Help with Spanish Language?

Question

hello, I'm in the BEGINNER stage of trying to learn some basic Spanish. I have been using audio lessons (Pimsleurs Spanish 1). There are a few things that confuse me, regarding certain sentences...

1. "ustel abla ingles"- 'ustel' means 'you', alba means 'you speak' and 'ingles' means 'english. This doesn't make much sense because it translates into 'you you speak english'. I have heard 'ustel' being said before phrases that start with 'you' several times. Also at the end of phrases as well:"entiende ustel" which would mean 'you understand you'. I'm a bit puzzled. Am i translating wrong? or not interpreting this right?

2. if bueno means 'good' then why is it said as 'buenos' in phrases like 'buenos dias'. wouldn't that mean 'goods day'. also if dia means 'day' then why is it said diaS' with an 's'. The sentence "goods days" doesn't seem right.

3. Is there an easy way to determine whether a word is masculine or feminine? (It is tricky having to chose the correct version of 'buenos')

Answer 1

I'm sure you'll receive lots of answers on this.

There are FOUR ways of expressing 'you' in castillian Spanish: tú, vostros, usted and ustedes. The first two are sing and plural familiar and the last two are sing. and plu. formal.

A quirk in Spanish is that usted and ustedes take the 3rd person part of the verb, like it, he, she, they. Habla simply means (it/he/she/you) speaks. Without 'usted', you wouldn't know if you were saying 'he speaks English', 'she speaks English' etc.

Likewise 'entiende usted?' If you just said 'Entiende?' this could mean does he understand, does she understand, does it understand. In practice, you'd probably say simply 'Entiende?' if in a formal conversation with someone, because the other possiblilities would not make sense.

Bueno/buenos as in buenos días is one of those mysteries of Spanish - just accept it! Same with goodnight - buenas noches.

You'll soon start to guess the gender of most words correctly. Most ending in 'o' are masculine and most ending in 'a' are feminine; but as in all languages, there a quite a few exceptions, like 'la mano' = the hand.

Best of luck!

Answer 2

1. In Spanish, questions are usually asked in the form of statements, but you can tell that they're questions by the tone of voice. When you see them written down, the sign ¿ comes at the beginning, which is also a tip off that what follows is a question. Usted is the polite form and if you simply left it off and used the verb on its own, you'd normally get your message across. As you will have noticed, it takes the third person and so you are really asking "does he/she speak English?"
"¿Entiende Usted?" is one of the comparatively rare occasions when you invert the verb and the subject. Usted is the subject. If it were the object, you would have to add the preposition "a", eg. ¿Entiende Usted a este chico?"

2. Buenos dias and buenas noches may take some getting used to, but at this stage simply say them without pondering too much on their origins, which go back many centuries.

3. Masculine words often end in -o and feminine words in -a or -ad. There are some exceptions, one of which you probably know already, "el idioma", imported from the Greek.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/index.shtml
http://spanish.about.com/od/tipsforlearningspanish/u/start.htm
http://www.studyspanish.com/
http://www.spanish-teaching.com/blog/Spanishforbeginners

Answer 3

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Answer 4

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