You can speak Spanish! All it takes is a little work…..
After just a few lessons of a properly structured course, you should be able to make some simple sentences for yourself, & talk a bit about what you do in your daily life. By ‘properly structured’ I don’t mean a course where a teacher just gives you lots of random ‘useful phrases’ to learn & repeat parrot fashion. That’s OK for ‘holiday Spanish’, but not if you actually want to learn the language & USE it!
I’ve come across lots of people over the years who know lots of slang, can say all kinds phrases which sometimes incorporate quite advanced Spanish….. but if they need to actually construct a simple sentence to ask for or about something, or tell someone something which isn’t covered by their ‘stock phrases’…….. they can’t. They simply cannot adapt these phrases to anything else, because they have no idea how the language works! Then they come to me for classes, thinking that they are ‘Intermediate’ level, & we have to get though the awkward ‘Well actually I think you really need to backtrack a bit ‘ conversation….
So, if you REALLY want to learn Spanish (or any other language) you have to put a bit of work in to understand it. Learning stock phrases will only get you so far. The good news is, with Spanish, there are lots of simple rules & patterns, & Spanish rarely breaks the rules.
To start with some really simple sentences which you can construct yourself, you need to learn how verbs (doing words) work, because you need a verb in every sentence…….so you need to learn to conjugate them (make them ‘fit’ the person). Luckily, most verbs follow the same pattern!
Do you see how the end of the word (the verb) changes for different people? The END which I have highlighted in yellow, tells you WHO is doing the action.
Most verbs follow the same AR / ER / IR pattern. These are known as ‘regular’ verbs’. Here are a few more useful ‘every day’ verbs which follow the same patterns as above:
Hablar – to speak / talk………..Andar – to walk……… Correr – to run………. Limpiar – to clean……Nadar – to swim….Estudiar – to study……. Escribir – to write…….. Abrir – to open……….Cenar – to dine / eat the evening meal…..
Combine any of those (and any verb book will have 100s more ) with a few more words & you will have LOTS to say!
CADA means ‘each’ or ‘every’ . Here are a few examples for you.
Trabajo cada día por la mañana – I work every day in the morning.
¿Estudiáis español? Do you (both/all) study Spanish?
Sí, estudiamos cada miércoles por la tarde – Yes, we study every Wednesday evening.
Anda en la playa cada noche María – María walks on the beach every night.
See – it’s easy! Now it’s your turn!
