LEARN SPANISH NOW

QUIERE HABLAR ESPAÑOL?

Quieres hablar español, means "Do you want to speak Spanish"  If yes! then you have come to the right place. But before we continue, I need to stress there are numerous websites throughout the internet that offer Spanish Tuition and Spanish Courses, however it normally comes at a price and from my experience not very good. At We Speak Spanish, we offer Spanish tuition to you absolutely FREE. 

Competitively, there is Learning Spanish Like Crazy, there is Spanish Now, there is Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish, there is Rocket Spanish, there is Michel Thomas Spanish Course, there is Don Quijote Spanish Courses, there is Short Cut  To Spanish, there is Instant Spanish to mention but a few. There are also several Spanish books and several have Spanish Audio CD programs from which to learn; but best way to learn Spanish is by enrolling in an Immersion Spanish courses available in places like Mexico, Barcelona, Madrid, 

This Spanish Course at We Speak Spanish will get you ready to enter any immersion courses so that you would benefit from it from the very first day.  First you need to at least commit a few Spanish words to memory so that your recall is instantaneous and not something you need to think about. All the letters in Spanish words are enunciated and therefore easy to pronounce and read.

Hello - Hola
Good morning - Buenos días
Good afternoon - Buenas tardes
Good evening - Buenas noches

Good night - Buenas notches

Sir / Mr - Señior

Madam / Mrs - Señiora

My name is Hector - Me llamo Hector
What is your name? - ¿Cómo te llamas?

What is your name? - ¿Qué es su nombre? 
Nice to meet you - Mucho gusto 
How are you? - ¿Cómo está usted?  (formal)

How's it? - ¿Cómo estás?  (informal)

I am fine - Estoy bien
See you later - Hasta luego
See you soon - Hasta pronto
Goodbye - Adiós
Go well (Go with God) - Via con dios 
Yes - Sí 
No - No
Please - Por favor  
Thank you - Gracías

Excuse me - Perdóname
Excuse me - Con permiso. 
I'm sorry - Lo siento 

I - Estoy

You -Tu (informal)

You - Usted (formal)

He - El 

She - Ella 

We - Nosotros /Nosotras

I miss you - Te extraño

I love you - Te quiero 

I love you - Te amo

Who? - ¿Quién?

What? - ¿Qué? 

Why? - ¿Por qué?

Where? - ¿Dónde?

Who is at the door? - ¿Quién es a la puerta?

Where you from - ¿De donde eres?

What is this - ¿Qué es esto?

Why don't you speak Spanish? - ¿Por qué no hablas Español? 

I am lost please help - Estoy perdido/a ayudame por favor.

I need help - Neccesito ayuda.

It is very important to me - Es mas importa parame.

How much is than? - Quanto de costa?

Money - Dinero / Plata

Men - Hombre

Woman - Mujer

Lets go - Vamenos

I have to go - Tengo que ir

My house is your house - Mi casa es su casa.

My farther - Mi padre

My mother - Mi madre

My Brother - Mi Hermano

My Sister - Mi Hermana

My Son - Mi Hijo

My daughter - Mi Hija

I need to change my money - Nesesito cambiar mi dinero

Numbers

0 - Cero

1 - Una

2 - Dos

3 - Tres

4 - Cuatro

5 - Cinco

6 - Seis

7 - Siete

8 - Ocho

9 - Nueve

10 - Diez

11 - Once

12 - Doce

13 - Trece

14 - Catorce

15 - Quince

16 - Dieciséis

17 - Decisiete

18 - Dieciocho

19 - Diecinueve 

20 - Veinte

21- Veintiuno

22 - Veintidós

23 - Veintitrés

24 - Veinticuatro

25 - Veinticinco

26 - Veintiséis

27 - Veintisiete

28 - Veintiocho

29 - Veintinueve

30 - Treinta

40 - Cuarents

50 - Cincuenta

60 - Sesenta

70 - Setenta

80 - Ochenta

90 - Noventa

100 - Cien

SPAIN AND SPANISH

QUE HABLAS?

In Spain, Barcelona is pronounce "Barthelona" but very seldom if even as "Barselona".  It sounds like it's said with a "lisp". This pronunciation is specific to Castilian or Catalan, or Madrileños speech or even  common to all of Andalucía (Spain),  Seville (Saviye), Malaga, Salamanca, Granada, Toledo, Madrid, Medina del campo, Medina de Rioseco. Pehaps even the whole of Castile and León.  

There is so much hearsay about the Spaniard's "lisp". Rumour has it that originated from Arabic and has existed since the Arabic / Moorish occupation of the Iberian peninsula.  Comparing the Arabic alphabet the English alphabet, A = Alif, B = Baa and C= Thaa. Resulting in Spaniards pronouncing the English C  as "TH".  Spaniards however vehemently deny this, denying Arabic heritage, claiming they're not the offspring of Arabs or Jews or Moors who coexisted in harmony for eight centuries. 

The mere fact that the Arabs/Moors  ruled Spain for 800 years implies that there was and extended interaction between the "invaders" and the Spaniards. Inter trade, inter marriage, inter religion, inter education, culinary influence and social and cultural interaction meant that there had to be a common form of communication in use and if there wasn't, one was developed.

For example, Afrikaans is a bastardized South Africa tongue somewhat resembling Dutch, introduced by Jan van Riebeeck and his Dutch colonialist in 1652. This Euro Dutch became mixed with the languages of the slaves they traded, languages of the exiles that was banished to South Africa, etc. It can thus be said that Akrikaans was a mix of  Dutch  Malaysian/Indonesian, Hindi, and Arabic, in an attempt towards mutual understanding.

The first Dutchman who arrived here in the Cape some 363 years ago, give birth to Afrikaans - the youngest of world languages. Today less than 400 years later Afrikaans is spoken by some 60 million South Africans as either their first or second language. Whereas the Arabs were in Spain for more than twice as long. Therefore it's painfully obvious that the language would somewhat change and merge, adapted to common understanding.

However, one school of though attributes the "lisp" to a Spanish king whose subjects mimiced his speech, so as not to constantly remind him of his speech impediment. But that's just folk law. It is also speculated that originally the Spanish C (cedilla) made a "ts" sound and that the Spanish Z (dezir) made a "dz" sound, both of which were contracted into the "lisp".

Some even say these two sounds are representative of "zz" like "ts" in Tuscan Italian when enunciating "pizza". However this "lisp" is not unique to Castilians, it is actually quite rife among the Portuguese, since  the entire inland border of Portugal embraces all of Castille -as can be seen by the map. Interaction, communication, cross border activities and speech rubbed off.  

If you speak Portuguese, you know exactly what I mean, because spoken Portuguese sound very much like a Spaniard speaking with a really bad speech impediment. In fact the comedian Russel Peters jokes about this in one of his sets, saying that Portuguese sounds like the speech of a Spanish retard. Play nice Russel!

So lets look at the remnants of Arab / Moorish language and culture to see it any still remains after 800 years of denial.  The rock of Gibraltar is the Spanish rendition of the Arabic name Jabal Ṭāriq (جبل طارق). Jabal means mountain in Arabic and the Arab who conquered this rock was non other than Tariq ibn Ziyad. Subsequently called the mountain of Tariq or the Jabl of  Tariq which eventually ended up mispronounced as Jabral Tariq and misspelt to Gibraltar. 

The word Medina in Arabic means City therefore Medina del Campo means City in the Country which is a mixture of Arabic and Spanish. In Medina de Rioseco, Medina means city and Rioseco means tolerance and acceptance. It is obvious that it was called - Medina tu Sabr, means City of Patience /Tolerance. 

To get back to the "lisp". Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian are the five romance languages  but none have anything to do with Love and Romance. It has to do with the Romans who spoke Latin. The 5 romance languages are also based on the Latin script. 

During the 800 years of Arabic rule, Arabic was the lingua franca and Arabic script was the script of choice. With its consonantal  alphabet a (alif), b (baa), t (taa), th (thaa), j (jeem), h (ha), k (ko), d (dal), dh (dhal), r (ra), z (za), s (seen), sh (sheen), etc. The latin script a, b, c, coincided with Arabic a, b, t, as such t (taa), th (thaa), was used interchangibly  as the third Latin alphabetical character representing the third Arabic alphabetical character.

This language influence is not unique to Spanish and not the only word derivatives. Spanish is fraught with Arabic words among which are, but to mention but a few:-

Arabic Spanish (English)

al-zayt aceite (olive oil)

tassah taza (cup)

al-tūn atún (tuna)

al-sukkar azúcar (sugar)

qīṯārah gitara (guitar)

nāranǧ naranga (orange)

al-jabr Algebra (math subject)

aruzz Aarroz (rice) 

al-qutn algodón (cotton)

Šarāb Jarabe (syrup)

The Arabic  influence on the Spanish language and culture, agriculture and culinary art are unmistakenly strong, so-much-so that according to Spanish historian and philologist Rafael Lapes — former director of the Spanish Royal Academy — that  4,000 words of modern Spanish come from Arabic and in his book Historia de la lengua española he poses the rhetorical question "How did this happen and what does it mean for Spanish today?" 

WE SPEAK SPANISH

We speak Spanish - Hablamos Espanol

Spanish is probably on of the most desirable languages to learn to speak and can roughly be divided into to broad categories, viz, South American Spanish and Euro Spanish. Euro Spanish (Castilian) has a very distinctive sound from South American Spanish and is very evident in words like Barcelona, cerveca, concecer .... where one of the  c's is pronounce as th, sounding like Barthelona, thervesa, conether. South American Spanish on the other hand is also very diversified in the sense that Argentinians sound so very different from Mexicans, Chileans sound so different from Venezuelans, Colombians sound so different from Cubans, and the list goes on. 

Barcelona, the gateway to Europe.

When learning South American Spanish, it is feasible to adopt one nationality's intonation, especially when learning to decipher speech from Telenovelas and Spanish movies. I find a lot more Spanish movies are produced in Spain but most Hollywood movies targeted at South Americans are just badly audio dubbed. As a student of the language I find the cognates of English and the similarities of Arabic grammar used in Spanish most intriguing. This can quite easy be heard in Spanish Movies.

Catalina Sandino Moreno star of Maria full of grace.

Especially movies like "María, llena eres de gracia" - Maria full of Grace, "Amores Peros"; Love's a Bitch, "Habla con Ella", Talk to her, "Nueva Reinas"- Nine of Queens, "Mar Adentro" - Sea Inside, "Los Olvidados" - The forgotten ones", Y Tu Mamá También"- And you too Mama, and so many other movies is evidence of this, which I will expound on as we go.

Sin Nombre - The Mara Salvatrucha gang leader and smiley

Telenovela method  / Linguee online