Spanish pointers

Ok I’m a HUGE nerd, but here are some things I wish I had figured out much sooner, or had been explained better….

Pronunciation system
Spanish is awesome, because it’s highly phonetic. Spanish dictionaries don’t need pronunciation guides next to each word – once you know the system, you can pronounce anything. The rules for pronouncing a word are as follows:
1.all words ending in vowels, n, or s are stressed on the second to last syllable
2.all words ending in consonants other than n or s are stressed on the last syllable
3.i and u are weak vowels, and join with any other vowel to form a dipthong of one syllable
4.all words that are stressed on a syllable that does not agree with the above take an accent on the stressed syllable

Por vs para
This is a really tricky for English speakers, and usually not explained well. Both of these words can often be translated as ‘for,’ but they should be thought of in much more specific senses. Por is ‘because of,’ and para is ‘for the purpose of.’ If something is being done because of a reason or thing that already exists, use por. For some future purpose or end, use para. There are places where both could be used, and it often depends on what you’re trying to emphasize. Thinking about the distinction in the above way has helped me a lot.

Qué vs Cuál
Many people try to oversimplify this by saying that qué is ‘what’ and cuál is ‘which,’ but this doesn’t really work. In most cases they do function as such, but be careful when you ask ‘qué es….’ This question is always asking for a definition. If you say ‘Qué es el río?’, the response should be something like ‘a river is a body of water that flows downhill from the headwaters to the mouth.’ It’s asking for a definition. If you say ‘Cuál es el río?’ the response might be, ‘that’s the Charles River, it flows right through Boston.’ Cuál asks for identification. As far as I can tell, this is the only tricky insight with these words.

Tú vs Usted
This subject is something very foreign to English speakers, as we don’t have anything similar. It is always explained as formal vs informal, with tú being used with peers and people younger than yourself, and usted used for older people or people in positions of respect. This is not untrue, but doesn’t really paint the whole picture. A native speaker in our group described it instead as personal vs. impersonal, and I think this gives a better feel. Someone could be in a position of authority, but if you are close to them, you use tú. Likewise, for a younger person serving you in a restaurant, you might use usted out of respect but also because you don’t know the person well. All of this is pretty relaxed and fluid though – my host family parents constantly switch between tú and usted with me.

Aquí, Acá, Allí, y Allá
Both aquí and acá want to say ‘here,’ and both allí and allá want to say ‘there,’ but in certain situations you will always hear one or the other. In general, acá means ‘over here’ and allá ‘over there.’ I hear acá and allá more often because they’re used to refer to locations relative to oneself. When we would say ‘Let’s go over here/there,’ they might say ‘Vamos por acá/allá.’ For things more abstract, aquí and allí are used. Just like in English, these don’t refer to exactly how far away something is. We could use ‘here’ for something 10 miles away, or ‘there’ for something 5 feet away. It’s relative to where you are and what’s being spoken about.

False feminines
A frustrating thing for English speakers in Spanish is gender, especially since there are so many words which appear to be of one gender, but are actually the other. In general the words that break our expectations in this regard are almost always masculine words that appear feminine. There are just a few feminine words that end in ‘o’ – mano, foto, moto, and maybe others. But there are a whole host of words that end in ‘a’ but are actually masculine – particularly those words ending in ‘-ma.’ Take care also with words ending in ‘-ista,’ like machista, which can refer to a man or a woman – you can never say machisto, nor turisto. Therefore, be more careful with words that appear feminine – they may not be!

Tomar vs. Sacar
In the dictionary you’ll see both of these generally defined as ‘to take,’ which is silly because they have very specific uses. Tomar is always used to say ‘take in,’ and sacar is always used to say ‘take out.’ You tomar a drink, and you sacar something from your pocket. In Spanish classes, we always learned to say ‘sacar una foto.’ I’ve found that everyone now says ‘tomar una foto,’ and this makes sense, since camera technology has changed from needing to take out film, to just storing photos in your camera. Makes sense, right?

Punto vs punta
I used to always get these confused. Punto is a dot (o). Punta is something pointy (A). Just as in English, they are often applied in more abstract ways, like point of view (punto) or a point of land on the coast (punta).

The above are just my observations. Please correct me! I think grammar is important.