Go beyond basic Spanish vocabulary at Speak Like a Spaniard
June 23, 2009
BY EMILY JACK
If you teach Spanish, you’re probably very familiar with sentences like, “Juan es muy guapo.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but this sort of phrase gets muy boring — both for you and for your students. We all know that every culture expresses itself with more color than such pedestrian sentences indicate. Help your students experience some of that color with the Speak Like a Spaniard blog, a compendium of idiomatic phrases, slang, and colloquial speech commonly used in Spain.
Each entry is brief but illuminating, offering an idiomatic Spanish phrase, its literal English translation, its figurative meaning, and comparable English idioms. The blog is updated frequently and searchable by topic. For example, clicking on “vegetables” delivers nine veggie-related phrases, including “meterse en un berenjal” — literally, “to get into an eggplant patch,” the Spanish equivalent of “to get into a pickle.”
“Speak Like a Spaniard” offers a great way for your advanced students to move beyond the confines of textbook Spanish and an excellent opening for discussions of language as it relates to culture. It’s also a useful resource for students (and lucky teachers) who will spend time abroad.
But be forewarned: It may not be long before your students respond to “¿Cómo estás?” with “Yo soy Juan Palomo, yo me lo guiso y me lo como” — that is, “I am John Pigeon, I cook it and I eat it.”
Related stuff:
SALSA comprehensive Spanish program from Georgia Public Broadcasting
Mango: Rhymes with Lingo (Sort Of)
Photo credit: Contando Estrelas on Flickr.
