Today will be the end of two complete months with my Spanish tutor. She has been coming every day for an hour and a half. We have covered a lot of material in these last two months. Today will be our last day for 6 weeks as she has to do community service in another town as part of her undergraduate degree. My hope is that we will resume upon her return.
Here is a summary of what we’ve worked on since beginning April 21st. My goal is to review these things daily so that I will have mastered them before we start up again.
Possessive pronouns
Object pronouns (procliticos and encliticos)Imperatives
Negative imperatives
Verb conjugations: past preterite
Verb conjugations: past imperfecto
Verb conjugations: present (with emphasis on irregular verbs)
Verb conjugations: future simple
Verb conjugations: future conditional
Verb conjugation: past participles/present perfect
Verb conjugation: past participles/past perfect
Verb conjugation: past participles/future pefect
Verb conjugation: past participles/conditional pefect
Verb conjugation: subjunctive/present
Verb conjugation: subjunctive/past
Verb conjugation: subjunctive/present perfect
Verb conjugation: subjunctive/past perfect
Reading practice and translation
Vocabulary (mostly taken from the readings)
Listening comprehension exercises
Verb conjugations have taken up the bulk of my studies. There seems to be an endless set of patterns and rules I have to commit to memory. Here is an example of the 75 conjugations from a regular verb. 79 if you add the 4 forms of the imperative (the negative imperatives take the subjunctive).
infinitve: dudar (to doubt)
present simple:
dudo (I doubt)
dudas
duda
dudamos
dudan
past imperfecto:
dudaba (I was doubting)
dudabas
dudaba
dudabamos
dudaban
past preterite:
dudé (I doubted)
dudaste
dudó
dudamos
dudaron
future simple
dudaré (I will doubt)
dudarás
dudará
dudaremos
dudarán
conditional
dudaría (I would doubt)
dudarías
dudaría
dudaríamos
dudarían
perfecto de indicativo
he dudado (I have doubted)
has dudado
ha dudado
hemos dudado
han dudado
pluscuamperfecto de indicativo
había dudado (I had doubted)
habías dudado
había dudado
habíamos dudado
habían dudado
futuro perfecto
habré dudado (I will have doubted)
habrás dudado
habrá dudado
habremos dudado
habrán dudado
potencial compuesto (conditional)
habría dudado (I would have doubted)
habrías dudado
habría dudado
habríamos dudado
habrían dudado
present subjunctive
dude
dudes
dude
dudemos
duden
imperfecto de subjuntivo
dudara
dudaras
dudara
dudáramos
dudaran
imperfecto de subjuntivo (version 2 – why!!!)
dudase
dudases
dudase
dudásemos
dudasen
perfecto de subjuntivo
haya dudado
hayas dudado
haya dudado
hayamos dudado
hayan dudado
pluscuamperfecto de subjuntivo
hubiera dudado
hubieras dudado
hubiera dudado
hubiéramos dudado
hubieran dudado
pluscuamperfecto de subjuntivo (again, WHY!)
hubiese dudado
hubieses dudado
hubiese dudado
hubiésemos dudado
hubiesen dudado
Being able to remember the above 75 forms is bad enough, but being able to discern the difference in the spoken word of others is extremely difficult. My listening comprehension skills are really bad because of this.
But despite the frustrating difficulty, I’ve already begun to adopt new verb forms as I interact with others. Learning the past, future, and conditional simple tenses have been particularly helpful for me. Now, rather than saying, “I like tacos. I want taco” while ordering food, I can say, “I would like to have a taco” or “would you please bring me another beer”.
The subjunctive is very difficult to grasp. Mostly because we rarely use it in English. The only occurrence I can think of is after a conditional. We say, “If I were a nice guy, I’d buy you a taco”, not “If I was a nice guy, I’d buy you a taco”. Although I often hear people say the latter so I suspect it won’t be long until the subjunctive is completely eradicated from the English language.
In Spanish, the subjunctive is far more intrusive. It appears when communicating desire or emotions. After hypothetical situations. After conditionals. After expressions like, “maybe, I would like…, I hope that…, I need that…, I want that…”, it appears after some verbs like ‘to believe, to think, to opine, to suppose, to remember”, but ONLY when they are used in the negative, such as, “I don’t think that you are a nice person”. Such madness. Who came up with this stuff?
Then of course there is the endless list of irregular verbs! Verbs that follow no apparent predictable pattern. 79 forms to the regular verb and then I have to memorize totally unique forms for a long list of ‘special’ verbs! Insanity.
But apparently people do eventually learn the language. I am hoping to be one of those people. I know that it will take an enormous amount of practice though and I’m certainly living in the right place for that.