Here’s a screenshot of an iPhone app/game that practices conjugation. It’s called “Spanish Touch Trainer”. There are 2 levels: beginner and advanced. The basic concept of the game is to translate an English sentence into Spanish, verb by verb. After completing the task, you can hear an audio clip of the sentence. An added bonus is a list of verb conjugations of some common spanish verbs. It’s priced at $1.99. Here’s a review about it. I personally find it useful especially when I have down times at work to just continue practicing verb conjugations. Enjoy :)

“Por eso brindemos hoy”  - So we toast today. 

From Julieta Venegas’ song “Despedida” = goodbye/farewell.

What a cool verb “brindar” = “to drink a toast”. It can also mean “to offer” depending on the context.

Brindar is a regular -AR verb. Click here for brindar’s conjugation, other meanings and examples.

Switchfoot’s “Needle and Haystack Life”…an excuse to remember “once in a lifetime”

“we are once in a lifetime” = estamos una vez en la vida.

Click here for the lyrics en español.

A picture from the book “The boy without a name” or “El niño sin nombre” - a book written in English and Spanish.

A great resource: Learn Spanish through children’s books. The International Children’s Digital Library is a treasure trove of free books in many languages. It has 100+ books in Spanish. Good stuff.

Got the idea from this blog post.

"La amistad es innecesaria, como la filosofía, como el arte, como el universo mismo, porque Dios no necesitaba crear. No tiene valor de supervivencia; más bien es una de esas cosas que le dan valor a la supervivencia."

-

CS Lewis, Los cuatro amores (Four loves)

Original quote: “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” 

Beautiful quote with nice vocab words to learn from.

Vocab: “amistad” = friendship  ”supervivencia” = survival “valor” = value

“innecesaria(o)” (ending in ‘a’ or ‘o’ depending on the gender of the word its describing - the feminine amistad in the above quote) = unnecessary

“más bien” = rather or more exactly

"Estas patiendo el trasero"

- Translated as “you are kicking butt”

Spanish Word(s)/Phrase of the Week: Lluvia de ideas

Meaning: brainstorming

“If it doesn’t break your heart it isn’t love. If it doesn’t break your heart, it’s not enough. It’s when you’re breaking down with your insides coming out, it’s when you find out what your heart is made of. And you haven’t lost me yet. No you haven’t lost me yet. I will sing until my heart caves in. No you haven’t lost me yet.”

This is “Yet” by Switchfoot. Great song! And an excuse to try to remember what “Yet” is en español. Two possible words: “todovia” or “aún”.

Ejemplos:

No you haven’t lost me yet -> No me han perdido aún.

I am still waiting. -> Todovia estoy esperando.

Not yet -> Todovia no.

For other meanings/uses of todovia, click here.

“Do you ever think about me? Do you ever call my name? Ask me now. I will give you the reasons my love will not fade through the fire and the rain, the fire and rain”

Learned some prepositions this past week. Here are two of them:

1. Pensar en - think about

 e.g.  “Do you ever think about me?” -> Alguna vez (tu) piensas en mi”

2. Tropezar con - bump into

e.g. “She bumps into the sofa” -> Ella tropieza con la sofa.

Matisyahu covers Kings of Leon’s “Someone like you”. Not sure why this song came to mind when I was going over conjugating “conocer” but I thought it was kind of appropriate too because there’s a yearning to “know”/reach out to someone in this song.

Going over a few key points about the verb “conocer” (to know) in particular to “to know a person”. 

(1) If the direct object is a noun e.g. a person’s name there has to be “personal a” before the name. Some examples:

(a) I know Felipe -> Conozco a Felipe.

(b) Maritel knows Tony. Maritel conoce a Tony.

(2) If the direct object is a pronoun there are certain words to memorize. For example, We know (him)/(her)/(them)/(you):

Structure: pronoun before the verb

(a) We know him -> Lo conocemos.

(b) We know her -> La conocemos.

(c) We know them -> Los conocemos.

(d) We know you -> Te conocemos.

(e) Nobody knows me here -> Nadie me conoce aqui.

(f) They know us -> Ellos nos conocen.