The Wrong Way To Learn Spanish
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[edit] Introduction
What is the Wrong Way to Learn Spanish? It is a method of learning Spanish outside of the standard methods of academia. Instead, we focus on learning by doing. The method has a textbook, if anyone wants to pursue it, however, it is used as a guide rather than the main teaching method. Most learning in The Wrong Way to Learn Spanish method takes the form of games and entertainment : trivia, live gameshows played by the student, role-playing, jokes, and stories. Because it's made based on fun-filled mnemonics, learning Spanish in this way would be the same as a kid who is just having a good time, while building up one's knowledge on the Spanish vocabulary.
[edit] Lesson 1. The first 6 words
Zorro means fox. (zorro).
- Imagine a fox in a zorro mask.
Gato means cat. (Gah-toh).
- Imagine a cat with big gaps between his toes.
Perro means dog. (Peh-roh).
- Imagine a dog jumping over a pair of rowboats.
Oso means bear. (oh-so)
- Imagine spotting a huge bear looking at you, and running away because it is 'oh-so big.'
Camarera means waitress. (kama-reh-rah)
- Imagine a waitress at a restaurant offering to take a picture with your camera as you hang out with your friends.
Chico means boy. (Chee-ko)
- Think "It would be a Chick (i.e. female), but it isn't, because it has an o on the end, which makes it masculine, ergo, a guy, or boy."
[edit] Exercise 1.
What is the English word for these Spanish words?
- chico
- oso
- gato
- zorro
- perro
- camarera
[edit] Exercise 2.
What is the Spanish word for these English words?
- boy
- bear
- cat
- fox
- waitress
- dog
[edit] Lesson 2. Five More Words
[edit] Vocabulary
Mesa means table. (meh-sah)
- Imagine a table made of salt licks.
- Imagine the geological structure, with its flat, table-like surface.
Falda means skirt. (fahl-dah)
- Imagine a skirt worn in the fall by your da.
- Imagine a skirt with pleats or folds.
Agua means water. (ah-gwah)
- Imagine some water crying out "Agh!" and "Wah!" as it's poured into a bottle of Aguafina.
- Imagine some water in a cup contaminated with guano.
- For those with literary and linguistic knowledge, Water = Aqua = the Spanish word Agua
Cabeza means head. (kah-BEH-sah (Latin America) Kah-BEH-thah (Standard Castilian))
- Imagine a head sitting in a cab at the base of the passenger's side, crying out "Ah!" when the driver makes a sharp turn. (For the Castilian version, say the same thing with a lisp, so "base" sounds like "bayth".)
Chica means girl. (cheeh-ka)
- Imagine kissing a girl on the cheek.
[edit] Exercise 1.
What is the English word for these words
- cabeza
- agua
- mesa
- oso
- falda
- chico
- chica
[edit] Exercise 2.
What is the Spanish word for these words?
- table
- skirt
- water
- head
- bear
[edit] Lesson 3. The Gender of Words
Words in Spanish have gender, which is the attribute of being masculine or feminine. In this sense, you can think about words being either boys or girls.
Let's lift their knickers and see exactly what gender they are. Words that are masculine generally end in o and words that are female generally end in a. Two important exceptions are el día (day) and la mano (hand).
Another way a teacher taught it was this: guys are LONERS and girls like DIJON mustard. Words ending in l, o, n, e, r and s are masculine. Words ending in d, i, a and sión are feminine. NOTE: It is true that there are exceptions to this, but if you have to guess at the gender of a word, it's a good method to try. Some important exceptions that are female are mujer means woman, flor means flower, actriz means actress, emperatriz means female emperor. Words macho and hembra don't have gender, it is used from gender of the noun.
[edit] Exercise 1.
Are these words masculine (m) or feminine (f)?
- chico
- chica
- oso
- falda
- mesa
- zorro
- camarera
- gato
- agua
- perro
- cabeza
- mosquito hembra
- mosquito macho
- flor
- emperatriz
[edit] Lesson 4. Your First Five Adjectives
Adjectives that don't change with the gender of the noun:
- Grande- big
- Feroz- fierce
- Caliente- physically hot object (NOT the Air or Outside-Inside temperature, NOR the attractiveness of a specific person, usually. Hot in the spicy food sense is also not represented here. That word is picante)
- Inteligente- intelligent
- Interesante- interesting
[edit] Lesson 5. Masculine and Feminine "the"
In English, we have one word for "the." In Spanish, there are four. Ah, but don't let this discourage you. After all, you already know three of them, and we are only going to be discussing two of them in this lesson.
Continuing with the theme of words having gender, the word "the" in Spanish also has gender, depending on what the noun it is used with. Think of this like clothing. Boy words wear tuxedoes and girl words wear dresses.
The tuxedo for boy words is "el".
The dress for girl words is "la." (Yes, very feminine sounding.)
"The" also has plurals (numbers three and four) which are "los" and "las". But we'll get to that later.
[edit] Lesson 6. "Es" and Your First Complete Sentences
The word "es" is used as "is," for description of what something or someone is, looks like, or belongs to. Do not use it for location.
e.g. La casa es grande. The house is big.
e.g. El gato es feroz. The cat is fierce.
The structure is article + noun + es + adjective.
Remember to make the adjective agree with the noun!
[edit] Test 1.
[UNDER CONSTRUCTION]
Test everything presented so far, i.e. Lesson 1 exercises 1&2, Lesson 2 exercises 1&2, and Lesson 3 exercise 1.
[edit] Paltalk Activity 1. Animal, Mineral, Vegetable
[UNDER CONSTRUCTION?]
[edit] Answers
[edit] Lesson 1.
Exercise 1
- chico - boy
- oso - bear
- perro - dog
- gato - cat
- zorro - fox
- camarera - waitress
Exercise 2
- dog - perro
- bear - oso
- cat - gato
- fox - zorro
- waitress - camarera
- boy - chico
[edit] Lesson 2.
Exercise 1
- cabeza - head
- agua - water
- mesa - table
- falda - skirt
- chica - girl
Exercise 2
- table - mesa
- skirt - falda
- water - agua
- head - cabeza
- girl - chica
[edit] Lesson 3.
Exercise 1
- chico - masculine (m.)
- chica - feminine (f.)
- oso - m.
- falda - f.
- mesa - f.
- zorro - m.
- camarera - f.
- gato - m.
- agua - singular is m, plural is f. (la agua doesnt work for pronunciation, though las aguas does)
- perro - m.
- cabeza - f.
[edit] Credits
[edit] The Team
If you are part of the regular team, this is the place to credit yourself.
[edit] Authors
If you are not a part of the regular team, but contribute, credit yourself here.
- Manpurse: Hola, Wiki!newbie here. Hopefully I can add some more words later. Feel free to edit any programming/language errors at whim! Ciao, all. <3
- Jose: Hola! newbie here. I've made some spellcheck in Spanish words. I'm wondering if I could help in later checking also.
- Gina: Hey, I'm one of the anal retentives who speaks Spanish and corrects discrepencies with definitions every now and then. Just remember that words may not mean the same thing with every spanish speaking person, depending on where they come from. There is Mexican Spanish, Cuban Spanish, Puerto Rican Spanish, Castillian Spanish, Spanish from the same country but different areas/regions that have dialectic changes, and please remember that Not everyone from South America speaks spanish, in some countries French and Portuguese are the languages spoken. Always ask first.
- Kate: just a Spanish student. Jr in HS, Spanish level 6 in KS
- Mystery lurker: Holds jobs as a technical editor/technical writer. Contributed by adding some stuff and cleaning up existing ones. Understands the concept of clarity when editing documents or when writing a new book/article/news column. Took middle-school and high-school Spanish, loved it, but sadly moved out of the USA, thus lost touch with Spanish (boo hoo).
[edit] Guinea Pigs/Commenters
If you offer your opinion or make yourself a guinea pig for the method, credit yourself here.
?: �Hola! �Consider me a guinea pig! -KKS
?: Orale mi raza, I am a student as well as a teacher! Hope this page will continue to grow. Viva espana!
?: I want this page to grow. Somebody teach me spanish!!! Come on... - Peter Pawan, Noob.
?: ¡El español es fresco! Great page! I now have an weird image of Zorro the fox taking of with some chicas stuck in my head. Good work!
?: Keep working on this, please. Thx for doing it. - trent, guinea pig
?: I think that the best way to learn Spanish is to first read the Spansh alphabet and their pronunciation. But there is no need to learn too much about how the vowels sound and what are the exceptions to the rules etc. The next step is to download a nice interesting book in english that you have already read. Copy one sentence at a time from the english book and put it in google's language translator [1].(Google language translator page as retrieved on September 30, 2009) Now you can easily analyse each and every word and each and every phrase since you already know the words of that English book. This will seem to take time but it will give you solid foundation in Spanish. Because i am from India and have just started to learn Spanish a few days ago. This method seems to work for me. Earlier i tried reading the Spanish grammar books and reading elementary Spanish reading books which have stories for children or tried to copy the sentences from blogs of common Spanish people and tried to translate those sentences through google's language translator but the problem with this was that i couldnt find any blogs which were either too plain and boring or if they were interesting then they were too short and didn't form any coherent story. The elementary Spanish stories also proved to be too uninetersting. The problem with grammar books was that till the time i would learn the 11th rule i would forget the 1st rule in Spanish grammar. So i feel translating ineteresting English stories or blogs or news reports in google's language translator is the best method for Español newbies like me. after i have analysed one or two books i will download a grammar book from gutenberg website [2] (Project Gutenberg page as retrieved on September 30, 2009) and learn the Spanish grammar so as to make my foundation even stronger.
[edit] Special Thanks
Thank your mother, beer, bigfoot, or whatever here.
?: Mediawiki!
?: I would especially like to thank beer, without which my mother and bigfoot might never have met, and I might not be typing this aqui.
?: Bigfoot is an allright guy, but let's not forget el chupacabra.
[edit] Links
- Extremely useful for beginners and very easy and moreover it is free has detailed lessons. (the upper part of the webpage is filled with advertisements but the lower half of the webpage contains the lessons (as retrieved on October 3, 2009)
- Google's language translator webpage as retrieved on September 30, 2009.
- Project Gutenberg website as retrieved on September 30, 2009.
- For typing Spanish accents in emails and in other documents (as retrieved on September 30, 2009). Only the typing of accent part is useful otherwise the entire website is useless.
