Learn Spanish Blog

To learn more Spanish words, please visit our website www.spanishprograms.com

antes de meternos en – before getting into
muchos de ustedes han preguntado – many of you have asked
acerca de nuestro curso – about our course
miles de personas – thousands of people
personalmente – personally
tema – topic
el sistema de correo – the postal system
una carta de otro país – a letter from another country
de amigos y familia – from friends and family
cuando recibía paquetes – when I received (used to receive) packages
como galletas y dulces – like cookies and candies
adentro – inside
tenía un amigo norteamericano – I had an American friend
y lo mandó – and sent it
y nada había llegado – and nothing had arrived
y todavía nada había llegado – and still nothing had arrived
negó que – denied that…
otro cuento chistoso del correo – another funny postal story
el vivió – he lived
no había – there weren’t
unos meses antes de la Navidad – a few months before Christmas
nos reímos de él – we laughed at him
la situación del correo – the postal situation
como puede imaginarse – as you can imagine
por el correo – through the mail
donde el pago – where the payment
en efectivo – with cash
guarda dinero en el banco – keep money in the bank
su dinero – their money
muchos no tienen cuentas bancarias – many don’t have bank accounts
cómo es la situación bancaria – what is the bank situation like
¿Es común…? – Is it common…?
lecciones de la vida práctica – practical life lessons
en sus bancos – in thei r banks
es preferido – is preferred
si visita – if you visit
un poco de efectivo – some cash
disponible(s) – available
es importante darse cuenta – it’s important to realize
en efectivo – with cash
hace pocos años – a few years ago

If you would like to learn more Spanish vocabulary words, please visit our website www.spanishprograms.com

To learn more Spanish vocabulary words, please visit our website www.spanishprograms.com

Before we get into this week’s Spanish Culture topic, I just wanted to let many of you readers know briefly about our Spanish course. Many of you have asked if we recommend a particular course to learn Spanish. I just wanted to give you a link to our website www.spanishprograms.com  where you can take a look at our course, see our free course demos and get more information about our course. To give you an idea of the effectiveness of our course, Visual Link Spanish™ has been taught to thousands of people around the world, to major corporations and at the university level for the past four years.

Now, moving onto this week’s culture topic; the postal system in Latin America is very different from that here in the U.S. If you’ve ever lived in Latin America and waited for a letter from another country you know what I mean. When I lived there it would take anywhere from weeks to usually months for letters to arrive from friends and family.

Needless to say, the postal system is very slow and quite different from ours. When I would receive packages with coveted items like cookies and candies from the U.S., usually they had been opened first by a Latino postal worker to see if there was anything of value in them.

I had an American friend who also lived in Latin America and wanted his mom to send down his high school letterman jacket. She carefully wrapped it and sent it through the normal mail system. He checked the post office after a month and nothing had arrived. Then he checked every week for the next few months and still nothing arrived. Finally after quite a few months he went into the post office and noticed that a postal worker was wearing his letterman jacket. He got upset and claimed that the postal worker had taken his jacket! The postal carrier denied that any wrong doing had happened and kept “his” new letterman jacket.

Now for another humorous postal story; I had a different American friend that also lived in Latin America for an extended period of time. He lived in many of the lower-income pueblos where they didn’t have many of the niceties of life. For example, there weren’t toilet seats in any of the apartments in the cities where he lived. He ordered a new toilet seat from his family in the U.S. a few months before Christmas and it came through just in time. It was opened by the postal workers but wasn’t “claimed” by them and went right through to him. We laughed at him, but he was thrilled to get a small part of his former life back.

Because the postal situation is somewhat less reliable in many Latin American regions, as you can imagine, people don’t usually send their bills or payments through the mail. Many of them take their payments directly to companies where the payment is due and pay by hand using cash.

Many pay bills by cash because of the bank situation. In some Latin countries, inflation rates can be astronomical. If people keep money in the bank, in the worst cases they can lose the majority of the value of their money virtually overnight. Because of that, many don’t have bank accounts and as a result, they don’t use checks or credit cards either. I knew someone in Latin America personally who had around $30,000 in the bank which was devalued to just a few thousand in only a few days. OUCH!!!

To our international readers: what is the bank situation like in your countries and how is the inflation rate? Is it common for people to own credit cards or use checks?

Practical Life Lessons:

1. If you live in Latin America, putting large amounts of money in their banks is not recommended. An account in your original country is preferred and money can be transferred to you on a regular basis.

1. If you visit Latin America, many places don’t accept credit cards or checks – cash only. Be sure to take some cash and get instructions to ATM locations as there are fewer of them available.

1. If you are doing business in the U.S. and cater to many Latinos, it’s important to realize that many will pay you with cash and only a few will use checks or credit cards. It was amazing to me that, as my company taught English classes to Latinos a few years ago, probably over 98% of Latinos paid for the classes with cash.

 To learn more about the Spanish language, please visit our website www.spanishprograms.com

antes de meternos en – before getting into
muchos de ustedes han preguntado – many of you have asked
acerca de nuestro curso – about our course
miles de personas – thousands of people
personalmente – personally
tema – topic
el sistema de correo – the postal system
una carta de otro país – a letter from another country
de amigos y familia – from friends and family
cuando recibía paquetes – when I received (used to receive) packages
como galletas y dulces – like cookies and candies
adentro – inside
tenía un amigo norteamericano – I had an American friend
y lo mandó – and sent it
y nada había llegado – and nothing had arrived
y todavía nada había llegado – and still nothing had arrived
negó que – denied that…
otro cuento chistoso del correo – another funny postal story
el vivió – he lived
no había – there weren’t
unos meses antes de la Navidad – a few months before Christmas
nos reímos de él – we laughed at him
la situación del correo – the postal situation
como puede imaginarse – as you can imagine
por el correo – through the mail
donde el pago – where the payment
en efectivo – with cash
guarda dinero en el banco – keep money in the bank
su dinero – their money
muchos no tienen cuentas bancarias – many don’t have bank accounts
cómo es la situación bancaria – what is the bank situation like
¿Es común…? – Is it common…?
lecciones de la vida práctica – practical life lessons
en sus bancos – in thei r banks
es preferido – is preferred
si visita – if you visit
un poco de efectivo – some cash
disponible(s) – available
es importante darse cuenta – it’s important to realize
en efectivo – with cash
hace pocos años – a few years ago

To learn more Spanish words and phrases, please visit our website www.spanishprograms.com

To learn more Spanish words, please visit our website www.spanishprograms.com

This week’s Spanish culture lesson is a little different from out previous topics.  I would like to start off this week by saluting all of the public-school Spanish teachers of today. You are so dedicated and do such wonderful work usually on a shoe-string budget.  Many of you use so much energy while teaching, and put on “performances” each day for your students to get them to learn Spanish. You do great work and should be commended!!

So why is it that so many students finish Spanish classes without being able to converse in Spanish? That is the issue I would like to address.

In my opinion, one of the major problems with learning Spanish today is that the resources available for people and school classes to learn Spanish are over 100 years old — the manual and the workbook. The same horse-n-buggy approach of 100 years ago is still used today, with an occasional low-budget CD.

Another problem is that most of the textbooks available are designed to teach students how to be Spanish teachers and not how to speak and converse in Spanish. In other words, when students finish a course, they have a lot of grammar rules memorized and can regurgitate them and even conjugate different verbs but can’t actually communicate in Spanish.

What does this do to the average person? The problem is that most students that finish taking Spanish classes have the idea that Spanish is very difficult because of all of the rules and conjugations. Many of you have probably built mental blocks against learning Spanish because when you finished Spanish at school, you couldn’t speak it and much less with a native speaker. So many people I talk to think that they were just not “made” to speak Spanish. They also think that they were the only ones that didn’t get much out of Spanish in school. If you feel this way, don’t worry, you’re not alone, a majority of people that take Spanish in school feel the same way.

Is there hope? Don’t worry, you’re not less intelligent or lacking a “Spanish gene”; in school you were simply trained to memorize grammar rules and verb conjugations but not to speak Spanish! Whew! I can already feel a sigh of relief from many of you who thought you were subpar or damaged intellectually for the rest of your lives because of your experience with Spanish. Think of all of the wasted worries you could’ve put to rest had you known that you were simply learning with the wrong methods!

In my opinion, textbooks, even current “up-to-date” ones generally teach you Spanish backwards. Within the first few months of class, you learn numbers, colors, days of the week and many verb conjugations. The n the real hope is that you’ll later pick up conversational skills.

That is why we at Visual Link Spanish™ have done nine years of research and development to create our courses with modern technology and in a format that actually works. We teach you Spanish like children learn their own language but tailored to adults. First, you learn vocabulary words with computer pictures. It is done in a way that stimulates the brain and teaches you to build sentences. You also learn conversational skills like asking and answering questions. We don’t teach you in-depth grammar at first just like children don’t have grammar lessons when first learning a language. However, you do learn to speak and converse correctly with correct grammar!

When we took English in our later school years, we finally started learning grammar rules. But most of us don’t even remember the grammar rules we learned in school. Does that make us less effective English speakers? NO! The fact that we don’t remember what a prepositional phrase is or the past participle of the word “swim” doesn’t mean we can speak English correctly.

In learning Spanish, there is a little difference however. Verb conjugations are a major part of advanced Spanish. They do have to be learned and practiced to achieve an advance level of Spanish. As you are probably aware, Visual Link Spanish™ Level I is available for the beginning student which takes you from a beginning to an intermediate level and gets you conversational. We also have our Level II verb course that is similar in style to our Level I course but teaches you the ins and outs of verb conjugation. I have lived in foreign countries and taught Spanish personally for three years at the university level and have never seen anything as complete as our course will be for teaching verb conjugations.

Our goal and passion here at Visual Link Spanish™/U.S. Institute of Languages® is to help you learn Spanish using the most modern and technologically advanced methods so when you are finished, you can actually speak Spanish. We are not like many companies who just throw together a Spanish course to make money at your expense and you gain nothing from it. We’ve had many customers say they’ve wasted hundreds of dollars trying to learn Spanish, and finally with our course they were able to learn and communicate in Spanish.

 Thank you so much for reading our blog.  If you would like to learn more about speaking Spanish, please visit our website www.spanishprograms.com

el boletín de esta semana – this week’s newsletter
son tan dedicados – you are so dedicated
muchos de ustedes usan – many of you use
cada día – each day
si nuestros maestros – if our teachers
en español – in Spanish
en el boletín de esta semana – in this week’s newsletter
en mi opinión – in my opinion
los recursos disponibles – the available resources
desde hace cien años – from 100 years ago
otro problema – another problem
maestros de español – Spanish teachers
terminan un curso – finish a course
el problema – the problem
es muy difícil – is very difficult
las reglas – the rules
tantas personas con quien hablo – so many people that I talk to
también piensan – they also think
¿Hay esperanza? – Is there hope?
reglas de gramática – grammar rules
de muchos de ustedes – from many of you
los métodos equivocados – the wrong methods
al revés – backwards
números – numbers
colores – colors
días de la semana – days of the week
nueve años de estudios – nine years of research
que en verdad funciona – that actually works
el cerebro – the brain
al principio – at first
sin embargo – however
no han visto – have not seen
reglas de gramática – grammar rules
el hecho de que – the fact that
correctamente – correctly
es ayudarle a – is to help you to
para ganar dinero – to earn money
cienes de dólares – hundreds of dollars

If you would like to learn more Spanish words and phrases, please visit our website www.spanishprograms.com

If you would like to learn more Spanish words, please visit our website www.spanishprograms.com

¡Hola mis amigos! It’s great to be back with you another week of sharing cultural information about Latin America. This week’s Spanish Culture topic is one of my favorites.

According to ancient Aztec legend, there is a god called Quetzalcoatl [ket-saul-co-ottle] (Kukulcan [coo-cool-kahn] according to the Mayans) who visited the ancient Indians of Latin America and educated them. According to stories, he taught them science, the calendar and created ceremonies. He also discovered corn, represented saintliness and all good aspects of civilization.

Some called him the plumed serpent, but he was also known by the legend to be a bearded white man. As part of the legend, it was understood that he would someday return from the east.

This legend plays a significant part in history when around 1519 Hernán Cortés came to Mexico from Spain as a “conquistador” (conqueror) seeking gold and riches at any expense. Since he was a bearded white man, many of the native Aztecs supposed him to be Quetzalcoatl returning and gave him a royal welcome. It was a great tragedy when Cortés, because of their legend and his “royal treatment”, obtained incredible gold riches and defeated the Aztecs killing many and eventually subjecting them to the rule of the Spaniards.

The legend of Quetzalcoatl ended up being a significant factor that influenced the history of Mexico and Latin America forever. The legend, as well as the fact that the Spaniards had more advanced weapons and armor, contributed to the downfall of the Native Americans.

Now, on a little different topic, we’ll take a look at theories of the origin of the Native Americans. Some scholars think they migrated from regions of Egypt due to the pyramid-style temples they built. Scientific DNA studies seem to have proven that they came from somewhere in Europe. Another theory has to do with an ancient record that was found buried in the North-Eastern U.S. around 1823. It was translated and recounts the history of the Native Americans on the North and South American continents up to about 400 a.d. It claims that they originally came from the Middle East/Israel area. It also talks about a bearded white god that visited the people and corroborates the common legend of Quetzalcoatl.

It is a very fascinating religious-type book, and I have some information on it if any of you newsletter subscribers are interested in getting a copy. I am familiar with a private organization that has given the book out for free for many years. From what I understand a public publishing company just started publishing the book a few years ago to make it available to everyone. If any of you want a copy, I’ll see what I can do to get you one for free.

In summary, it’s important to get to know the culture and legends of others. It gives us a greater understanding of different people and what they are like. Understanding the culture and language of a people can really enhance us as individuals. Our culture newsletters are a great supplement to our Complete Spanish Course that has taught thousands to communicate in Spanish all over the world and can help you learn Spanish effectively.

If you would like to learn more about Spanish culture, please visit our website www.spanishprograms.com