They simply cannot adapt these
phrases to anything else, because
they have no idea how the language
works! Then they come to me for
classes, thinking that they are
‘Intermediate’ level, & we have
to get though the awkward ‘Well
actually I think you really need to
backtrack a bit ‘ conversation….
So, if you REALLY want to learn
Spanish (or any other language)
you have to put a bit of work in
to understand it. Learning stock
phrases will only get you so far.
The good news is, with Spanish,
there are lots of simple rules &
patterns, & Spanish rarely breaks
the rules.
To start with some really
simple sentences which you can
construct yourself, you need to
learn how verbs (doing words)
work, because you need a verb in
every sentence…….so you need
to learn to conjugate them (make
them ‘fit’ the person).
Luckily, most verbs follow the
same pattern!
Do you see how the end of the
word (the verb) changes for
different people? The END which
I have highlighted in yellow, tells
you WHO is doing the action.
Most verbs follow the same AR /
ER / IR pattern. These are known
as ‘regular’ verbs’. Here are a few
more useful ‘every day’ verbs
which follow the same patterns as
above: