As we grow up, we’re constantly having our grammar corrected by our parents and teachers until the rules become completely ingrained. It’s understandable then that when we start to learn another language, we try to apply the rules we already know to it. This doesn’t work though, as we frequently (but patiently!) have to explain to students.

With Indo-European roots, English and Spanish grammar has similarities in places, but there are also significant differences. One of the first things you have to come to grips with as a beginner is gender. As English doesn’t assign a gender to inanimate things, this is often a source of confusion early on for learners. Agreement – changing adjectives to match the nouns they describe – is still more difficult, especially in the early days when just one form can be a struggle to recall. Word order differs in many cases too. Taking once again the simple example of a noun and an adjective, the phrase “the tall man” would translate as “el hombre alto”; as you see, the adjective comes after the noun, whereas it is the opposite in English.

Verb conjugations and word endings can also be challenging for English speakers who have not been exposed to other languages, but these basic examples illustrate the danger of trying to apply your native grammar rules to a foreign language. Difficult though it can be at times, the best approach is simply to absorb and accept the rules of Spanish and forget about trying to make sense of them in the framework of English grammar. Don’t feel daunted though; the rules are not complex – simply different to English – and your native Spanish tutor will be there to help you every step of the way.

Legendary Cuban singer Celia Cruz, known as the Queen of Salsa (La Reina de la Salsa) was one of the most successful exponents of Latin music of the 20th century, earning twenty-three gold albums during the course of a long and illustrious career. She was born in Havana in 1925 and was the second child of Simon Cruz and Catalina Alfonso.

Cruz got her first break way back in 1950 when she was called upon to fill in as lead singer for a popular Cuban orchestra. For fifteen years she toured all over Latin America with the band, who adopted the name ‘Café con Leche’ (Coffee with Milk). However, after the Cuban revolution, she opted not to return home and became a US citizen. She continued recording and performing, also appearing in a number of films, until shortly before her death, from brain cancer, in 2003.

Listening to music is a great way to keep in touch with the language between Private Spanish Lessons. It can help you to pick up new vocabulary as well as reinforce the words you already know by repetition. Think about how we learn our own language growing up: we’re surrounded by stimuli of all different kinds, picking up words from music, television and those around us, not just in the formal setting of the classroom. If you’re not already familiar with her work, why not listen to some of the songs from Celia Cruz’ back catalogue and see how much you can learn from them. Once you get to know the tunes, singing along can help you to improve your pronunciation too!

There can be few people with knowledge of contemporary music who are unfamiliar with the name Gloria Estefan. She’s the most successful crossover Latin musician ever, with seven Grammy awards and 100 million record sales to her name. Gloria María Milagrosa Fajardo García de Estefan was born in September 1957 in Havana, Cuba. Have you ever wondered at the lengthy names quoted in our biographical blogs? These follow Spanish naming customs where the paternal name (Fajardo) is given first and the maternal family name (Garcia) second. ‘de Estefan’ was added after her marriage in 1978 to Emilio Estefan.

Aside from a musical career spanning over four decades, Estefan is perhaps best known for her courage and determination in recovering from a fractured spine after her tour bus was involved in a crash in March 1990. There was speculation that she may never walk again and she endured a great deal of pain, once saying, “There were times when the pain was so bad I prayed I’d pass out”, yet she committed herself fully to intensive rehabilitation therapy and resumed touring and singing after just 10 months.

More recently, Estefan has diversified into children’s literature, writing two successful books, The Magically Mysterious Adventures of Noelle the Bulldog and its follow-up, Noelle’s Treasure Tale. Both are available in Spanish language versions entitled Las Magicas y Misteriosas Aventuras de una Bulldog Llamada Noelle and El Tesoro do Noelle: Una Nueva Magica y Misteriosa Aventura respectively. Reading children’s books is a great way to complement your Private Spanish Lessons and expand your knowledge of the language. The simpler language of children’s literature is more manageable for learners and you can gradually increase the difficulty of your reading as your skills improve – just as we do when learning our native languages.

 

Painter Frida Kahlo was born in Mexico City in 1907. Thanks largely to a traffic accident in her teens, Kahlo suffered lifelong health problems, and these contributed to the “pain and passion” she displayed in her works. She is probably best known for her self-portraits, a result of the isolation enforced on her by her poor health. As she herself said, “I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best”. Though she is sometimes referred to as a surrealist painter, Kahlo refuted this, saying, “They thought I was a surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality”.

Though she is celebrated mainly for her art, Frida Kahlo possessed an acerbic wit and was an eloquent speaker and writer as well as an artist. A collection of letters, poems and other writings have been gathered together in the book ‘Frida by Frida’ by art critic Rachel Tibol, who describes her as using “unreserved, imaginative language”. Her illustrated diary, published in 2005, more than fifty years after her death, charts the last ten years of her life and provides further examples of her incisive wit and dark humour as she reflects on her childhood, her politics and her stormy marriage to fellow Mexican artist, Diego Rivera.

Kahlo’s art has become iconic, but the legacy she left in her spoken and written words is equally fascinating. As Martha Zamora, the translator of her Cartas Apasionadas (Passionate Letters), said, Frida wrote “honestly and without reserve, employing all the vocabulary at her disposal to convey her thoughts and emotions”.

If you’re looking to improve your own Spanish vocabulary, our Intensive Spanish Courses could be just what you need.

This week we look at the language and influence of another contemporary giant in the world of literature, Gabriel García Márquez. Born in Aracataca, Colombia in March 1927, his full name is Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez, though he is known throughout the Latin American world simply as ‘Gabo’, a mark of the great affection in which he is held.

Márquez began his writing career as a journalist and went on to pen a number of acclaimed short stories and non-fiction works. He is, however, best known for his novels. His first full-length novel, ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ (Cien años de soledad), won him international recognition when it was published in 1967 and popularised the literary style known as ‘magical realism’, which blends supernatural elements with events and experiences in the natural, everyday world.

Márquez went on to write several 20th-century classics in the same genre, employing his vivid imagination, great storytelling prowess and again combining the fantastical with the mundane. His stories often centre on a dead, dying or about to die character, such as in ‘Autumn of the Patriarch’ (El otoño del patriarca), which studies the character, corruption and tyranny of an archetypal dictator as he faces his impending death.

Márquez was recognised with the Nobel Prize for Literature 1982. Very sadly, it was announced in 2012 that his writing career was effectively at an end after the onset of dementia. He leaves a fine body of work for future generations to enjoy, including ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’ and ‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold’ amongst his best-known novels. He also leaves several titles which, to date, are only published in Spanish. Our Private Spanish Lessons could equip you with the skills you need to discover them.

Chilean author Isabel Allende, sometimes called “the world’s most widely read Spanish-language author”, has achieved great commercial success with novels such as La Casa de los Espiritus (The House of the Spirits) and La Ciudad de las Bestias (City of the Beasts) among her many published works.

Perhaps the key to Allende’s great success is her flowing style of prose which is often likened to a skilled storyteller telling a tale orally. Allende often uses complex and very long sentences; she frequently digresses and repeats herself, just as a person telling a story tends to do, all of which adds to the appeal of her writing. At other times she creates impact by doing just the opposite and writing in the economical language of her journalistic past when she wants the action speaks for itself, a style she employs in some of her more brutal scenes to, in her own words, “grab the reader by the neck”.

Allende describes her writing as an organic process, one which she says she would be unable to do in any language other than her native Spanish, although she also speaks English well, having lived for many years in California. For such an acclaimed author, Allende remains very modest, and admits that her years in America have had a detrimental effect on her Spanish, to the point that she now needs a Spanish editor to correct mistakes and remove the American influences from her manuscripts.

Allende is a formidable writer who produces novels rich in emotion, vivid characters and strong plots. Her works are widely translated so if you need a few more Spanish lessons before you’re ready to tackle them in their original language, do make a point of discovering her in English.

Continuing our series on some of the most influential Spanish speakers, this week we take a look at the Chilean diplomat and politician Pablo Neruda who is hailed as one of the most important poets of the 20th century. Born Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto in 1904, Neruda was something of a prodigy, having composed his first poems at the age of ten and been published by the time he reached his early teens.

By 1920 he had adopted the pen name Pablo Neruda, in honour of the Czech poet Jan Neruda. Neruda is celebrated for the wide variety of styles in which he wrote. He is renowned for his use of metaphor and imagery, and first came to critical acclaim at the age of just 19 with his second major published work, a series of erotic poems entitled Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada or, as it was translated in English, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. His other works include styles as diverse as historical epics, political manifestos and surrealist poetry. He also penned his Memoirs detailing his early life in rural Chile, his student years in Santiago, his political career and his exile from and later return to Chile after the banning of communism, of which he was a fervent supporter.

Neruda’s poetry ultimately won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971, just two years before his death. His works have been widely translated and you can enjoy many of them in English, though others have been deemed too difficult to translate and are best experienced in their original Spanish. Need some help to attain the required language skills? Try our Private Spanish Lessons.

 

In 1605, the first volume of the most influential piece of Spanish literature was published. Indeed, it is today considered one of the greatest works of literature ever written in any language. Its full title in Spanish is El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, or The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha. The novel by Cervantes follows the adventures of Alonso Quijano, who reinvents himself as Don Quixote and embarks on a quest to revive chivalry, accompanied by his squire, Sancho Panza.

Cervantes was undoubtedly a master storyteller, but we want to focus on the language of Don Quixote, which helped to make it the masterpiece it is, and was also instrumental in cementing the position that Spanish enjoys today. The name of the main character is a play on words in several different ways, not least because of its hint at a combination of the name Quijano with the Spanish augmentative suffix -ote, suggesting ‘The Great Quijano’, which is particularly apt given the character’s delusions of grandeur. The central character speaks in Old Castilian, a medieval form of Spanish he copies from his chivalric books, though the people he meets struggle to understand him as a result – the humorous effect being much admired at the time of publication.

The novel gave rise to many well-known Spanish phrases and is even thought to be the origin of the English saying ‘The proof of the pudding is in the eating’, derived from a not entirely accurate 1700 translation of the book when in fact the original text actually read ‘You will see when the eggs are fried’. If you haven’t discover this classic yet, you really should put it on your must-read list, in English at first perhaps, then later with the help of Spanish Lessons you can enjoy the novel as it was originally written.

If you’ve already started Spanish language lessons with us then you have probably learned the 2nd person singular personal pronoun tú which is used in informal situations such as when speaking to friends, relatives and people you know well. 

However, if you should travel to Latin America, you are likely to encounter a different form altogether. In Argentina, you will notice that the word used for the informal ‘you’ is ‘vos’. Though you will be understood if you use tú, it is highly unlikely that you will hear anyone use it, unless of course they happen to be visiting from Spain! Vos is used in other parts of Latin America too, for example in parts of Colombia, and to a lesser extent in Venezuela, Ecuador, Chile and southern Mexico, though it is only in Argentina that it is used to the exclusion of tú.

Vos is conjugated rather differently to tú, typically taking a form where the accent is on the finally syllable with endings of -ás to the stem of ar verbs, -és for er verbs, and -í for ir verbs, dropping the stem change that comes with tú in standard Spanish. There are some irregular forms too, notably the second person of the verb ser (to be) is sos, meaning the equivalent of tú eres is vos sos.

If you are planning a trip to South America, don’t panic thinking that you need to learn all of the new forms, you will quickly pick up the way it’s used by listening to others. And if you have any questions, our native tutors will be happy to help you out.

Last week we were extolling the virtues of taking an interest in culture as way to boost your motivation when learning a language. This week we turn our attention to a medium whose claim to being cultural is somewhat dubious, but nevertheless it is a fixture on television screens across the Spanish-speaking world and beyond, and it could help you to engage with the language in new ways: the Latin American soap opera.

You might wonder what value there is in watching what is often thought of as low-budget, low-brow entertainment such as this, but any and every means of practising a language can be helpful in order to supplement your conventional studies. Latin American soaps also give you some exposure to modern slang and expressions which you may not necessarily pick up in the classroom, but which will certainly help you to grasp everyday conversation when you visit any Spanish-speaking country.

Soap operas are hugely popular across Spain and Latin America and you can find them quite readily to stream online or download. You may find it helpful to seek out those that have English subtitles initially, but as you get more accustomed to the dialogue, you will hopefully find yourself needing to read them less and less often, and eventually do without them altogether. But be warned, though it may start out as an academic exercise, those plotlines can be seriously addictive!

If you live in London, don’t forget that we can help you with private or group Spanish lessons with native tutors, whether you’re a beginner, intermediate or more advanced student.