Spanish For Dummies

Spanish For Dummies is the title of a book in the popular "For Dummies…" series. It quite naturally targets the Spanish language and sets out to teach it in an easy and entertaining manner.

Spanish For Dummies has been written by those who know the language best at the Berlitz language school. The book features common expressions and phrases that you may find useful when on holiday, and tries to get you up and running with the language.

The Spanish For Dummies book describes itself as being, "…the ultimate guide for speaking Spanish quick and easy." The book is accompanied by a CD-ROM, which allows you to hear the language spoken by native speakers.

In a way, you could describe any starter Spanish learning course as being Spanish for dummies, in a general sense that is. The concept is that it can take someone who has no idea about Spanish, or even language structure, and who couldn't separate a Romance language from what they said on their first date, from knowing nothing at all to at least speaking a few useful phrases of Spanish.

There are plenty of courses like that you'll be pleased to hear. These days language courses have started concentrating on the fun aspect of language learning, downplaying the need for grammar, syntax and cultural nuance, and replacing it with shortcuts, tricks and tips to actually speaking the language with other native speakers.

Grammar certainly has its place. Spanish grammar is quite different from English grammar. That's why they will describe a new car as "un coche nuevo," literally, "a car new." There's not much you can do about that other than simply learning it.

Translating directly from English to Spanish is a very bad idea. That would come out as, in our example, "un nuevo coche," and would sound every bit as bad and wrong to a Spanish person as "a car new" sounds to you! As a rough rule of thumb, put the adjective, the describing word, after the noun, the thing being described. This is the opposite of the normal rules in English.

The Spanish for dummies kind of courses tend rather to concentrate on the easier side of things. There are a large number of Spanish words, for example, that are very similar to their English equivalents. Mostly they change only with the endings. Words in English ending in "ant" often become words ending in "ante" in Spanish. Por ejemple (that's Spanish and I'll bet you can guess what it means), "important" becomes "importante." But that's not all…

Many of the "ent" ending English words become "ente" in Spanish, such as "evidente." Many of the "ible" and "able" ending words stay the same in both languages: comparable, combustible. Some Spanish words merely drop English endings, such as the "ate" ending words where "participate" becomes "participa" and "terminate" becomes "termina."

How many English words can you think of that end in "ary"? There are dozens and you've just learned as whole lot more Spanish words, because you can adapt the English to Spanish by changing the "ary" ending to an "ario" ending.

Spanish for dummies can be the title of a best selling language book, or it can simply be a way of describing a good Spanish course aimed at teaching the language easily and simply with the minimum of fuss.

Click Here!
Learn Spanish The Easy Way