The First Meeting with the Spanish

Pronunciation
- Spanish pronunciation
- Stress
Essencial Vocabulary
- Cardinal and ordinal numbers
- Months of the year
- Days of the week
- Seasons of the year
- Dates

Pronunciation

- Spanish pronunciation

In Spanish each letter has only one sound which doesn't happen in English. There is a big difference between the way the words are spelled in English and the way they are pronounced. For example, in the following words, the letter "a" is used to represent five different sounds: hate, father, have, any, saw. Spanish spelling patterns are always a reliable guide to pronunciation.

- Stress

The stress is important in spanish because the change in stress changes the meaning of the words. But it's no big deal, there are rules that apply to any written word to know where to place the stress. For example:

Papá is dad, papa is potatoe and Papa is Pope.

Those words have two syllables, in the first example the second syllable is emphasized and in the second and third example the first syllable.

That line above the "a" (called "tilde") means that the letter is emphasized more than others.

Essencial Vocabulary

- Cardinal and ordinal numbers

In English, we say sixty - one, seventy - five, etc. In Spanish the same process begins with 30, except "and" is inserted between the numbers.

Months of the year - meses del año
Enero
Febrero
Marzo
Abril
Mayo
Junio
Julio
Agosto
Septiembre or Setiembre
Octubre
Noviembre
Diciembre

Days of the week - Días de la semana
Lunes
Martes
Miercoles
Jueves
Viernes
Sábado
Domingo

Seasons of the year - Estaciones del año
Otoño
Verano
Invierno
Primavera

Dates - Fechas
In Spanish we always follow this order: Day / Month / Year
For the day we say cardinal numbers, for example:
El dos de enero de 2000
El 25 de julio de 1995