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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Possessive pronouns
\nObject pronouns (procliticos and encliticos)Imperatives
\nNegative imperatives
\nVerb conjugations: past preterite
\nVerb conjugations: past imperfecto
\nVerb conjugations: present (with emphasis on irregular verbs)
\nVerb conjugations: future simple
\nVerb conjugations: future conditional
\nVerb conjugation: past participles\/present perfect
\nVerb conjugation: past participles\/past perfect
\nVerb conjugation: past participles\/future pefect
\nVerb conjugation: past participles\/conditional pefect
\nVerb conjugation: subjunctive\/present
\nVerb conjugation: subjunctive\/past
\nVerb conjugation: subjunctive\/present perfect
\nVerb conjugation: subjunctive\/past perfect
\nReading practice and translation
\nVocabulary (mostly taken from the readings)
\nListening comprehension exercises<\/p>\n
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<\/em> verb. 79 if you add the 4 forms of the imperative (the negative imperatives take the subjunctive).<\/p>\n infinitve: dudar (to doubt)<\/p>\n present simple<\/span>: 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.<\/p>\n 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”.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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?<\/p>\n Then of course there is the endless<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 … Continue reading
\ndudo (I doubt)
\ndudas
\nduda
\ndudamos
\ndudan
\npast imperfecto<\/span>:
\ndudaba (I was doubting)
\ndudabas
\ndudaba
\ndudabamos
\ndudaban
\npast preterite:<\/span>
\ndud\u00e9 (I doubted)
\ndudaste
\ndud\u00f3
\ndudamos
\ndudaron
\nfuture simple<\/span>
\ndudar\u00e9 (I will doubt)
\ndudar\u00e1s
\ndudar\u00e1
\ndudaremos
\ndudar\u00e1n
\nconditional<\/span>
\ndudar\u00eda (I would doubt)
\ndudar\u00edas
\ndudar\u00eda
\ndudar\u00edamos
\ndudar\u00edan
\nperfecto de indicativo<\/span>
\nhe dudado (I have doubted)
\nhas dudado
\nha dudado
\nhemos dudado
\nhan dudado
\npluscuamperfecto de indicativo<\/span>
\nhab\u00eda dudado (I had doubted)
\nhab\u00edas dudado
\nhab\u00eda dudado
\nhab\u00edamos dudado
\nhab\u00edan dudado
\nfuturo perfecto<\/span>
\nhabr\u00e9 dudado (I will have doubted)
\nhabr\u00e1s dudado
\nhabr\u00e1 dudado
\nhabremos dudado
\nhabr\u00e1n dudado
\npotencial compuesto (conditional)<\/span>
\nhabr\u00eda dudado (I would have doubted)
\nhabr\u00edas dudado
\nhabr\u00eda dudado
\nhabr\u00edamos dudado
\nhabr\u00edan dudado
\npresent subjunctive<\/span>
\ndude
\ndudes
\ndude
\ndudemos
\nduden
\nimperfecto de subjuntivo<\/span>
\ndudara
\ndudaras
\ndudara
\ndud\u00e1ramos
\ndudaran
\nimperfecto de subjuntivo (version 2 – why!!!)<\/span>
\ndudase
\ndudases
\ndudase
\ndud\u00e1semos
\ndudasen
\nperfecto de subjuntivo
\n<\/span>haya dudado
\nhayas dudado
\nhaya dudado
\nhayamos dudado
\nhayan dudado
\npluscuamperfecto de subjuntivo<\/span>
\nhubiera dudado
\nhubieras dudado
\nhubiera dudado
\nhubi\u00e9ramos dudado
\nhubieran dudado
\npluscuamperfecto de subjuntivo<\/span> (again, WHY!)
\nhubiese dudado
\nhubieses dudado
\nhubiese dudado
\nhubi\u00e9semos dudado
\nhubiesen dudado<\/p>\n