People speak a language. The language grows and changes. Patterns emerge, we call those patterns/norms grammar. We codify the norms so that others can figure out what is going on. Who knew? Grammar is supposed to help us. Since language happens first and grammar second, sometimes there are breaks in the pattern. You can get really mad at those exceptions, or you can simply find a way to deal with them. To deal with them means to find the patterns in what initially appears to be a cruel conspiracy designed specifically against you. If you have every taken or taught an ESL class, you will notice that there seem to be more exceptions in the English language than there are patterns. Just look at a list of irregular verbs. Spanish verbs are cumbersome for many of us because every time the speaker changes, the ending changes. Argh. It helps me to think of the endings as both time markers and subject pronouns. Despite the seeming complexity, there are some ways to look at the conjugations and find the pattern. I am going to start with Preterit = past tense. The preterit tense is used when answering the questions: "Who did it?" "What happened?" This tense is essential for telling stories and jokes. Rather than starting with the regular, let's start with the exceptions since these are high frequency verbs. (If they weren't high frequency, the irregularity would have become obsolete. That's how it works. So there.) I may have forgotten a couple of verbs on this list, but it should be mostly complete. Learn these and you should be good. The rest of this post gets into more detail than most of you probably need. Sorry, I am back in the classroom this week after a two year hiatus, got carried away. Proceed only if you find yourself in need of a grammar detour. 2 Reminders: Irregular verbs in the preterit DO NOT have accent marks. If an irregular verb is the root of another verb, that verb keeps the irregularity. EX. TENER/DeTENER. PONER/comPONER
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A confident voice came from the back of the car, "I love the word poop." The speaker? My daughter, five years old or so at the time. At twelve, she still has a quieter but lasting appreciation for the word. I must admit that poop is pretty satisfying. A very pleasing palindrome.* On more awkward days, a convincing onomatopoeia. Not many words are so distinguished.
There are a whole group of words that when pronounced with certain Spanish dialects, Caribbean among them, strike an equally deep chord with me. Not for the pureness of their form, but instead I delight in their efficiency. The words in question end with -ado or -ada, and the "d" sound is dropped. If you are at a fish market, you will never hear anyone selling pescado. They will sell pesca'o. This pronunciation is so prevalent that I once had a man argue with me that pesca'o is what you buy and pescado is what you eat once you get it home. This may have stemmed from the fact that when you go to pescar (fish) that you are looking for a pez or peces. Only once you have caught them do they become pescado which, by the way, means fished. Why shouldn't the unsold form be pesca'o? I especially like the lost "d" effect with words such as fregado = fed up (Am.) and cansado = tired. Cansado is pronounced "cansa'o" or "cansa'a." If you are so tired that you can't bring yourself to exert the effort of the "d," you're very tired in my book. In fact, you're pooped. *I have always been a bit disappointed that the word for palindrome is not one. Oh well. If you were going to name an RV Campground what name would you give it? Give this some thought before you continue reading. I am not planning to open a campground any time soon, however they are a distinctly North American curiosity, as far as I know, and worth some consideration.
There are some trends in the names of these beloved institutions. From what I can tell, you should have the word park, resort, or campground in the name. Then you go with a place or landform name to round things out. Around where I live my imaginary park might go with the name Blue Ridge RV Resort or Valley/Mountain View Campground. However, I find those names to be uninspired. Recently, I set out on a road trip and, much to my delight, new possibilities arose. Driving across the state of Florida, I saw a trailer park/RV campground named “Alpine Village.” In case you have never been to Florida, there is nothing alpine about central Florida. In fact, it used to be the bottom of the ocean and is the poster child for karst terrain, sink holes and all. When I think of village, I don’t usual think of RV campgrounds. Did the owners think we wouldn't notice the contradiction between the name and reality? My first thought was that maybe they felt that naming it alpine village would make it so. However, I think I have come up with a much better hypothesis: since two negatives make a positive, why shouldn't they feel that it worked for naming their corner of paradise? When I open my RV park in a yet undisclosed location in central Virginia, I may well follow the example of my friends to the south and name it Ocean View Park. I am open to suggestions. Many had a laugh at Dan Quayle's gaffs (some, I imagine, falsely attributed to him) when he was VP. He purportedly said: "I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn't study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people." Maybe we shouldn't have laughed quite as gleefully. Cringe?, certainly, cough?, sure, but Latin could have helped him communicate. Let me explain. When I took a summer class with Joel Rini at UVa, I started to become aware of concrete examples of the Latin-Spanish connection. Yes, I knew Spanish was a Romance Language. But without any knowledge of Latin, knowing it was a Romance language did not forward my understanding of Spanish. It was Rini who pointed out that many of the "irregular" verbs in Spanish weren't irregular, they were Latin. Here is an example with Ser = To Be in the Preterit (past tense)
I did not run out and sign up for a Latin course, but it was one of those "it's nice to know there is a reason for all of these confusing exceptions" moments in my educational career.
How about other words? There are many, as you might imagine. There are entire volumes dedicated to this topic. Don't worry, this is a blog post, we'll keep it short(ish). Here's one example where a little knowledge of language history helps. Remember the periodic table? Remember how annoying it was the letters didn't always match with the element? For example, Iron was Fe. Fe? Really? I is Iodine, why can't Iron be Ir, or In, or something with an I? I don't know the answer to that, but I can explain where we got Fe. In Latin, Iron is Ferrum. Fe=Iron. That's all you need to know for the periodic table. This little bit of knowledge can also help you with Spanish. Somewhere along the line a new letter, H, emerged and some "F's" became "H's." This fact does not help with the word "Iron" since that has nothing to do with Latin, but stay with me, and I will show you how it helps with Spanish. Over the years /ferrum/ with the dative* form /ferro/ became hierro which in turn = iron. The /e/ became /ie/ -- very common linguistic phenomenon and /f/ became /h/, also very common. As a result, the word for tool, herramiento or thing made of iron, also makes a lot more sense with a little bit of Latin. Note: The "h" is not aspirated in Spanish; it is silent. The /f/ to /h/ also helps with other words. /Facere/ means to make in Latin. Facere became facer which then became hacer which still means "to make." (FYI: This also explains why the word like satisfacer and hacer share the same conjugation patterns; they share the same root.) If you squint, facere and hacer are the same word; hacer is the Latin that Quayle, and arguably the rest of us, should have studied harder in school. *I don't remember what dative means, but you can look that up. I took Japanese for two years in high school. After one week in Spanish class I could communicate more than I could with my two years worth of Japanese. I had a good teacher for Japanese, but only some of the katakana words had anything that I could tie back to English and the rest of it seemed to have nothing at all to do with my native language. Well, I probably could have studied more too. The advantage in Spanish were all of those lovely cognates. Just change the stress on a syllable and presto -- Español. Isn't it nice that the words cognate and cognado are cognates?*
Cognates are easy when the word is written almost exactly the same way. Calculator = Calculadora, Comet = Cometa (m). But there are some other tricks to help you decode the cognates. Really easy is to remember that the -tion ending is going to be -ción, -sión or –xión which are all pronounced the same. Well, the same as each other, not the same as -tion. There is no "sh" sound in Spanish unless you hang out in some parts of Costa Rica. Connection = Conexión Connotation = Connotación Replace the -ty ending from English with -dad or -tad. Nice side benefit? All of these are feminine. Faculty = Facultad City = Ciudad (yeah, there is a "u" but not bad) Clarity = Claridad The past participle in English usually ends with an -ed and in Spanish with an -ado or -ido. This makes forming new nouns and adjectives fun and easy too. Fascinated = Fascinado Or change a verb into the past participle and see if it helps you understand a new Spanish verb. valer becomes valido which looks a bit like valid I'd say. Then you have a good starting point for deciphering. Remember that you can't have a word beginning with a "S + consonant" combination. Just add an "e." Station = Estación (also means season, no help from English for that definition) Special = Especial There are a couple of other spelling tricks that will help you. The only double consonants that exist in Spanish are cc, ll, nn, rr. [Fun fact: ll (pronounced somewhere between a "y" and a "j") and rr (never found at the start of a word, this is where you really get to roll the "r") were considered letters in the alphabet until a few years ago.]The letter k is not in any Spanish words so you need the letter c before a,o,u or the qu before an e or i to get that sound. There isn't any w either unless the word is a latecomer to the language. This is why whisky can be spelled güisqui and wow becomes guau. Kiosk=Quiosco (a quiosco can also be a corner store probably because it was a kiosk before it became a tienda, but at least you know you are going somewhere to buy something.) Professor=Profesor/a (only one "s" folks) After a while you get confident and try to turn everything into Spanish with your new tricks. This may get you into trouble. Exit = Salida and ≠ Éxito = Success Embarrassed = Avergonzado and ≠ embarazada = pregnant Excited = Animado ≠Excitado at least not unless you meant to say you were aroused. Brave is not necessarily ≠ Bravo which can mean brave in a battle but usually has more to do with being aggressive. A bull might be described as being bravo. If you want to be brave, try valiente which just also happens to be a friendly cognate. I am sure I will think of more cognate tips for a future posting. This is all I have for now. *Sadly, when I point this out to some of my students, they just look confused. Confession time When my daughter was a newborn I watched quite a bit of morning shows in my new mom stupor. (That's the confession for the first paragraph.) During one such program there was a woman who was cheerfully giving advice about how to make the penny stretch. Although I was given time off work to be with my daughter, not all of it was paid, so I perked up at any ideas to help save money. The woman's advice might have been good but it was all lost when she demonstrated her final idea. She said, "To save money on laundry detergent, just add some water to the detergent bottle to water it down." My brain unclouded for a moment and I wanted the throw something at the TV. Did she get paid to say something that innocuous? How could I get her job? I agree that most of my clothes are not that dirty so the watered-down detergent wouldn't be a problem, but rather than watering down the bottle, I would argue that simply using less detergent in each load would do the trick. It's the same water after all. I have wondered since then if she ever made that connection and revamped her talking points in future presentations.
Here are a couple of my "duh" moments aka "How did I miss that?" Fortunately for me, my "duh" moments have not yet been televised. Thermostat Wars In college I rented a house with a group of friends. I like to think that we were a pretty practical bunch. When the winter came along we noticed that the downstairs rooms were rather cold. Heat rises, yes, but does it rise that much we asked ourselves. Finally we called the landlords. They sent someone over who pointed out to us that the lamp in the hallway was placed directly below the thermostat. Problem fixed? Yes. Our finest moment? No. ABC Twinkle During my daughter's toddler years she would happily listen to a particular rendition of the ABC's over and over again. It was on a cassette, my car had a replay function which meant I could put it on a loop. (At this moment you can show your age and get excited about the fact that I had a cassette and a cassette player.) On a particularly memorable car ride it looped for four and a half hours before she finally fell asleep during the last fifteen minutes of the trip. I mention this to underscore how well I knew the tune. On another car trip started humming "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" for her and she started singing the ABC's. This was the moment that I realized they were both the same tune. How had I never make that connection? Just add water. Feel free to share your own "duh" moments. Last night I tried to make a phone call only to be confronted with an odd message that read, "emergency calls only." I tried calling the provider -- I was put on hold. I looked on the provider's website, nothing. I finally searched "emergency calls only on my cell phone" and was met with very helpful advice. I followed the advice, took out the SIM card and put it back in. Hmm, the cell phone equivalent to the age old restart the computer technique. You don't know why it works, but it does. Resolving this issue made me feel pretty satisfied. Maybe even smart.
[Transitional Leap Alert] This incident reminded me of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Actually it reminded me that I had once read something about people's ability to self-assess their own aptitude and Wikipedia helped me find the name of the study and then I found those who disagree with the conclusions of the findings but never-mind about them. The basic premise of the D-K effect is that inept people overrate their ability and those with ability tend to underestimate their competence. This means we all think we are average or above average no matter who we are. Just thinking about that hurts my brain. Should me success in fixing my cell phone be celebrated as aptitude or is the fact that I had no idea what to do immediately better understood as a clear symptom of my Luddite affliction? I am below average on technological skills, however, for that illusive moment last night I felt adept because I conquered one corner of my ineptitude. Prepositions are quite possibly evil. They don't make any sense and seem arbitrary because, well, basically they don't and often they are. I am at the store, I am in the store, I am going to the store, What did you get from the store, This is for the store... And those were easy examples. They are little words added all over the place to purportedly indicate a relationship between two words. Whatever. Learn a new language and prepositions quickly become your new worst enemy. Just because at means en some of the time, it does not mean that they are interchangeable all of the time: I am at the store = Estoy en la tienda. I will see you at 5 o'clock = Nos vemos a las 5. Not to mention the favorite English speaker's dilemma with Spanish: por or is it para. Before you start to feel sorry for yourself, how is a non-native English speaker supposed to make sense of get off, get on, get in, get over, get to, get by, get through (some of those are prepositions some of the time and adverbs at other times, I think) only then be confronted with baby's got back*? And then there's the question we have all had for years: why isn't shut up the opposite of shut down?
Even as a native speaker, I have my own personal preposition issues. I still say "Where are you at?" from time to time; I think that's a New Jersey thing. Until not very long ago I would say a quarter of rather than a quarter to the hour. Of course, now no one understands either expression, and I say the appropriate number between one and twelve + forty-five. Digital clocks took care of that particular preposition issue even if we are still stuck with my awkwardly dangling at. What does all this have to do with the title of this post? I wanted to remind you the annoying quality of the preposition as an introduction to my favorite Spanish grammar rule, and it got a bit long-winded. It is very difficult to find a grammar rule that is not then followed by innumerable exceptions which is why the rule in question is oh so very elegant. Here it is: when a verb follows a preposition, often acting like the English gerund when you translate, the verb will always be in the infinitive. That is beautiful. Preposition + verb = Preposition + infinitive. Por ejemplo: Para seguir adelante voy a salir sin mirar atrás. * Back is not a preposition. Input: I have never taken a marketing class, and I only took one Economics* class in college.
Output: I am easily impressed by information that explains how the market supposedly works. I put that out there because while I enjoyed reading Contagious, I recognize that my credentials may be suspect as an evaluator. I will spare you my ignorance and keep this entry short. As the title states the book is about why things catch on and why other things don't. That's what it sets out to do, and does so in an engaging manner. The parts that stuck in my mind were the explanations about failed campaigns. I especially enjoyed the section discussing the "Just Say No" to drugs campaign, how it didn't work, and may have actually helped to normalize drug use. I don't know why I derive a certain kind of malicious delight from such anecdotes. *I took Econ 101 and got an A. This is the only class I have ever taken where I managed to get an A without understanding the material. I think I managed to do well because I was able to do the math the course required from me. I am not sure why it never made sense. Still an experience that has me shaking my head from time to time. Is it spring forward or fall forward? This is the kind of thing I have to look up every year, twice a year. What's the internet good for anyway if I can't use it to look up such things? It's spring forward in case you were wondering. And to those of you who were born knowing such things, be smug if you need to be. (Interested folks can find a short history of this tradition on Snopes.) The clocks changing, like the weather, is a very safe topic to take up with people you don't know that well. And, people have strong and differing views about it which makes it a tad more interesting than the weather. Plenty a year I have forgotten about it and showed up on the wrong side of the hour for something. Despite the embarrassment it has caused me over the years, I like the ritual and the power of changing time. Think about it, twice a year we get to add or subtract an hour to the day. Damn, we're cool. I am pretty sure that no energy is saved, but nor is there necessarily more expended than there would be if we refrained from changing the clock. So that can't be why I like this oddity. It has to be something about power or at least the reminder that there is more than one way to think about time, and, the fact that it's simply been a good conversation starter in early March and November since 2007*. In Panama there is no Daylight Saving Time. There are also no long summer nights even though every day is hot and humid no matter what month you find yourself in. The lack of long summer days has nothing to do with tradition or ritual, it has to do with the proximity to the equator. Daylight time just does not vary that much, you have about twelve hours of day and twelve hours of night every day of the year give or take about a half an hour. Once this equator detail is pointed out, it seems so obvious. Yet this is the kind of thing that can throw you for a moment when you are in a new place. Things that are so "normal" that you don't even realize are odd until they are examined from a different point of view. *Before 2007 clocks changed in April and October according to my new Snopes knowledge. |
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