Visual Link Spanish(TM) Newsletter - Volume 6 Issue 40

Current # of Subscribers: 204,229

This issue:
1. NEW - Cultural Spanish Recipes
2. Testimonial
3. Weekly Spanish Lesson - “Advanced”
4. Words of the Week
5. Ask Dave Section - “How Can I Help You - En Que Puedo..”
6. Culture Lesson - “El Correo y El Banco”
7. Responses to Past Newsletters

========================
Complete Course on Sale
========================

>> At last, Be Successful with Spanish <<

Find success by learning sentence structure and communication skills
with the effective teaching format of Visual Link Spanish™. If you
aren’t conversational in 30 days, you get a full refund!

- Click for Sale Info! -

-http://www.learnspanishtoday.com/complete_newsletter.htm

This offer includes the complete Visual Link Spanish(TM) Course with
free shipping and a free dictionary! Remember your 6-month Money-Back
Guarantee - you’ll learn Spanish Guaranteed or your money back!

* With 30-60 minutes a day, five times a week, you will become
conversational in 30 days or less guaranteed - or your money back.

===============================
NEW! - Cultural Spanish Recipes
===============================

We are excited to implement a cultural Spanish recipe section to our
newsletter. We welcome your tasty Spanish recipes including the
originating countries (if available), accompanying pictures where
possible without copyrights and any interesting notes or comments
about the recipe.

We appreciate this important cultural connection around the globe
celebrating the all-important food traditions of the Spanish-speaking
people.

Please email recipes and pictures to: mercedes@learnspanishtoday.com

=======================================
Visual Link Spanish(TM) Testimonial –
=======================================

Hola,

Todo está bien. I’ve been listening to the audios quite a bit. I
think your method of teaching is great. It’s very practical since you
learn how to say a few sentences right from the beginning. I think
that also builds confidence. I downloaded a some Spanish songs and
have been listening to them over and over. I remember when I first
played them it seemed like it was all one big word, but then I could
eventually hear each word- regardless if I knew what it meant I could
usually hear each word separately. Just the other day I was listening
to a song and then all of a sudden it hit me… Wow! I actually know
what a sentence or two means in this song! It’s great to have a
Spanish song stuck in your head, but even better when you know what
it means!

I’ve also found a few small children’s books online. It has been fun
trying to understand the really simple sentences. I’ve made friends
with a few free online translator websites. They help. Another thing
is that I’ve been going on PalTalk (on my computer) and going into
the chat rooms and listening and reading. There are even a few rooms
on there where you can practice your Spanish and Spanish speakers can
practice English. I remember the first time I went into one I noticed
lots of people saying “jejeje” or “jajaja”. I thought, “What in the
‘mundo’ could that mean?” I don’t understand 98% of what goes on in
the room but I didn’t even know where to start when I seen that. And
then it hit me that “j” has an “h” sound. Ah! They were laughing
about something!

Again, thanks for your program. It has helped me tremendously.

- Josh

=======================================
Weekly Spanish Lesson—Advanced Lesson
=======================================

This week’s lesson comes from the complete Visual Link Spanish™
course. Click below for Part V of your fun, interactive lesson
Sentence Building Lessons.

To check it out, click here:
http://www.learnspanishtoday.com/learn/advanced.htm

==================
Words of the Week
==================

Taken from our complete CD-ROM course —–

Monday / Where is? / ¿Dónde está?
Tuesday / Wall Street / la calle Wall
Wednesday / the park / el parque
Thursday / the mall / el centro comercial
Friday / the supermarket / el supermercado
Saturday / the store / la tienda
Sunday / the beach / la playa

Click Here to login and access your free membership and lessons.
http://www.learnspanishtoday.com/login.phtml

=====================================
The Official “Ask Dave” Section —–
=====================================

Question

First of all, let me say I love receiving your newsletter each week.
I am trying to find the spanish translation for the phrase: How may I
help you? or What can I do for you?

I sometimes have spanish-speaking customers who have very little
english or none at all & I am trying to find this phrase in spanish?
Can you help?

Gracias,

Agnes

Answer

Hola Agnes,

The phrase “How can I help you?” in Spanish is, ¿En qué puedo
servirle? This literally means “In what can I serve you?” It is found
in the telephone section (section 11) of the complete course. All of
the phrases on the bottom half of the page can be used in every-day
business as well as on the phone. Most of the phrases on the top of
the page can be used only while on the phone. For example, you can
answer the phone saying “aló” but you would never say “aló” in person
(while not on the phone). For more info, refer to section 11 in your
course.

Dave

==================================
Culture —– El Correo y El Banco
==================================

Before we get into this week’s topic, I just wanted to let many of
you subscribers know briefly about our Spanish course. Many of you
have asked if we recommend a particular course to learn Spanish. I
just wanted to give you a link to our website
www.learnspanishtoday.com where you can take a look at our course,
see our free course demos and get more information about our course.
To give you an idea of the effectiveness of our course, Visual Link
Spanish™ has been taught to thousands of people around the world, to
major corporations and at the university level for the past four
years. If you have any questions about it, please e-mail me
personally at dave@learnspanishtoday.com.

Now onto this week’s topic. The postal system in Latin America is
very different from that here in the U.S. If you’ve ever lived in
Latin America and waited for a letter from another country you know
what I mean. When I lived there it would take anywhere from weeks to
usually months for letters to arrive from friends and family.

Needless to say, the postal system is very slow and quite different
from ours. When I would receive packages with coveted items like
cookies and candies from the U.S., usually they had been opened first
by a Latino postal worker to see if there was anything of value in
them.

I had an American friend who also lived in Latin America and wanted
his mom to send down his high school letterman jacket. She carefully
wrapped it and sent it through the normal mail system. He checked the
post office after a month and nothing had arrived. Then he checked
every week for the next few months and still nothing arrived. Finally
after quite a few months he went into the post office and noticed
that a postal worker was wearing his letterman jacket. He got upset
and claimed that the postal worker had taken his jacket! The postal
carrier denied that any wrong doing had happened and kept “his” new
letterman jacket.

Now for another humorous postal story. I had a different American
friend that also lived in Latin America for an extended period of
time. He lived in many of the lower-income pueblos where they didn’t
have many of the niceties of life. For example, there weren’t toilet
seats in any of the apartments in the cities where he lived. He
ordered a new toilet seat from his family in the U.S. a few months
before Christmas and it came through just in time. It was opened by
the postal workers but wasn’t “claimed” by them and went right
through to him. We laughed at him, but he was thrilled to get a small
part of his former life back.

Because the postal situation is somewhat less reliable in many Latin
American regions, as you can imagine, people don’t usually send their
bills or payments through the mail. Many of them take their payments
directly to companies where the payment is due and pay by hand using
cash.

Many pay bills by cash because of the bank situation. In some Latin
countries, inflation rates can be astronomical. If people keep money
in the bank, in the worst cases they can lose the majority of the
value of their money virtually overnight. Because of that, many don’t
have bank accounts and as a result, they don’t use checks or credit
cards either. I knew someone in Latin America personally who had
around $30,000 in the bank which was devalued to just a few thousand
in only a few days. OUCH!!!

To our international subscribers, what is the bank situation like in
your countries and how is the inflation rate? Is it common for people
to own credit cards or use checks?

Practical Life Lessons:

1. If you live in Latin America, putting large amounts of money in
their banks is not recommended. An account in your original country
is preferred and money can be transferred to you on a regular basis.

2. If you visit Latin America, many places don’t accept credit cards
or checks - cash only. Be sure to take some cash and get instructions
to ATM locations as there are fewer of them available.

3. If you are doing business in the U.S. and cater to many Latinos,
it’s important to realize that many will pay you with cash and only a
few will use checks or credit cards. It was amazing to me that, as my
company taught English classes to Latinos a few years ago, probably
over 98% of Latinos paid for the classes with cash.

Sneak peek at next week: “Spanish Punctuation, Dates and Capital
Letters”

¡Hasta luego! (”Until later”)

David S. Clark — President / Director
Visual Link Spanish(TM)
Fun, Interactive Spanish Courses
http://www.learnspanishtoday.com
dave_c@learnspanishtoday.com

=============================
Responses to Past Newsletters
=============================

Response #1

Hola,

I think I just saw those images of the Nazca shapes in the nueva
pelicula: Indiana Jones.

In your newsletter (periodico/boletin?) scientists pregunta, “How
were they built if the people didn’t have airplanes to see them from
above?” My guess would be that ellos utilizaron fórmulas
matemáticas… Ellos probably drew una pequeña versión primero, and
then figured out how to enlarge each sección to recreate uno mucho
grande shape!

Gracias por los periodicos/boletines interesantes,

Dora Crow

©2007 U.S. Institute of Languages
1893 East Skyline Drive Ste. 105
Ogden, UT 84403
1-866-977-2647

If you no longer wish to receive communication from us:
http://visuallinklanguages.net/app/r.asp?ID=1020733575&ARID=0&D=

To update your contact information:
http://visuallinklanguages.net/app/r.asp?c=1&ID=1020733575&D=