Norton's Spanish Basics: Audio Podcast

  Learning Spanish takes some work! Many students use flashcards to help them learn Spanish (or other things). But who wants to take the time preparing to study instead of actually studying?! In this episode, Señor Norton discusses his use of Quizlet.com for digital flashcards. He has already prepared flashcards for you so you can just go online, or use a portable device, and get learning! To find the flashcards that he has already prepared, visit https://www.quizlet.com/senornorton  ____ This podcast uses the following sound file from The Freesound Project:Remix 3 of Freesound 116385__cunningGnome__20_Tang_II_Base.flac from Owdeo; licensed under a Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0 License.  

Show notes: “To be or not to be: that is the question.” In this podcast we will be discussing the two different verbs for “to be”. In Spanish we say either ser or estar when we want to convey the meaning “to be”.   Every year, I ask my Spanish two students if they can tell me the difference between ser and estar. They usually regurgitate the easy-to-teach responses that they heard from they’re first year teachers: Ser is permanent and Estar is temporary. Others will fumble over an acronym or list of occasions that a teacher made them memorize. Neither of those techniques worked for me when I was learning Spanish – the first seemed to have too many exceptions and the second was entirely too cumbersome to use if I were in a conversation with somebody and having to stop mid-sentence in order to drill through a memorized list of situations just to be able to use the correct verb in the sentence that was stopped. Instead, I will give you a less concrete exa

In this episode, Sr. Norton talks with Michelle about her school day. Classes, transportation, clubs and friends are discussed during the short dialogue. The dialogue is played two times. The first has short pauses inserted between sentences to give the listener time to process. The second time plays straight through. Extra credit: After the dialogue, there is a humorous interview between Michelle and her father. Credits: Reggaeton.wav beat from freesound.org Artist: djpuppy's breaksfile: duppyReaagetomSoca01-114.wav Trumpet loops from freesound.org Artist: Trumpet Loops 'n' Hitsfile: TrumpetLoop02.aif

In this episode we discuss the verb GUSTAR as well as a brief overview of indirect object pronouns (IOP). To say you like something is done differently in Spanish than in English. Talking about our likes and dislikes requires a slightly different perspective than what you may be used to. As you learned in Spanish 1, we typically use the verb gustar to discuss our likes and dislikes. Many people will say that gustar means “to like” as in “I like apples.” More accurate, however, would be to say that gustar, actually means “to be pleasing”. So in Spanish we don’t really say “I like apples.” Instead what we really say is “Apples are pleasing to me.” That’s why we say that it requires a slightly different perspective. In English we are accustomed to declare what we like, not to think, say, or even believe that it is not us that is doing the action rather that noun that is liked or disliked is actually the noun performing the action. Clear as

  There are a couple of ways to say have in Spanish. The only one that we have used so far is the one that we are going to be reviewing today: tener. Now many people say that tener looks nothing like any English words, but let’s think about this for a minute… When a verb ends in –er in Spanish then it is in its infinitive form, which is like the to before an infinitive verb in English. Let’s look at tener without its –er ending: ten-. This, by the way, is called the stem of the verb. So ten- is the stem for to have. Are there any words in English that have the ten (or –tain) sound and has something to do with to have? Brainstorm for a minute about English words with –tain and then read the next paragraph.   There are many, many English words with –tain in them and many of those words have some sort of connection to to have. Though we don’t talk about them having have in them, they are related. Here are a few with definitions that are slightly

Show Notes: Hola y bienvenidos a Norton’s Spanish Basic. One of the verbs we learn early on in Spanish is ir. Even people that claim to not know any Spanish often know the words vamos and vámonos – both forms of the verb Ir. The Spanish verb ir  means to go. Many first year students will hesitate on how to conjugate this verb because the conjugations don’t look anything like the infinitive. However, we can use the forms of ir to talk not only about going places but also about future happenings.   By the end of this lesson you should be able to write sentences to describe events or actions that will take place in the future.   We have more than one way to discuss future events in English. That means that there is more than one way to do future conjugations. Take a look at these two examples:   I will study today. I am going to study today.   You can see that their meanings are similar and vary just slightly. The first example is a future tense that we

In Spanish, much like English or any language, we often do things to ourselves: I bathe myself. I wake myself up. She hurts herself. He cut himself. We dress ourselves. We call these actions (verbs) “reflexive”. Reflexive verbs must be used with a reflexive pronoun in order to indicate that the subject is performing the action of the verb upon itself. Reflexive verbs exist in English, but they are much more common in Spanish. Reflexive verbs usually have to do with parts of the body, clothing, or one's state of mind. You can recognize reflexive verbs by the "se" tacked on to the infinitive. Here are some common reflexive verbs:   aburrirse to get bored acostarse to go to bed afeitarse to shave (oneself) animarse to cheer (oneself) up arreglarse to get (oneself) ready bañarse to bathe (oneself) calmarse to calm (oneself) down caerse to fall (down) cansarse to

Subject pronouns are the pronouns that take the place of a noun and is used as a subject in a sentence. Did that send your mind into a grammatical spin? In this podcast we will be reviewing the subject pronouns in Spanish. I          Yo We Nosotros You (familiar) Tú You-all (familiar)* Vosotros He Él They (male or co-ed) Ellos She Ella They (all female) Ellas You (formal) Usted (Ud.) You-all (formal)* Ustedes (Uds.) Reggaeton.wav beat from freesound.org Artist: djpuppy's breaksfile: duppyReaagetomSoca01-114.wav Trumpet loops from freesound.org Artist: Trumpet Loops 'n' Hitsfile: TrumpetLoop02.aif

Very Brief Rules for Stress (Accents) In Spanish, words are spelled just like they sound. In order to take advantage of this simple and nearly perfect system of spelling, one must first know the rules for stress - that is, how to know which syllable is pronounced the loudest. 1.     Words ending in a vowel, -n, or -s are stressed on the next to the last (penultimate) syllable: nadana - dalimonadali - mo - na - dazapatosza - pa - tosmanzanasman – za - nas comprocom - proestaes - taestases- tas   escuela es – cue - la 2.     Words ending in any consonant except -n or -s are stressed on the last syllable: doctor                          comer                           ciudadd

Listen to Francisco and Carlitos use possessive adjectives like mi, mis, tu, tus, su, sus, etc. (my, your, etc.)

A brief overview of the concept and structure of conjugating verbs in Spanish.