Spanish is turning out to be one of the tougher classes I've taken at USC. At this point I would rank it second behind the histology course (500 level biology) I decided to take several semesters back. The good news is that I got through histology and I think I can get through Spanish, but it's going to take a lot of hard work.
One of the things I would like to do is blog about and in Spanish to help me better understand the language. If you speak español I would love your feedback on anything I put up on the site. For this post, I will be going through some of the material that will be on the quiz tomorrow. Hopefully this can be a reference point for others as well as give me an opportunity to better understand and learn the material.
La ropa habla - The clothes speak
Me visto para el trabajo - I dress for work
Me gusta llevar ropa profesional - I like to wear professional clothing
Me gusta usar camisas azules - I like to wear blue shirts
de cuadros - is a pattern that uses a lot of perpendicular lines
con lunares - is a dotted pattern
de rayas - is a pattern that uses a slanted lines with alternating colores
estampado - is a pattern with many different shapes
Los Astros llevar jerseys blancos, pantalones blancos y gorras de béisbol naranjas - The Astros wear white jerseys, white pants and orange baseball caps.
In Spanish the color of something goes after the object. While we say white pants in Spanish it's pantalones blancos.
Los numeros ordinales - The ordinal numbers
Primero - first
Segundo - second
Tercero - third
Los adjectivos demostrativos - The demonstrative adjectives
Este/esta - this
Estos/estas - these
Ese/esa - that
Esos/esas - those
The first word there is the masculine version and the second word is the feminine version. In Spanish words can have the same meaning but depending on the word and gender it can be spelled slightly different. As a general rule (a) is considered feminine, (o) and (e) are masculine.
Palabras difícil - Difficult words
For some reason I'm struggling a little bit to remember words such as encantar or to love and parecer or to seem/appear. Quedar is also another tricking one but it means to stay or remain or even to fit. If it's to fit then words like bien (well) or mal (poorly) will follow it. Both parecer (to seem) and quedar (to fit) can have the subject placed in front of them instead of at the end of a sentence.
That's about all I've got for now. I'll try to update on how the quiz went and hopefully I'll have something more constructive next time.