Basic Spanish

The blurring of international lines in today's globalized culture has spurred for many the need to develop language skills beyond the mastery of one's native tongue. Audio training programmes have been around for years and offered self-study to international travelers and business professionals expanding their business pursuits into the world market. These internet and CD programmes teach broad scope conversational language skills in the privacy of one's own home.

As with other Latin-based languages, Spanish sentence structure differs from English in one basic way: the noun precedes the verb. So instead of saying "I'll buy that purse" the correct Spanish sentence is "That purse I'll buy." This rule also applies to the proper placement of adjectives. "I have a red purse" in Spanish reads "Red purse have I."

Subject nouns are commonly absent from Spanish sentences unless the speaker wishes to emphasize the subject noun. "I am English" becomes "Am English" and the subject noun is implied to be the speaker. Therefore the literal "Yo soy Ingles" is more traditionally versed "Soy Ingles" and the audience understands that the "Ingles" is the speaker.

Questions are distinguished by punctuation in the written word or inflection in the spoken word, but rarely incorporate changes in the sentence structure. "You live in Spain" ("Vivas en España") can be equally a question or a statement of fact. The question is further affirmed by adding "no" or "verdad" at the end of the statement: "¿Vivas en España, verdad?" ("Verdad" means "true" and is a suitable alternative to the more common "¿No?") Note that when questions appear in writing the punctuation precedes and follows the statement to clearly designate the query.

Spanish verbs are all a variation on a single theme with inflections that indicate the tense (past, present, future). AR, IR and ER are all the basic verb types and are often used interchangeably with little distinction. Tense is indicated by minor variations on the ending of the base verb: to work: trabajar; I work: trabajo; I worked: trabajé; I will work: trabajaré.

Understanding verb conjugation in the Spanish language is one of the most difficult challenges, so it's best to invest some time to understand the basic rules before moving on to more complex rules.

Finally, Spanish nouns are gender-specific, masculine or feminine, and the adjective must match the designation. In general, masculine adjectives end in "o" and feminine in "a", however some adjectives may be used with either gender designation. This is one area of the Spanish language that seems as complicated as some of the idiosyncrasies of the English language and poses a humourous complication for the student immersed in a gathering of native Spanish speakers.

It is said that native speakers immersed in another culture will develop the ability to "think" and even dream in the language of their new country as their brain finally links to the cultural consciousness. And it is widely accepted that the English language, with its endless rules and exceptions is far more difficult to master than any of the Romance languages, whose rules and structure follow the same rules from one language (Spanish) to another (French).