Fluent in Six Months » General

Saludos — How to end an email in English

David — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 04:48:25 +0000

Music is a great Spanish teacher. First, because songs are short, it's easy to replay them to repeat a line that you didn't quite get (or that you really like alot!). The ease of repetition makes music great for learning pronunciation. In addition, lyrics have a conversational style. This makes hit songs a great source of everyday vocabulary....

El dativo | Dative (2)

David — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:44:41 +0000

A number of verbs other than gustarand encantar use the dative construction. These verbs include apasionar -- "to be passionate about," antojarse -- "to feel like," arrugar -- "to be wrinkled,"quedar -- "to suit, to fit, or to be left", sobrar -- "to be left,"caber -- "to fit," doler -- "to be hurtful," and faltar -- "to be lacking." As with gustar, the grammatical subject and object are the reverse of what you would expect:....

El Dativo | The Dative

David — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 16:57:01 +0000

The verb gustar and a number of other Spanish verbs expressing feeling or sensation use what is called a "dative construction." In the dative construction, the grammatical subject and the indirect object of the sentence effectively reverse their roles. For example, with gustar:

Elisión | Elision

David — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:49:04 +0000

Common in both English and Spanish, and perhaps in nearly all languages, elision -- elisión in Spanish -- refers in its most simple form to the omission or suppression of the pronunciation of one or more letters in a word. Read on to see why elision is so important in the Spanish language.