Pronunciación
An ant (not an ont)
Has a rant (not a ront)
In a restaurante
(Not a restaurontay)
Restaurante
En inglés, the word restaurant sounds like it ends with the letters –ont! It’s the same in French I believe. En español they write –rante, and they say –rantay.
Continuamos …
Es el fin de martes, el segundo día de mis vacaciones. Tomo una copa de vino con mi amiga Maxi. I tell her about mi día.
- We finalmente went to el restaurante you’ve always recomendado, el restaurante en la playa. ¡Era perfecto!
Maxi had recomendado the fish. She asked what we ate:
- ¿Tomaron the fish del día?
- Sí, claro. Era delicioso. They cooked it with garlic, nada más, on a barbacoa.
- Es delicioso because es muy fresco,
…explica Maxi.
- Los botes come in, and some of el pescado goes out in the vans a los mercados, but some goes directamente a este restaurante where you went.
Mi amiga continua con su explicación.
- You all went to el restaurant at the best time – lunchtime. Por la mañana y por la tarde el pescado es still fresco. Por la noche it’s too late for fish.
Notas
Pescado
Pescado meaning fish comes from the same Latin word that gives us Pisces, un signo del zodiaco del 19 diecinueve de febrero, hasta el 20 de marzo (for those who like their horóscopos).
Por la mañana, por la tarde, por la noche.
Where we say in the morning but we say at night, en español it’s por for all of them. Por means for.
Tomar (toma, tomo, tomaron)
Tomar means to take, but los españoles use it to say what they have to eat or drink. It has muchas formas, a bit like verbos ingleses: eg.
Toma = he or she takes,
Tomo = I take,
Tomaron = you all took.
Words like tomar – to take – are called verbs. Verbs are first described to children as “doing words”.
There are changes to verbs that depend on who is doing the action, and when the action is done, so “I take” is “Tomo”, and “he takes” is “Toma”.
If you choose to learn language in the way that a child does, by delving into the language to get the meaning, then you learn verbos one by one as they come along. This is the way of learning supported by Spanglish Fantástico.
Another way to learn language is to study the patterns of language, to investigate how groups of words change in various circumstances. This is the study of grammar, and is outside the scope of Spanglish Fantástico.
Within Spanglish Fantástico there is not much mention of grammar. Here, words are learned by seeing them. Tomo = I take. Toma = he takes or she takes. Tomaron = they took.
Poco a poco … little by little … is the Spanglish Fantástico way, always remembering that a small “error” doesn’t usually stop people from understanding us. After all, we all make small “errores” all the time.
Spanglish Fantástico 