Visual Link Spanish(TM) Newsletter - Volume 6 Issue 43

Current # of Subscribers: 274,571

This issue:
1. NEW - Cultural Spanish Recipes
2. Testimonial
3. Weekly Spanish Lesson - “Survival Expressions”
4. Words of the Week
5. Ask Dave Section - “Singular and Plural with Verbs”
6. Culture Lesson - “Getting Around in Latin America”

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NEW! - Cultural Spanish Recipes
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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: elise@learnspanishtoday.com

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Visual Link Spanish(TM) Testimonial –
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Hola! ¿Cómo está?

Gracias for your email My husband is a native speaker from Mexico I
needed the course to link sentences properly.This is a great course.

Thanks

Jill Rios

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Weekly Spanish Lesson—Survival Expressions
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For this week’s lesson, click below to learn 12 basic Spanish
Survival expressions with audio. You’ll hear María from Mexico model
each.

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

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Words of the Week
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Taken from our complete CD-ROM course —–

Monday / Where are you? (formal - if you use a title for someone) /
¿Dónde está usted?
Tuesday / Where are you? (informal - if you are on a first-name basis
with someone) / ¿Dónde estás tú?
Wednesday / Where are all of you? / ¿Dónde están ustedes?
Thursday / How do I get to…? / ¿Cómo llego a…?
Friday / How far is the…? / ¿Qué tan lejos está el/la…?
Saturday / museum / museo
Sunday / gift shop / tienda de regalos

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

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The Official “Ask Dave” Section —–
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Question

How would I say ‘I hope you have a good day’ to a single female? I
know I read “¡Que tengan un buen día!” but would ‘tengan’ change for
the singular?

Thanks

Richard

Answer

Hola Richard,

First of all, verbs in Spanish are changed (conjugated) according to
how many you people you are talking to or about (one person vs. two
or more). They are also conjugated depending on whether you are
talking directly to someone in a formal or informal setting. However,
verb conjugation does not depend on whether the person is a male or
female.

To answer your question, if you are on an informal basis (where you
are comfortable enough to talk to her using her first name), you
would say “¡Que tengas un buen día”. If you are on an informal basis
with her (where you would use a title like Mrs. etc.), you would say
“¡Que tenga un buen día”.

On a different but similar topic, if you use adjectives to describe a
person, you do have to change the adjective to masculine, feminine,
singular and/or plural.

Thanks,

Dave

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Culture —– Getting Around in Latin America
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When you ask people for directions in a Latin American country, if
they know where your destination is, you are in luck and they will
give you directions like those found in the “Locations” section of
our Complete Spanish Course. However, if they don’t know, they
usually won’t let you know that they don’t know. They will instead
say, “Está por allí” or, in English, “It’s over there.” Then they’ll
usually wave their arm and point to some indefinite place. If this
happends to you, it should be a quick red flag that the person isn’t
quite sure where the place is. If this happens and especially if you
are on foot, be sure to ask at least 3 to 4 people where the place is
as you get closer to your destination; eventually you’ll get there. I
can’t tell you how many times this happened to me when I lived in
Latin America.

Like the U.S., where many of us men don’t want to stop and ask for
directions (it’s kind of a pride thing because we’d have to admit
that we really didn’t know where we were going), in Latin America
many men act similarly and don’t want to admit that they don’t know
where a certain destination is. Of course, in both cultures, there
are woman that do the same thing, but generally us men are the most
guilty.

Now back to our original scenario. Let’s say that you want show off
your newly acquired Spanish, and ask where the “Vásquez Building” is,
so you say, “¿Dónde está el edificio Vasquez?” And, let’s say that
the person knows exactly where it is and rattles off some long
description in Spanish and you have no idea what they said. What
should you do?

I just talked to a neighbor last week who had an experience just like
that. She was in Latin America with her boss representing an adoption
agency last month. They had to get to a certain building and she
said, “¿Dónde está . . .” Her boss was so impressed that she knew
Spanish, and after a lengthy description, the boss said, “Well, what
did he say?”. She said, “I have NO idea!”; they both laughed. She
ended up calling me last week and now wants to purchase our course
which has 13 major conversation sections, including a great locations
section, so she can communicate better in Spanish and work through
almost any situation.

If any of you have had similar experiences, please let us know; we’d
love to hear about them. Also, if any of you native speakers out
there have more to add on this topic, please feel free to write in.
We’d love to hear from you.

Side Note: In Latin American miles are not used when speaking about
directions or distances. Instead of miles, kilometers are used. For
your information, one mile equals approximately 1.6 kilometers. So,
if you drive 30 miles, that would be equivalent to 48 kilometers.
And, if you drive at 65 miles per hour that is the same as 104
kilometers per hour!

Sneak peek at next week: “Gringoisms”

¡Qué le vaya bien! (May everything go well for you!)

David S. Clark — President / Director
U.S. Institute of Languages
dave_c@learnspanishtoday.com
http://www.learnspanishtoday.com
866-9SPANISH

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1893 East Skyline Drive Ste. 105
Ogden, UT 84403
1-866-977-2647

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