The Spanish Subjunctive: A Reference for Teachers


Book Description

A Complete Guide to the Spanish Subjunctive is the most complete reference guide to the use of the subjunctive in Spanish. Along with an exhaustive review of published literature on the subjunctive, the book also includes a thorough discussion of the uses and meanings of the subjunctive as well as examples throughout drawn from linguistic corpora such as the CREA database. The book presents a comprehensive theory of the subjunctive and provides practical rules for understanding, teaching and acquiring the Spanish subjunctive. This book includes: "Your Turn" sections that invite readers to reflect on the content discussed and on their own experiences in teaching the subjunctive A "Synopsis" section that summarizes the content of the work and offers practical suggestions for teaching the subjunctive Two indexes providing a summary of verb conjugation in the subjunctive and an alphabetical list of expressions used with the subjunctive.







Fluent Forever


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • For anyone who wants to learn a foreign language, this is the method that will finally make the words stick. “A brilliant and thoroughly modern guide to learning new languages.”—Gary Marcus, cognitive psychologist and author of the New York Times bestseller Guitar Zero At thirty years old, Gabriel Wyner speaks six languages fluently. He didn’t learn them in school—who does? Rather, he learned them in the past few years, working on his own and practicing on the subway, using simple techniques and free online resources—and here he wants to show others what he’s discovered. Starting with pronunciation, you’ll learn how to rewire your ears and turn foreign sounds into familiar sounds. You’ll retrain your tongue to produce those sounds accurately, using tricks from opera singers and actors. Next, you’ll begin to tackle words, and connect sounds and spellings to imagery rather than translations, which will enable you to think in a foreign language. And with the help of sophisticated spaced-repetition techniques, you’ll be able to memorize hundreds of words a month in minutes every day. This is brain hacking at its most exciting, taking what we know about neuroscience and linguistics and using it to create the most efficient and enjoyable way to learn a foreign language in the spare minutes of your day.




Intermediate Spanish For Dummies


Book Description

Need to brush up on your Spanish? Intermediate Spanish For Dummies is your key to success in building your writing skills and bolstering your confidence. It gives you the straight talk and nitty-gritty detail that will see you successfully through any major or minor roadblocks to communicating in Spanish. This friendly, hands-on workbook is loaded with practical examples and useful exercises so you can practice how native speakers use the language. From vocabulary and numbers to juggling tenses, you’ll get a clear understanding of the nuances of Spanish style and usage that will have you writing like a native in no time. Plus, you’ll find multiple charts that provide conjugations for all types of Spanish verbs. You’ll get up to speed with Spanish grammar, master essential differences between Spanish and English language usage, and be able to communicate effectively when traveling or conducting business. Discover how to: Use fundamental Spanish grammar, from nouns, adjectives, and adverbs to pronouns, prepositions, and conjunctions Select and conjugate Spanish verbs correctly Understand the importance of grammatical gender in Spanish Avoid the most common writing mistakes Use numbers and express dates and times Name countries and nationalities in Spanish Expand your Spanish vocabulary exponentially Get comfortable with the subjunctive Combine verbs with confidence and competence Sharpen your Spanish-language skills the fun and easy way with Intermediate Spanish For Dummies.




Demystifying the Spanish Subjunctive


Book Description

We, Gordon and Cynthia of LightSpeed Spanish, are totally excited to bring you the book that really does demystify the Present and Past Spanish Subjunctive. Most students of the Spanish language shy away from this subject and it's no wonder! So many books on the market make it look complex and difficult to understand. Yet here at LightSpeed Spanish we have developed the perfect system to walk you through the entire range of the Spanish Subjunctive, step by step. This comprehensive book uses simple, easy to understand explanations that won't leave you mind boggled, while it guides you through the creation of over 600 Subjunctive sentences. By the time you've finished this learning journey we anticipate that you will be more confident, more at ease and far more able to use the Spanish Subjunctive in every facet of your communication. It really is a must buy for any serious student of the Spanish language!




Systemic Functional Grammar of Spanish


Book Description

This book offers a systemic-functional account of Spanish, and analyses how Spanish grammatical forms compare and contrast with those of English. The authors analyse Spanish according to the three main 'metafunctions': ideational, interpersonal, and textual. The result is a comprehensive examination of Spanish grammar from the clause upwards. Presupposing little or no knowledge of Spanish, this book will be of interest to researchers in Spanish language, systemic functional linguistics or contrastive linguistics.




The Development of Grammar in Spanish and The Romance Languages


Book Description

Researchers in Romance languages will find this book a stimulating and broad-ranging treatment of the development of grammar, demonstrating the relevance of markedness for both linguistic theory and language teaching. A substantial and original account of a unique body of data, across first and second language acquisition, creolization and historical linguistics and across a wide range of languages and contact varieties, demonstrates a new impetus and predictive force for markedness theory.




The Spanish Language of New Mexico and Southern Colorado


Book Description

The Spanish language and Hispanic culture have left indelible impressions on the landscape of the southwestern United States. The role of cultural and geographical influence has had dramatic effects on the sustainability of the Spanish language and also its development and change. In a linguistic exploration that delves into a language as it is spoken by the Hispanic population of New Mexico and southern Colorado, historical substantiation shows the condition of New Mexican Spanish and what the future holds for its speakers. With two major dialect regions, one in the north and one in the south, detailed maps illustrate the geography of linguistic variation for the Spanish spoken in the region, whose generations of speakers were not only influenced by other languages, but also developed their own variations of words and structure out of need or innovation. This diverse language has evolved since its origin in Spain with influences that include Native American languages, exposure to English, and Mexican immigration in the twentieth century. Snippets of New Mexican folklore and folk etymology give voice to that evolution. Though this work doesn't attempt to save the New Mexican Spanish language, Bills and Vigil detail the effects of inevitable encroachment that intensified during the twentieth century and seriously threaten the continued viability of this unique dialect.




Demystifying Spanish Grammar


Book Description

Why does this word have an accent? When do I use ser and estar? Why por and not para? I don't understand the difference between the imperfect and the preterit. The subjunctive? I give up! Do these questions sound familiar to you? If they do, you have the right book. I had the same exact questions when I was studying Spanish. Now, I know them well enough to explain in this book. I have to admit that I don't always know the reason why I use one form instead of another; I learned a lot just from reading and listening to spoken Spanish.




Mutual Influence in Situations of Spanish Language Contact in the Americas


Book Description

Mutual Influence in Situations of Spanish Language Contact in the Americas focuses on the structural results of contact between Spanish and Maya, Quechua, Guaraní, Portuguese, and English in the Americas. This edited volume explores the various ways in which these languages affect the linguistic structure of Spanish in situations of language contact, and also how Spanish impacts their linguistic structure. Across ten chapters, this book offers a broad survey of bidirectional influence in Spanish contact situations both geographically (in the US Southwest, the Yucatán Peninsula, the Andean regions of Ecuador and Peru, and the Southern Cone) and structurally (in the areas of phonetics, phonology, morphosyntax, semantics, and pragmatics). By examining the potential structural effects that two languages have on one another, it provides a novel and more holistic perspective on mutual linguistic influence than that of previous work on language contact. The volume serves as a reference on mutual influence in bilingual language varieties and will be of interest to researchers, scholars and graduate students in Hispanic linguistics, and more broadly in language contact.