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Words of the Week -----
Words taken from the "Comprehension" Section of our Complete Course.

	English	Spanish
Monday	There is /      There are.	Hay.
Tuesday	There was /      There were.	Había.
Wednesday	What is the difference      between ____ and ____?	¿Cuál es la diferencia      entre ____ y ____?
Thursday	How do you      say ____ in Spanish?	¿Cómo se dice      ____ en español?
Friday	How do you say      this in Spanish?	¿Cómo se dice      esto en español?
Saturday	How do you say      that in Spanish?	¿Cómo se dice      eso en español?
Sunday	Did I say that      correctly?	¿Está bien dicho?
Hear Newsletter Words!	Many people have purchased our Complete Spanish Course which has around 1,000 words with audio/visual lessons and then read our newsletter each week to review them.

Culture ----- kwaw-care!!

When living in Latin America, for three months of the two years I was there, I ate breakfast every morning with the Silva family. They were native Spanish speakers and lived in a small city called Vista Alegre (happy view). Every morning the mother of the house would wake up early and go to the bakery to pick up fresh rolls for us to eat. They were always very delicious.

Quite often she would also make a breakfast drink called "kwaw-care". It seemed to be made out of cooked oatmeal, chocolate, and milk. I grew to love my frequent morning drink of "kwaw-care" and really looked forward to it. I had not heard the word "kwaw-care" before and tried to look it up in the dictionary, but I couldn't find anything even remotely close. I looked up the word for oatmeal and it was "avena" [aw-ben-aw].

I continued to drink my "kwaw-care" for the next few months and pretty soon it became a "household" word for me. I would go to breakfast at the Silva's and eagerly await my daily dose of "kwaw-care".

It wasn't until I was about to move on to another city that I finally found out what "kwaw-care" really was. I was in the Silva family's kitchen and saw the mother preparing "kwaw-care" and suddenly it dawned on me! She was taking oatmeal out of a box of "Quaker Oats" and that is how they pronounced "Quaker" -- "kwaw-care"! I suddenly laughed out loud and began to tease the family a little bit about it. I asked them why they didn't just call it "avena" since that was the real name for oatmeal. They didn't have a good answer.

The more I thought about it, I realized that it must be a common language phenomenon that happen all over the world in different cultures. With certain consumer products their brand names become so familiar that people begin to use them as the actual name for the product. For example, if I get cut, I use a bandaid (which is actually a brand name).

So, the next time you are in Latin America and someone makes you "kwaw-care", you'll know exactly what it is!!

P.S. - If anybody out there working for Quaker Oats™ or the Bandaid™ company reads this, we'll gladly accept advertising money from you. We'll even send out a follow-up newsletter so everyone will for sure learn what "kwaw-care" really is!

¡Hasta luego! (Until later!)

David S. Clark -- President
U.S. Institute of Languages
dave@spanishprograms.com
http://www.spanishprograms.com

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