Day 6: You are farther along in Spanish than you thought.
Already moving pretty quickly. A brief recap of what you will have learned so far:
Day 1: Spanish is its own thing. Forget about how things are done in English; just learn how they are done in Spanish. Different language, different rules.
Day 2: Spanish nouns are either masculine or feminine. Learning words with their definite article (English "the"; Spanish "el" or "la") is the best way (but still not a perfect way) to remember a whether a noun is masculine or feminine. Words that use "la" are always feminine. Words that use "el" are almost always masculine.
Day 3: A, E, I, O, U, el burro sabe más que tú. (AH, EH, EE, OH, OO, ehl BOO-rroh SAH-bay MAHS kay tOO).
Day 4: "es" (ser) = "is" when describing how something is on an "ESsential" level, describing it's very "ESsence"; "está" (estar) = "is" when describing how something is as it passes through a "(E)STAge" or "(E)STAte" in space or time. Space and time, how appropriate for (E)STAR!
Day 5: More ways to say "is" depending on who you are talking about. Ser: soy, eres, es, somos, sois, son. Estar: estoy, estás, está, estamos, estáis, están.
So already you:
• have freed your mind to learn Spanish on its own terms,
• have learned a little about the importance of masculine and feminine words,
• know the basics of Spanish vowel pronunciation,
• have been given an introduction to the differences between the two "to be"
verbs—ser and estar, and
• are aware of all the ways to say "is" (and "am" and "are") in Spanish.
Let's move on by looking at some real Spanish and focusing on how much we can figure out already (and not worrying about what we can't figure out yet):
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BRUSELAS, 17 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) -
La Alta Representante de Política Exterior y de Seguridad Común de la UE, Catherine Ashton, ha apelado este sábado a Corea del Norte para que no realice el lanzamiento del satélite 'Kwangmyongsong-3', como ha anunciado Pyongyang, ya que supondría una violación de las resoluciones del Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU.
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This news article is reported from "Bruselas" on "17 Mar." and mentions Catherine Ashton of the European Union, so "Bruselas" would be Brussels, and the report is from March 17.
Making some educated guesses and substituting the resulting English words for the Spanish ones, the sentence might look like this (compare to the Spanish above):
The Alta Representative de Política Exterior y de Security Common de the EU, Catherine Ashton, ha appealed este sábado a Korea del North para que no realice the lanzamiento del satellite 'Kwangmyongsong-3', como ha announced Pyongyang, ya que supondría una violation de the resolutions of the Council of Security of the UN.
The important thing here is not to spend lots of time figuring out the whole thing, nor even to entirely trust our guesses, but instead to see what we can learn about Spanish from this exercise. Besides "Bruselas" = "Brussels," we can also guess (accurately) that "de" can mean "of" (and "del" and "de la" = "of the"). There also appears to be a tendency to put some related words in a different order in Spanish ("Seguridad Común" for "Common Security," "UE" for "EU," "Corea del Norte" for "North Korea," "el satélite 'Kwangmyongsong-3'" for "the 'Kwangmyongsong-3' satellite," "la ONU" [la Organización de las Naciones Unidas] for "the UN" [the United Nations]). These all happen to be nouns followed by adjectives, in Spanish, corresponding to adjectives followed by nouns in English. It is true that adjectives often follow nouns in Spanish, but it is not always true. More on that much later.
So even without being able to read this Spanish perfectly (it may take a long time for that), we can still use the Spanish we do know—and the English we already know—to make some educated guesses that allow us to add to our Spanish knowledge. And, if we are so inclined, and have extra time on a given day, we can even look up in a good dictionary some of what we are unsure of or haven't figured out, and learn even more. But please don't think perfection is necessary, or even desirable. It's far more important to stay interested, keep things simple, so you will stay motivated to stick with it and keeping making progress bit by bit. Slow and steady wins the race.
