WELCOME TO SPANISH LANGUAGE
Welcome to your Spanish classroom. created especially for all those on planet earth who desire to be able to speak and write Spanish language not only well, but like it is done in its birth place – Castilla (Castile), Spain, in the Iberian peninsula. That is why I call what I teach, Iberian Spanish. Therefore, iberianspanish.com is the network of all the people on planet earth who are interested in the original Spanish language.
Thank you for being interested in Spanish and being serious about it, for so many people wish to speak languages but so few really do something about it. I assure you that after the first few lessons, after you might have known a little about this Romance and romantic language, you are not only going to like it, you will love it with a passion, if you do not already, because Spanish is a sweet lovable language spoken in all continents of the world, and the more you know of it the more you fall in love with its linguistic magic. I leave you to find out for yourself.
I am waiting for you right here at this website, where I will be present everyday to attend to all of you, where you will be able to reach me and get any other help you might need while or after using the grammar book I have written for this purpose, which is intended to be a comprehensive teach-yourself grammar book, suitable for anybody who is interested in speaking and writing Spanish well. You will get weeks and months of my personal attention until you are proficient in the language.
It is also intended to teach Spanish using the English language, so it is assumed that the learner already knows English well enough, but experience has shown that a great many educated people who speak English “fluently” either do not know enough or have forgotten quite a lot of the rules of grammar they were taught in school. That is why effort is made here, not only to teach Spanish but also to refresh the readers memory on the rules of English grammar, because it is difficult for the learner of a foreign language to understand the rules of grammar in the one language when he or she has little or no knowledge of those rules in the other. This is very true of learners of Spanish whose mother tongue is not English, although those who have good knowledge of grammar, in whatever language, will find it relatively easy to learn any new language from any other one they speak or understand.
Speaking or writing a language is like building a house. A house is made up of several different parts (the concrete and tiles that form the floor; the sandcrete blocks and mortar that form the walls; the struts, purling and sheets that form the roof; the doors, the windows, the locks and finishing), all joined together in an orderly manner to create a perfect structural harmony called a house or a building. If a builder gathered all these expensive materials together and started his building by erecting the walls on the bare ground without an inch of foundation, then nailing the roofing sheets on the plastered side of the walls instead of on the wood above them, then fixing the light switches on the floor instead of on the walls, then putting the water closet in the kitchen instead of in the toilet or restroom, then erecting the wardrobe in the toilet instead of in the bedroom, passersby would look at the spectacle in disbelief and wonder what on earth that builder was trying to do, because they would not believe what they were seeing. That builder would have built something one might call an architectural monster.
It is the same thing with speaking or writing a language. The building materials of a language are called Parts of Speech. It is these parts that the speaker or writer brings together in an orderly meaningful manner to form the linguistic building called speech. Whenever one says something that has a meaning, one has constructed a beautiful linguistic building called speech; and whenever one says something that has no meaning, one has constructed a linguistic monster called confusion and nobody would understand that speech, because the building parts of speech have not been placed in their respective correct places.
Thank you for being interested in Spanish and being serious about it, for so many people wish to speak languages but so few really do something about it. I assure you that after the first few lessons, after you might have known a little about this Romance and romantic language, you are not only going to like it, you will love it with a passion, if you do not already, because Spanish is a sweet lovable language spoken in all continents of the world, and the more you know of it the more you fall in love with its linguistic magic. I leave you to find out for yourself.
I am waiting for you right here at this website, where I will be present everyday to attend to all of you, where you will be able to reach me and get any other help you might need while or after using the grammar book I have written for this purpose, which is intended to be a comprehensive teach-yourself grammar book, suitable for anybody who is interested in speaking and writing Spanish well. You will get weeks and months of my personal attention until you are proficient in the language.
It is also intended to teach Spanish using the English language, so it is assumed that the learner already knows English well enough, but experience has shown that a great many educated people who speak English “fluently” either do not know enough or have forgotten quite a lot of the rules of grammar they were taught in school. That is why effort is made here, not only to teach Spanish but also to refresh the readers memory on the rules of English grammar, because it is difficult for the learner of a foreign language to understand the rules of grammar in the one language when he or she has little or no knowledge of those rules in the other. This is very true of learners of Spanish whose mother tongue is not English, although those who have good knowledge of grammar, in whatever language, will find it relatively easy to learn any new language from any other one they speak or understand.
Speaking or writing a language is like building a house. A house is made up of several different parts (the concrete and tiles that form the floor; the sandcrete blocks and mortar that form the walls; the struts, purling and sheets that form the roof; the doors, the windows, the locks and finishing), all joined together in an orderly manner to create a perfect structural harmony called a house or a building. If a builder gathered all these expensive materials together and started his building by erecting the walls on the bare ground without an inch of foundation, then nailing the roofing sheets on the plastered side of the walls instead of on the wood above them, then fixing the light switches on the floor instead of on the walls, then putting the water closet in the kitchen instead of in the toilet or restroom, then erecting the wardrobe in the toilet instead of in the bedroom, passersby would look at the spectacle in disbelief and wonder what on earth that builder was trying to do, because they would not believe what they were seeing. That builder would have built something one might call an architectural monster.
It is the same thing with speaking or writing a language. The building materials of a language are called Parts of Speech. It is these parts that the speaker or writer brings together in an orderly meaningful manner to form the linguistic building called speech. Whenever one says something that has a meaning, one has constructed a beautiful linguistic building called speech; and whenever one says something that has no meaning, one has constructed a linguistic monster called confusion and nobody would understand that speech, because the building parts of speech have not been placed in their respective correct places.
‘Miguel de Cervantes is to Spanish as William Shakespeare is to English’ is a beautiful linguistic edifice.
But
‘Miguel Shakespeare de English to Spanish is as William is to Cervantes’ is a confusing linguistic monster.
‘That young girl is as pretty as her mother' is a beautiful linguistic edifice.
But
‘Girl young is as that her pretty as mother' is a confusing linguistic monster.
‘The junior jumper jumped the jump rope’ is a beautiful linguistic edifice.
But
‘Jump rope the jumped jumper the junior’ is a confusing linguistic monster.
Learning a language, therefore, means learning as many words as possible (all the words of the language, if possible, because the more words you know the more fluent you are) and learning how to use them in the right combination to form phrases, which combine to form sentences, which combine to form paragraphs, which combine to form endless speech or literature.
Just like words come together to form phrases and sentences, there are certain smaller units of sound that come together to form words. Those smaller units of sound that come together to form words are called Letters. Every language has a certain maximum number of letters used in speaking or writing it, and the total number of letters of a language is called the Alphabet, without which no language can be spoken or written.
We shall, therefore, begin this Spanish Language course by looking at the Spanish Alphabet, called in Spanish, El Alfabeto or El Abecedario.
La Real Academia Española
(The Royal Spanish Academy)
It is pertinent, at this point, to introduce the Real Academia Española (The Royal Spanish Academy).
The Real Academia Española, also known as the RAE, is a cultural institution with headquarters in Madrid, capital of Spain. In a nutshell, it is the Guardian Angel of the Spanish language, the Spanish Government-approved body that has nurtured and protected the language since 1713 when it was founded.
The Real Academia Española has partnered with twenty one other Academies of all the nations where Spanish is spoken, forming the Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (Association of Academies of the Spanish Language), where all the experts worldwide put heads together and agree before any changes are made.
From time to time, after consultations with the Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española, the Real Academia Española makes additions to the language (like admitting a foreign word into the Spanish dictionary) and subtractions (like removing an accent mark from a word that used to have it) – and publishes them – with the aim of bringing about unity of usage throughout the Spanish-speaking world. Those changes are not necessarily made to be dogmas; rather they are strong recommendations and proposals, which say to every Spanish-speaking person: this is the way the Real Academia Española strongly recommends that you speak and write your Spanish from now on.
Those changes have eventually affected the Spanish alphabet, which we are about to learn now. Therefore, I will be teaching the alphabet, and indeed the whole Spanish grammar herein, according to the doctrines of the Real Academia Española, while at the same time showing the learner what the language looked like before the Academia changed it.
Lesson 1 - The Spanish Alphabet