means "and". Also note that there are two forms for "they" in Spanish. You can say "ellos" or "ellas". "ellas" is used when referring to a group of females. "ellos" is used when referring to a group of men or a mixed group. It's also a good exercise to try to pronounce every Spanish sentence you see on this page.
Summary Vocabulary We'll ask you to study a number of words in each lesson . This time we'll give you a couple of very easy words to study. Learn them in both directions! English-Spanish and Spanish-English.
Exercises Each lesson will come with some exercises so you can practice the grammar and vocabulary of this lesson. In these exercises we ask you to write the subject pronoun between brackets so you learn those too. In the next lessons you can omit the subject pronoun.
Exercise A: Translate to English:
Exercise B: Translate to Spanish: Solutions After you've done the exercises you can check whether your answer is correct using the following solutions:
Solution of Exercise A:
Solution of Exercise B: Lesson 2: Articles and Gender Apparently you've successfully finished lesson one, so now we can continue with the second lesson. In this lesson you'll learn how to describe certain objects. First of all we are going to teach you articles. In the previous lesson you learned how to say "He is father" but that sounds a little bit tarzan-like. Wouldn't it sound better if you could say "He is a father" or "He is the father" ? That's what you'll learn now. Take a look at these Spanish sentences:
Here we see a whole mix of words, we see "el" and "la" as a translation of "the" and "un" and "una" as a translation of "a" and "an". But how come there are two translations? Of course they both are right, otherwise we wouldn't show them to you. But how can it be possible that the word "the" and "a and an" have two translations in Spanish? This has to do with the difficult concept of noun gender, a concept not known in English but is in almost every other language. In most other languages a noun has a certain gender. So you're telling me a noun can be a boy or a girl? Indeed...that's what we're saying. A noun has a certain gender. In Spanish (and many other Latin languages) there are two genders: masculine and feminine. Every noun (note that this gender concept only applies to nouns) has one of these two genders. How to determine what gender it has isn't very hard. And can be explained using a number of guidelines:
Most grammar rules are dependent of the gender of the noun, so you'll have to learn the gender of each noun. One grammar rule that is gender-dependent is the translation of the articles "the, a and an". When the noun to which the article applies is a masculine noun then "the" is translated as "el". If the article applies to a feminine noun then the article that has to be used is "la". Note that "el" and "la" are only used with singular nouns. When the noun is plural you use "los" for masculine nouns and "las" for feminine nouns. This also applies to the indefinite article ("a and an"). In Spanish you use "un" when the noun is masculine and singular and "una" when it's feminine and singular. In Spanish there also exists a plural indefinite article. While we in English can't say ("a houses and a tables"), in Spanish this is possible. You can use "unos" for masculine nouns and "unas" for feminine nouns. This could translate as "some" or "a couple of" in English. Well, this noun gender concept might have confused you a bit. For English speaking people it can be a weird concept. But if English is not your native language then it's most likely that you are already familiar with noun gender. From now on we will also mention the article of a noun in our vocabulary lists. In this lesson we'll also introduce another irregular Spanish verb, the verb "tener", which means "to have". Take a look at the full conjugation and translation of this verb:
Now that you've learned a new verb, memorize it. Note that this verb is not used as a helper verb like in English, In Spanish there is another verb which is used as helper verb. Summary In this lesson you've learned the concept of noun gender, what articles to use and you've learned another irregular verb. Vocabulary
Exercises
Exercise A: Translate to English:
Exercise B: Translate to Spanish: Solutions
Solution of Exercise A:
Solution of Exercise B: Lesson 3: Formal Pronouns, Possessive Adjectives, and Plural Nouns Before we teach you how to tell that something belongs to a certain person we first have to teach you how to be polite in Spanish. In Spanish and most other languages, but not in English, there exists a certain polite form of "you". In Spanish they say "Usted" instead of "tú" in formal speech, "tú" is only used among friends and for children. Verbs after "Usted" are also conjugated differently, like after 3rd person singular ("Él"). Take a look at the following sample sentences, and note that the subject pronoun is usually omitted, but for this example we haven't omitted it:
And this same construction also applies to the plural form of "you". Instead of "vosotros" they use "ustedes" in formal speech. Also note that in Latin America, "tu" and "vosotros" are almost never used. Now you know how to be polite we'll continue with indicating possession. We're gonna teach you the so-called "possessive pronouns" or "possessive adjectives". At the same time you'll learn how translate "this" and "that" (demonstrative pronouns). Here are a couple of new sentences:
You've learned a couple of things now. You can use "this" and "that" independently (separated by the verb "to be") and "éso". You can use them adjectively. The forms are "éste" ("this") and "ése" ("that") with masculine nouns, and "ésta" ("this") and "ésa" ("that") with feminine nouns. Note that those who are used independently receive an accent on the first é. Those used adjectively don't get an accent. You've also seen the possessive adjectives and you probably noticed that possessive adjectives also have a formal form for both the singular and the plural "you". Note that the both the possessive adjectives ("mi, tu, su, nuestro") AND the demonstrative pronouns ("eso, ese, esta, etc..") get an extra S when the noun they apply to is a plural noun. And you probably also noticed that there is a masculine and a feminine form of "our" and "your (plural)". With masculine nouns you use "nuestro" and "vuestro" and with feminine nouns you use "nuestra" and "vuestra". Now it's time to learn plural nouns. Until now you've only seen singular nouns such as "house" and "chair", but now we'll teach you how to form a plural noun ("houses", "chairs") in Spanish. Forming a plural noun in Spanish is a piece of cake, just like in English. When the singular noun ends in a vowel then you can just add an S to form the plural form. When it ends in a consonant then you should add ES. When it ends on IÓN you can drop the accent on the O and add ES. When it ends on EZ you replace EZ with ECES. That's all there's to it! Some examples: "Libro - Libros, Universidad - Universidades, Vez - Veces" Now we'll teach you one last thing in this lesson. You have to know that in Spanish the word order is very flexible and it often occurs that the subject of the sentence appears at the end of the sentence. An example of two sentences that are exactly the same, except for the word order:
You see the flexible word other. Get used to it because it frequently occurs that the subject appears at the end of a sentence. The demonstrative pronouns, demonstrative adjectives and possessive adjectives we've just discussed also have plural forms. When a plural noun is involved, you need to make them plural. This is simply done by adding an S to the singular form. The only two exceptions are ESTE and ESE, which become ESTOS and ESOS in plural. I think this has been enough material for this third lesson. Vocabulary
Exercises
Exercise A: Translate to English:
Exercise B: Translate to Spanish: Solutions
Solution of Exercise A:
Solution of Exercise B: Lesson 4: Regular Verbs and Negation You've already worked your way through three chapters. Make sure you understood everything that appeared in those chapters. Make sure you understand the grammar and vocabulary and do the exercises to practice. Also make sure you try to pronounce every Spanish sentence so you can practice your pronunciation. Let's start now by learning a regular Spanish verb: "hablar" ("to speak" in English). In Spanish a regular verb in the present tense always has the same ending. That ending is underlined in the following example. There are three groups of regular verbs in Spanish. "hablar", and all other infinitive verbs that end in AR, belong to the first group. The part of the verb that's not underlined is called the stem, and is the part of the verb that always remains the same. The stem can be obtained by removing the last two characters of the infinitive verb (AR, ER or IR).
It's pretty easy to understand. Each person has it's own ending. The endings you just saw are valid for all regular verbs that end in AR. There are two other groups: the ER group (for all regular verbs that end in ER) and the IR group (for all regular verbs that end in IR). An example of the ER group using the verb "comer", meaning "to eat".
An example of the IR group, using the verb "vivir", meaning "to live". This group is very similar to the conjugations of the ER group.
This was pretty clear I think. You should memorize the ending of each person for each of the three groups. Also note that when the same vowel ends a stem and starts an ending, the two vowels shoud merge, because two equal vowels never appear next to each other. Now we're going to talk about negation, because you might want to say: "That is NOT a house", "and that is NO dog". In Spanish "no" is translated as the same, as "no". It appears directly before the main verb. I think that's enough material for now. Make sure you understand it. It's quite hard, so don't hesitate to reread this lesson a couple of times. Vocabulary
Exercises
Exercise A: Translate to English:
Exercise B: Translate to Spanish: Solutions
Solution of Exercise A:
Solution of Exercise B: Lesson 5: Adjectives, Adverbs, and Questions After the difficult lesson you've just done we'll make things a little easier. In this lesson we'll teach you how to use adjectives in Spanish. An adjective tells something about a noun. It describes a property of a noun. It usually appears next to the noun, although it can also be separated from the noun using the verb "ser" (in English: "to be"). Note that in such a construction the "independent" adjective is never a direct object!
This is an easy construction. The Spanish adjective is never conjugated in any way in such a construction. You only have to make sure that the adjective agrees in gender and number with the noun. A specific set of rules is valid: If the unconjugated form of an adjective ends in O then the following rules apply:
If the unconjugated form of an adjective ends in an E or a consonant then the 2nd rule doesn't apply. And if it ends in a consonant then it will get ES when the noun is plural instead of S. There are some more exceptions but we won't go through those now. Of course, an adjective usually appears next to the noun (in Spanish usually after the noun) instead of being separated by "ser".
Now we can move onto the matter of adverbs. An adverb can be compared to an adjective but instead it says something about a verb instead of a noun. It's easy to form an adverb in Spanish, just use the feminine form of the adjective and add MENTE.
Now you also know how to form adverbs. It's really easy. Of course, there are also irregular adverbs. A good example would be "good" in Spanish: "bien". We can continue with asking question in Spanish. To tell someone something is nice, but once in a while you might need to ask someone something. We'll teach you. The word order in a Spanish question is almost the same as in English, although in English we use the helper verb "do". In Spanish there's no such helper verb. Where in English we'd use "do" the Spanish use the real main verb, in the correct conjugation that matches with the subject. Some questions:
First of all, you probably immediately noticed it, there's an upside down question mark at the beginning of a sentence. Spanish people don't just put one behind the sentence. They also put an upside down question mark at the beginning of the sentence. Also remember that the Spanish don't use a helper verb such as "do". Instead of it they use their main verb in the correct conjugation. You've also seen some interrogative pronouns now (the words used to ask question: such as: "what?" etc...). One strange thing is that you see two words for "what", there are two variant, you can say either "¿qué?" or "¿cuál?". The first one when asking about facts and such, the second one lies closer to our word "which", it describes an option, a choice, one of more possibilities. This concludes the fifth lesson. Vocabulary
Exercises
Exercise A: Translate to English:
Exercise B: Translate to Spanish: Solutions
Solutions of Exercise A:
Solutions of Exercise B: End Of Part One This is the end of part one. Now you've learned some of the basics of the Spanish language. Thanks for your interest in this course! If you discovered any mistakes or you just want to say something then please let us know. We do need feedback! So contact us if you discover any mistakes or have questions or just want to point something out! You can also write in our guestbook to share your thoughts.
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