Lesson 1: Spanish Pronunciation and Cognate Tricks

Transcript

hey everybody Qroo Paul here welcome to the first lesson of my course cero to conversational this course was designed specifically for english-speaking adults who speak little or no spanish or those who have tried and failed to learn spanish in the past via more traditional courses even if you’re an absolute beginner to spanish i promise you that by the end of this lesson you’re going to be translating sentences on your own i know that’s a big promise but you’re going to see in this lesson the very first lesson i’m going to be giving you an overview of the spanish language teaching you a couple of cool cognate tricks to convert your english vocabulary into spanish without having to rely on memorization and most importantly teaching you spanish pronunciation after all the goal of the entire course is to make you conversational in spanish and that isn’t going to happen if you’re just watching these videos silently to get the most out of this video lesson you’re going to have to be pronouncing these things these sentences out loud so i suggest that you tell the people in your house up front that you’re going to be doing this so they don’t keep popping their heads in and asking did you say something and what are you even doing in here as an english speaker you already have a big head start on learning spanish because the two languages share some common roots especially when it comes to vocabulary take a look at these english words animal legal social criminal digital final formal individual normal hospital and judicial as you can see these words all share a common trait they all end with a l now i’m going to do a quick little trick here and turn them all into spanish words ready there you go no there wasn’t a glitch there they just didn’t change all of these words are spanish words you just may not have recognized them because well they’re pronounced differently these are known as cognates which are words in two languages that share similar roots now sometimes these words are going to be exactly the same as they are here and sometimes they’re just going to be very similar fortunately for you english and spanish share a lot of vocabulary and the majority of that vocabulary comes from either latin or greek so this is going to allow you to gain about a thousand word vocabulary in spanish just from the english you already know so the cognate technique i just showed you is known as the al2al cognate trick meaning that many words but not all words in english that end in a al will be the same in spanish as i just mentioned although these look exactly the same they do not sound the same this is how they would sound in spanish animal legal social criminal digital final formal individual normal hospital judicial sounds very different doesn’t it so you’re going to have to learn spanish pronunciation well compared to english spanish pronunciation is much easier to learn as a second language because spanish is a phonetic language meaning if you can see it you can say it it follows very clear pronunciation rules the same cannot be said about english like think of herd and beard why are they not pronounced the same or one and bone and then we even have words that have different pronunciations and are written exactly the same like live and live that doesn’t make any sense refuse refuse i mean there just seems to be no rhyme or reason to english the key to pronouncing spanish correctly is to really focus on the sound of the vowels fortunately this is going to be super easy because there are only five vowel sounds in spanish now english has 12 vowel sounds in case you were wondering but spanish only has five here they are say them along with me a sounds like ah e sounds like a i sounds like e a real hard e o sounds like o and you sounds like okay let’s take a look at that word list again those words ending in al because i want you to practice your pronunciation remember you’re not going to become conversational or get good in spanish if you’re just watching these videos silently so we’re going to go through each one i really want you to focus on the vowel sounds okay i’m going to say it twice i’m going to pause so you can say it twice legal social social criminal criminal digital digital final finale formal formal individual individual if you had some difficulty pronouncing those don’t worry it’s going to take some practice now i want to talk about a little bit more about spanish pronunciation i’m going to use these words so let’s talk about the letter c c normally has a hard c sound like a k except before the letters e or i in that case it’ll have an s sound take a look at this criminal hard k right criminal social the c has an s sound because it is before an i or an e it’s an i in this case let’s talk about g g normally in spanish has a hard g sound or a but it will have an h sound like an h in english before an e or an i here are two examples legal legal that’s a hard g and then we have dijital digital which is more like the english h a v in spanish has kind of a soft b sound like boy or ben individual individual and one letter in spanish has absolutely no sound and that is the h you may have noticed that i didn’t say hospital i said a j in spanish sounds like an h in english and we had an example of that in judicial judicial okay that a l to a l cognate trick is pretty cool right but it isn’t the most useful cognate trick in my humble opinion i’m going to teach you the big one so you can practice it as we continue to work through your spanish pronunciation all right here it is the tion to cion cognate trick so to use this one we’re going to take words in english that end in tion now the first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to look at these words and we’re going to change the t at the end to a c and then put an accent over the last o that accent is going to tell us to put the emphasis on that letter when we pronounce the word well there you go these are spanish words now it’s that easy we’re going to go through these and just like i did before i’m going to say each one twice pause so you have an opportunity to say the word ready creation creation documentation documentation information information verification verification you can slow these down at first till you get better you can say creation now changing your english into the spanish using this cognate trick was pretty easy right now as with most cognate tricks it doesn’t work on all words for example the word translation in english is not translation in spanish it’s traduxion nevertheless this cognate trick works often enough that you can really feel confident making educated guesses trying to use it and working into your spanish in those cases where you’re wrong what generally happens is the person you’re talking to it’s close enough they realize what you’re trying to say and they correct you so let’s see if you can do a few of these cognate tricks on your own i want you to convert these four english words into spanish decoration elevation continuation confirmation now you can pause the video at any point if you want to work on something a little bit longer i encourage you to write these out on a piece of paper it just helps to reinforce that you know you’re seeing it you’re writing it and you’re going to be saying it all right are you ready if you’re not ready you may want to pause otherwise we’re going to move on all right what do we end up with decoration we change the t to c we put an accent over the last o and we get decoration decoration elevation we change the t to c put an accent over the o elevation are you saying these along with me because you should be saying them along with me continuation change the t to c accent over the o continuation that can be a little trickier that one because you have a lot of vowels in there and you’re going to be pronouncing all of the vowels and conformation t to c accent over the o confirmation all right now let’s cover some of the cognate tricks that are going to change a little in the root so if we have an english word beginning with an s followed by a consonant then it’s going to be the s is going to turn into es in the stem here’s an example speculation see we have an s followed by a consonant that’s the p so the spanish is going to be especially especially station same thing we’re going to be adding an e on the front everything else is going to go the same way we change the t to c we put an accent over it estacion estacion an estacion in spanish can mean station or it can mean season like the seasons you know fall spring summer stuff like that don’t worry if you can’t remember some of these nuances with the cognate trick the first time you watch this video you can refer back to this video whenever you feel the need and for some folks you may want to watch it several times to really drive these things home all right here’s another one double letters in english that don’t change the sound of the word will often go to a single letter in spanish they just don’t like wasted letters okay so take a look at this one in english recommendation look we have those two m’s together in the middle they’re not changing the sound it just still has an m sound it doesn’t even have a long m sound we’re not saying recommendation i don’t know why we have two letters in english anyways in spanish we won’t it’ll change to one and repeat after me i’m going to say it twice recommendation recommendation communication two m’s stuck together i don’t know why we’re going to drop one of them comunicacion comunicacion your turn i’m guessing you said it right i can’t hear you here’s another one illumination illumination now a double l in spanish will have a y sound so if we kept the two l’s it wouldn’t sound like illumination anymore it would sound like illumination so it’s going to drop to a single l illumination illumination it’s going to take you some practice to get this cognate trick down and that’s not really the point of this video the point is so you can work on your spanish pronunciation and you can also see that spanish is not going to be as difficult for you to learn as you may have thought it was you can use your english to give you a huge boost and not just in vocabulary it’s also going to help when we get into some of the grammar you’ll see what i mean as we go through the course all right let’s get back to our double letters or two of the same letters together in english sometimes we’re going to keep that in spanish if they each have their own individual sound meaning it’s important for the pronunciation of the word a good example of this is cooperation even in english we’re saying go operation we’re pronouncing each one of those o’s since it sounded out like that it’s going to stay the same in the root in the spanish cooperation now if there are two r’s together in a word they tend to stay together even though they’re not pronounced separately they’re actually pronounced like uh some people say it’s like a trill like a and this is going to be one of the most difficult sounds for most english speakers to make and it’s just going to take some practice so we have narration and we make that into spanish again t to c accent over the o those two r’s are going to stay together so we’re still going to focus on our vowels right i’m going to say it twice and then you can try that rolling r is going to give a lot of people trouble if you’re not getting it right now or it’s sounding like a hacion which some people pronounce it that way you’re just going to have to work on it some people refer to it as like a machine gun sound like little kids make when they’re like just take your time with that you’re going to get it you’re going to get it so with the tio and cio and cognate trick you may see some other spelling changes in the root of the word that don’t always make as much sense here are some of the common ones you just have to kind of learn them as they come up demonstration actually becomes demonstration demonstration and immigration with the double m’s which normally you expect to drop one they picked up an n in migration inmigration and humiliation actually picked up a double l you may remember i just mentioned that a double l is going to have a y sound so humiliation is going to turn into mumiacion it’s like a y sound in there here’s another spelling change you’re going to see not just here but occasionally with other cognates and that is if you have a th in english it often turns into just a t so authorization would turn into we’re going to drop that th to a t you try to say it good good so how’s your pronunciation coming along don’t worry if it’s sounding like auturisan it’s it’s really going to take some time okay now i want to talk about the n with a squiggly over it known as the enye spanish has a regular n with no squiggly but it also has this end with a squiggly and it’s going to be pronounced like the first n in onion like that sound a good example of this is the spanish word manana like manana all right we’re not done playing with our cognate trick just yet but i need to touch on the gender of nouns before we proceed right because i’m giving you an overview of the spanish language so gender of nouns in spanish every noun in spanish is assigned a gender it’s either masculine or feminine even inanimate objects like a chair or a car have gender well with the exception of living beings the gender assignment seems to be quite random when it comes to inanimate objects and you’re just going to have to learn the gender as you learn each new spanish word so with masculine nouns masculine nouns often end with an o but not always here’s a few examples chico boy hombre man remember h is silent parque park now i want to point out that q u in there in parque that’s going to have like a k sound parque parque and edificio building these are all masculine nouns with feminine nouns in spanish they often end with the letter a but not always here’s some examples chica means girl mujer means woman casa house sia chair see the double else has a y sound in english our nouns do not have any gender and we use definite articles and indefinite articles before them and don’t let the english grammatical terms freak you out because that’s where adult learners are like i don’t even know what he means by definite article indefinite article definite article is the the word the indefinite article is like a or an depending on it well in english it’s pretty easy because we don’t have a lot of options but in spanish the definite and indefinite articles have to agree in number and gender with the noun so let’s look at masculine nouns first the word the for singular is el so el chico the boy if i want to say a boy i use to make nouns plural if they end with a vowel we can just add an s so it could be chicos because that’s a vowel we just add an s and the the part has to change because it’s always going to agree in number and gender this is something that’s going to be different from english and might give you some trouble so it becomes los los chicos and there’s one more unos chicos and that would mean like some boys here’s a spanish word that does not end in a vowel see it as an accent over the first a so that’s going to show us to put the emphasis there it means tree so if i wanted to make it the tree el arbun a tree the trees to make it plural if it doesn’t end in a vowel we have to add an es los arboles los arboles and some trees would be unos arboles unos arboles okay that’s how masculine nouns work and we’re going to move on to feminine nouns la is the una for a for the plural and unas for some so we do the same drill we just did with masculine nouns we’re going to say for example we have chica we’re going to say the girl a girl the girls some girls ready la chica the girl una chica agro las chicas the girls unas chicas some girls mujer which means woman again this is gonna end with a consonant so we can’t just throw an s on we have to put an e s right remember that when we get to that part la mojer the woman una mujer a woman las mujeres the women unas mujeres some women and the last one sia remember l’s together two l’s mean a y sia la silla the chair una sia a chair la silas the chairs una some chairs if that seemed a little difficult at first don’t be discouraged you’re going to be working with nouns every single day as you work through this course so you’re going to learn it just through repetition in this first lesson this is really just an introduction for those folks who are just super new to spanish so i just wanted to give you that little breakdown all right now let’s get back to our tion cio and cognate trick now here’s the cool thing all of the nouns that we’ve made are all going to be feminine isn’t that great it’s great because you don’t have to try to memorize is that one masculine feminine they’re all feminine so let’s take an english word decoration let’s make it into spanish do you remember how to do it change the t to c put an accent over the o decoration decoration now i want you to say the decoration a decoration the decorations and some decorations how are we going to do that here we go the decoration la decoration now you say a decoration the decorations las decoraziones you may have noticed the accent mark disappeared in the plural that’s not a typo it does but you may have noticed that you still managed to put the emphasis in the correct place even without the accent mark telling you right like that’s why spanish didn’t need to add it so go ahead and say that las decoraziones and some decorations your turn all right now it’s time for you to do a little bit of translation i want you to translate the following the information the confirmation the implementation the motivation and the certifications be careful with that last one it’s in the plural i honestly don’t think you need too much time for this so we’re just going to jump into it i’m going to say the answer once and i’m going to pause during that pause i want you to repeat the answer so you can work on your spanish pronunciation all right let’s get started la informacion motivation did you remember to put loss on that last one remember the the in spanish is going to agree in number and gender with the noun now as you can see this is a pretty useful cognate trick but a lot of people ask me paul why do you like this particular cognate trick so much and the reason is is that i can use this cognate trick to make verbs yes verbs and few folks that haven’t been in school in a while those are action words we’re going to need some action words to start making our first sentences or your first sentences actually so i’m going to show you how to make these verbs first of all let’s take the spanish words that we just created and we’re going to drop those definite articles that means the la and las we don’t need them also we’re going to want them to all be in the singular which is not a problem for most of them but that one at the end certifications is going to become certification all right now this is super important if the noun we created using the tion cion cognate trick ends in asion acion then we can make it a verb so take a look at our words on the screen coincidentally or not so coincidentally they all end in asion which means we can make them a verb the way we do this is we drop the sion from the end and we add the letter r so that’s it these are verbs now so we end up with informar to inform confirmar to confirm implementar to implement motivar to motivate and certificate to certify that’s not so hard is it now you’re going to be able to do this with a lot of your tion words and convert them into verbs but not all of them if the cio n word that we’ve created in spanish using our cognate trick does not end in acion then you cannot make it a verb okay that’s just how it goes so here are some examples satisfaction satisfaction doesn’t end in asean see there’s two c’s in there we cannot make this a verb fiction fiction same problem axion action same problem so we’re just going to have to stick with using these as nouns little more overview of spanish there are actually three types of verbs in spanish there are those that end in ar er and ir every verb that we create with this little cognate trick is an ar verb those little endings are going to be important when we get into conjugations more all right so here are examples of an er and ir verbs gomer which means to e that’s ending with er and bibir to live is ending with ir those are just examples i don’t expect you to learn those right now now it’s your turn to actually do some of these on your own and i’m only going to be giving you the english verb like for example to participate because i want you to get in the habit of thinking of tion words so if i was like hey you know how to say to participate in spanish you might be like no i’ve never heard the word but if you can think of a tion word you’re like well maybe i do participation i can change that to participacion i know it ends in asion so i drop the cion and add an r participate to participate i guess i do know it so this exercise is going to get you in that habit we’re going to go through 15 of these our first one is to educate so what i want you to do is stop the video as necessary and it helps to write these out and i want you to first think of the tion right which will be education and change it into spanish and then change it into the verb to educate so when i give you the answers i’m just going to be giving you the noun and the verb and of course after i say them i would like you to say them out loud so you can work on your pronunciation because that’s our goal right we want to make you conversational in spanish all right go ahead and take a stab at that first one again pause the video as necessary because i’m going to go through these relatively quickly education education to observe [Music] to legalize legalization to facilitate facilitation facilitar to create creation [Music] to document documentation documentary to contemplate contemplation [Music] to imitate imitation to examine examination to converse conversation [Music] to participate to transform transformation did you get those right that’s a lot of translation there but you know you’ve learned a lot today but how much actual memorization’s been involved right not a lot so i’m going to be asking you now to learn two new words the first one is and that means to want that’s in the infinitive right the unconjugated form so the other word i actually want to teach you is just a conjugation from query now when you take a traditional spanish course they generally give you long lists of conjugations you’re going to learn how to say like i want she wants you want what you want we’re not going to do any of that right now we’re only going to learn one and that’s i want and the reason we’re doing i is because we’re going to make you conversational and the person who’s in every conversation you have is yourself so you’re going to be saying i a lot so repeat after me yo yo now there’s a unique thing about spanish that um a lot of times they’re actually going to drop that subject that pronoun the eye will disappear and they’ll just use the verb it doesn’t change how we translate it in spanish for example you may just see quiero with no yo but we’d still translate it as i want so the tendency in spanish is actually to drop the subject or that pronoun and just keep the verb if the conjugation of the verb makes it clear who we’re talking about or the context of the conversation does so when it comes to yo quiero it’s very clear from the verb conjugation that we’re talking about i so yo normally does not appear with it and you’re just going to say quiero quiero now the queue sounds like a k and i want you to pronounce every single vowel quiero all right just think i want so big into constructions i want you to like learn little constructions because they’re easier as an english speaker to keep in your head straight and the one we’re going to be using today is quiero plus infinitive remember the infinitive is the unconjugated verb that means i want to do something okay quiero plus infinitive here’s an example i want to participate this uses one of your cognate tricks right you just you just conjugate it to participate all we do is quiero and then we plug in infinitives when we have a series of verbs we’re only conjugating the very first one i think of it as the locomotive on a train pulling these other cars and i can just plug in other verbs without having to conjugate them this is a way that we can speak spanish faster down the road so quiero participar i want to participate piece of cake right i’m actually so confident you can use this formula with your cognate trick to successfully translate sentences that we are going to jump right into the exercise and you even the absolute beginners are going to translate complete sentences in spanish in your very first lesson here’s number one i want to memorize the information i want to memorize the information now i encourage you to actually stop the video at this point and to write this down otherwise the answer is going to come too quickly for you just break it down like i showed you use the formula you ready i want to memorize the information did you get that one so you had the quiero and where did you get memorized from you had to think of memorization right and then you had to make it into the verb that’s where that came from now we’re back to the information that’s just a noun using your cognate trick the the is la right because informacion is a feminine noun not too bad right here’s number two i want to participate i want to participate should have gotten that one because it was actually an example i just gave you i want to examine the documentation i want to examine the documentation quiero examinar la documentacion quiero you should be practicing your pronunciation as we go through these all right number four i want to cancel the reservation i want to cancel the reservation just a quick note about the translation of reservation another common translation is not a cognate trick and it is reserva and in some countries uh you won’t hear reservacion used as much in mexico we do say reservation for like when i’m making reservations for restaurants things like that so feel comfortable using it and if you happen to be in a spanish-speaking country where you don’t hear that as much you may not be able to rely on that particular cognate trick as much and you’ll just have to plug in reserva okay all right let’s get back to these i want to organize the information i want to organize the information i want to celebrate i want to celebrate i want to certify the information i want to certify the information [Music] i want to cooperate i want to cooperate i want to collaborate i want to collaborate i want to confirm the description i want to confirm the description quiero confirmar description i want to present the information i want to present the information presented i want to prepare the documentation i want to prepare the documentation quiero preparar documentacion quiero preparar i want to verify the information i want to verify the information quiero verificar la informacion quiero verificar la i want to deliberate i want to deliberate i want to decorate i want to decorate so how did you do on those if you’re absolutely new at spanish quite possibly those were the very first spanish sentences you ever translated on your own and you did it using your english and the simple formula there’s one thing i want to point out before you move on in all of those examples i was talking about what i want to do but what if i don’t want to do it how would i make it negative well the only thing you have to do is put the word no before quiero so if you say i don’t want to speculate again that’s one of our cognate tricks i could say no quiero especular now that little es was added remember because we had an s with a consonant so if i said something like i don’t want to decorate the house i would just say no quiero de corrar la casa i don’t want to decorate the house it’s really that easy well that’s the end of the lesson i hope you enjoyed it and i hope you stick with the course um i’ll be adding new lessons to this course periodically so be sure to subscribe to the channel and hit that little bell so you’ll get a notification whenever i publish something new feel free to leave me some feedback or questions in the comments section i get to them as i get time and until next time

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