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In my last article I started to talk about Spanish verb formations. In this article I want to talk specifically about verb conjugation books and a little about learning Spanish grammar in general.

For the most part the Spanish language is highly ordered. You can pretty much dissect any Spanish sentence and understand why it has been constructed in the way that it has, simply by learning some fundamental concepts about Spanish grammar. Once you understand those concepts you can use them to formulate other sentences.

My intention here is not to discuss in any great detail the workings of any particular aspect of Spanish grammar but rather to indicate those elements of Spanish grammar that are pretty much essential if you want to gain a good understanding of how the Spanish language works. Below I have divided these elements into four categories.

Spanish verb formations – Different tenses.
Gender – Forming masculine and feminine nouns and adjectives. Verbs and gender.
Types of words – Using prepositions / conjunctions / adverbs etc.
Sentence formation – How different words fit together in a sentence.

All of the above elements of Spanish grammar were included in the basic level Spanish textbook that I used when I first started to learn Spanish and in every other textbook that I have seen since.

I mentioned in my last article that you will want to buy a Spanish verb conjugation book in order to learn how Spanish verbs are formed. Not only can you use these books to understand and learn how different verbs should be formed in different tenses but you can also use them to learn which verbs fall into different formation categories. You can instantly tell for example if a new verb you have learnt is regular or irregular.

Verb conjugation books provide a constant reference. Every time you learn a new verb in Spanish how will you know how that verb should be formed in different tenses? You will have to refer to a verb conjugation book. Although you can often guess how a verb should be formed by looking at how it is spelt and whether it ends in AR, ER, or IR you can never really be sure.

Even when you have learnt how different verbs are formed in some of the most commonly used verb tenses you still may have to refer to a verb conjugation book to see how that verb is formed in a tense that is used in speech far less often!

Even when you are highly proficient in Spanish it is still quite likely that you will have to refer to a verb conjugation book from time to time. Even native Spanish speaking people have to use them occasionally! The truth is that there are thousands of different verbs that can be formed in so many different ways that it would be almost impossible to know and memorise how every verb should be formed and used in all types of situations!
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In this article I will illustrate the importance of learning a second language for the broadening of one’s life and opportunities.

Knowing a second language has it’s benefits and the importance of learning a second language is vastly underestimated.

The importance of learning a second language is greater today than ever. As the world keeps shrinking with greater advances in communications technology and modes of travel, people are moving around both physically and in cyberspace at an ever-increasing rate. Immigration and tourism are growing rapidly in many countries. You may live in a country with one “official” language but chances are that many other languages will be spoken in that country.

But how do you set about learning a foreign language?

Here are some tips.

1. Make sure you enjoy it. Make it fun. It will make the learning process easier for your brain.

2. Don’t get stressed out if you can’t remember words or phrases. Slowly it will all begin to fall into place.

3. Allocate enough time to study. Promise yourself you will study for “x” hours per week. If you are a student, or you work, don’t put too much pressure on yourself by thinking you will be able to study more than you actually find comfortable. This will be counter productive because you won’t enjoy it and you will become stressed (see points 1 and 2 above)

4. Learn with someone. It will be easier, and you will each have a “practice partner”

If you live in an area where your next door neighbors’ primary language is not your own, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to speak their language also? You can get to know them on a more personal basis, get invited to more parties and more easily ask for help if you need it. Of course, if you don’t care to talk to your neighbors or you live in an area where everyone speaks the same language, this would not apply. But what if you are the type of person who likes to spend a lot of time on-line? The Internet brings the world to your desktop! Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to chat with someone on the other side of the world in their own language?
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Note: This experience had to do with preserving Spanish for our kids but the principles are valid for anyone trying to help their kids speak and preserve any language and culture.

COUNTRY OF MANY PEOPLES
This country,,, (The authors raised their kids in the United States but they believe that their experience can be useful for people in other non-spanish-speaking countries.) This country is made up of people from all over the world. We or our parents came from Latin countries. We now live here. We function in two different worlds, the American world and the world of our parents. All of us live in these two different worlds in different ways. Some of us were born in the countries our parents came from; others of us were born here. This makes a difference in how and how much we live in our two worlds.

COUNTRY OF MANY LANGUAGES
The one thing that is most important in our parents’ world is their language which is also ours in different ways. The Spanish language of our parents is an issue to all of us every day. We may be proud to speak it well. We may be ashamed at not speaking it well. Some of us may have gone through periods of trying not to speak it because we wanted to speak English better. We may only speak it when we come across someone who needs help in understanding English. We may only remember some sayings of our grandparents or children’s songs taught to us by our parents.

You may want to review (or study it for the first time) your Spanish. We could only find one reference for you. It is expensive and is a textbook, not too appealing but complete. Take a look at Nuevos Mundos, Spanish for Native Speakers 2nd Edition, Workbook : Curso de espanol para estudiantes bilingues”

F. Bruce Robinson, assistant director in the National Endowment for the Humanities’ division of education programs asks “How does America preserve this important resource of people who are proficient in other languages? Instead of trying to depress the knowledge these students come to school with, we ought to be trying to build on it.” (Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb. 2, 1994, page A15)

OUR CHILDREN AND OUR LANGUAGE
We all want our children to speak the language of their heritage. We discount the opinions of those who say that it is better to forget Spanish and to concentrate on speaking English well. These people are just wrong. It does not hurt your English to speak another language; it helps. Spanish is particularly useful to children in their learning English vocabulary. Just today I taught my daughter the difference between vowels and consonants. Knowing Spanish really helped with the idea of the consonants. I told her that the consonants have no voice; they can only be pronounced with the vowels. The con-sonants suenan con the vowels.

But although most of us agree that it is a good thing for our kids to speak Spanish, most kids in the US whose parents were born in Latin American countries do not speak Spanish well.
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English has many words with more than one meaning – for example: ‘can’ – to be able to; tin receptacle. Many foreign language words also have multiple definitions. How can you ensure that you choose the correct one? Mistakes can be embarrassing!

Instead of searching for a single word, prepare a list of synonyms (words that mean close to the same thing).

========== The Word ‘Can’ ==========

If you want to find the word that means ‘can’ as in ‘to be able to’, your list might be something like this:

can

able

capable

Now, if you search for ‘can’ in foreign language dictionaries, you might discover the following in the English-[Foreign Language] section:

* German *

Büchse, Dose, Kanister, können, dürfen

You know that German capitalizes all nouns, so you eliminate the first three words. The main definition for ‘können’ is ‘to be able to’, and the main definition for ‘dürfen’ is ‘to be allowed to’. Therefore, the correct word in this case is likely ‘können’.
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