There are some verbs that don’t translate very neatly between English and Spanish. The verb “become” is one such example, as it has six equivalents in Spanish and they’re not all interchangeable. Before you become (no pun intended) panicked, there are fairly simple rules regarding the use of each of these translations and, with a […]
Category: Verbos
Alternativas para “coger”
¡Hola! If you’ve been learning Spanish for some time, you’ve probably discovered that the dictionary isn’t always reliable when it comes to translating what you want to say. For years, I used the word felpudo to describe a door mat, simply because it was the only translation my dictionary gave for the word. It wasn’t […]
Tocar
Today I thought it would be useful to explore the nuances of tocar, an extremely common verb which means much more than “to touch.” Although this is its literal meaning, in 23 instances of its use I documented while living in Mexico / Guatemala, only two were used in this way. One of these came from an argument between […]
El misterio tras el imperfecto vs el pretérito
¡Hola! I figured that since I’ve been so sporadic about posting lately (por mi trabajo), I’d offer something a bit more in-depth which I hope will dispel más dudas about this fun but crazy thing called Spanish grammar. Today I want to focus on the difference between the pretérito and the imperfecto, a tricky subject […]
El subjuntivo y el futuro
¡Feliz año nuevo! Last post, we explored some of the ethereal purposes of the Spanish subjunctive. We fairly well established that it is used whenever the speaker will not or cannot commit to a fact. Whenever doubt, desire, uncertainty or the imposition of one’s will over another come into play, the subjunctive appears. Until now, […]
El subjuntivo – la continuación
Last week, we entered the nebulous world of the subjunctive and I attempted to make sense of its somewhat subjective purpose. Today I want to delve deeper. We’ll look at sentences which I call bi-subjunctual (that’s not a real word, BTW). That is, sentences which can take either the subjunctive or the indicative and which […]
El subjuntivo – “¡qué miedo!”
Hola y bienvenidos nuevamente a JT’s Spanish. I’ve had several requests to go deeper into certain grammatical concepts that are the bane of our angloparlante existence and today, I’m going to try and darles gusto by exploring the most confusing of all grammatical aspects in Spanish: the “subjunctive” (I wanted to write this in some […]
Salir
Today I want to examine a very common verb which, like many high frequency verbs, has a plethora of meanings. Its primary English equivalents are to leave or to go out, although, as we’ll see, these translations don’t cover all of its possible uses. The verb is salir and its basic, present-tense conjugation look like […]
Tener prisa, apurarse, apresurarse, etc.
It seems that life is all about rushing around and, for many of us, there’s never enough time in the day to accomplish everything. While sitting in traffic the other day, in a hurry as usual, it occurred to me that the Spanish-speaking world doesn’t share our cultural propensity for cramming as many tasks into […]
Gástarselas, arreglárselas, vérselas, etc.
Today we’ll explore a number of colloquial expressions which, to some degree, transcend grammatical comprehension. Rather than over-analyze them, I’ll ask you to keep an open mind and simply accept these terms as part of the language. If you commit them to memory, they’ll become great allies in your efforts at self-expression. With a small […]