Page 502 - diccionario

500 SPANISH GRAMMAR / GRAMÁTICA ESPAÑOLA
WAITER!
The word ¡Permiso! Is useful for getting past people. To call someone´s attention, try ¡Disculpe! or ¡Perdón!.
MISTAKES TO WATCH FOR – SPANISH SPEAKERS
* Spanish speakers tend to find the pronunciation of some English words particularly difficult. For example, words beginning with ´s´ are often
pronounced with an initial ´e´ . ´estarting instead of starting´
* Distinguishing between a ´b´ and ´v´ also presents a problem and they are often both pronounced as a ´b´.
* Because Spanish speakers rarely use ´he/she´ before a verb, they commonly confuse the two in English, as well as the pronouns ´him/her´.
´Do you know my brother Taxi? She is coming tonight´.
* Just like English speakers, Spaniards often confuse the order of the adjective and noun.
´a tomato red´
* In Spanish the partitive (´a half´, ´a bit´, etc) generally goes after the noun instead of before and thus is often misused in English.
´one hour and a half´ instead of ´one and a half hour´
* The Spanish verb hacer can be translated as both ´to do´ and ´to make´, which is why Spanish speakers commonly confuse the two in English.
´Make me a favor: shut up!´.
* Another difference in the use of preposition in Spanish and English is highlighted by this common error.
´What for are you using this phrasebook?´ instead
´What are you using this phrasebook for?
* Spanish uses hay, hubo and había, all singular words, to express ´there is´, ´there are´,´ ´there was´, ´there were´ (see page 31). Because of this,
Spanish speakers will often say ´there is / was´ when ´there was / were´ is needed.
´There was onions in the basket´.
* Spanish speakers may use two forms of the past tense together in questions and negative statements. This is because such sentences in Spanish
don’t use an auxiliary verb (eg ´Did you say?´ would be ´You said´: ¿Dijiste?)
´I didn´t washed my hair yesterday´.
´Did you slept alone last night?´
* Many English verbs change their meaning according to the preposition that is used with them, a good example being ´to look´, which has many
different meanings when used with ´around, after, at, away, back on, down on, for, forward to, into, out, over, through ´and ´up to´.
´I´m looking at the window´ instead of
´I´m looking through the window´.
* A common mistake which Spanish speakers make in English is to use the third person singular of the verb (´he, she, it…´) incorrectly, using the
form of the first or second person (´I, you, we…´) or the third person plural (´they…´).
´She eat paella´.
´My mother have a beautiful bike´.
* ´People´ is always used as a plural word whilst it´s Spanish counterpart, gente is singular.
´People is very strange in Granada´ instead of
´People are very strange in Granada´.
VERBS
There are three different categories of verb in Spanish – those ending in –ar, -er and –ir. Tenses are formed by adding various endings to the verb
stem, and these endings vary according to whether the verb is an –ar, -er, -ir verb. There are quite a few exceptions to the rules when forming these
endings. However the following standard forms are useful to know: