Tag Archives: Spanish Tip of the Month

Spanish Tip of the Month- Body Parts (Partes del Cuerpo)

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This month’s tip is about body parts. I thought of this because I once heard a woman explain that the only Spanish her daughter ever learned was from the Spanish version of the song “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes”. I thought, well, at least it is somewhat useful. If you are in pain or otherwise need to point out something on your body, it could be rather helpful to know the word for it. So here are a few of the more commonly used ones:

The Body = El Cuerpo (El coo-er poe)

The Head = La Cabeza (lah cah bay saw)
The Shoulders =Los Hombros (lohs ome bros)
The Knees = Las Rodillas (lahs roe dee yas)
The Toes =Los Dedos de Pie (lohs day does day pee ay)
The Foot = El Pie (el pee ay)
The Leg = La Pierna (la pee air nah)
The Arm = El Brazo (el bra so)

The Face = La Cara
The Eyes = Los Ojos (lohs oh hoes)
The Ears = Las Orejas (lahs or ay hahs)
The Mouth =La Boca (La Boe kah)
The Nose = La Nariz (Lah Nah dees)
The Hair = El Cabello (El cah bay yo) -this refers to hair on the head, elsewhere it is ‘pelo’
The Tongue = La lengua (lah laing gwa) -this can also be a word for language which has a similar root in English.

In the song it is “Cabeza, hombro, rodilla, pie” (sometimes pierna (leg) is in place of rodilla) in order for it to fit the rhythm of the song, but that literally translates to: Head, shoulder, knee, foot.

 

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Spanish Tip of the Month -AR verbs and ATE

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I’ve decided to add a new feature to this blog, a Spanish tip of the month. On the first of each month I am going to try to share some useful tidbit about Spanish, a Spanish phrase, Puerto Rican or other Latin American slang, a unique Spanish word or two, or some useful tips on Spanish.

For this month, I thought I’d share a fun one about -ar verbs. AR verbs are verbs that end in AR. They are usually pretty standard and conjugate fairly easily. Some of these include:

cantar: to sing
bailar: to dance
sentarse: to sit (yourself down -the se is reflexive)
pensar: to think

There are many, many -ar verbs out there. But if you are looking for an easy way to know a few Spanish words off the bat and you are an English speaker, look to English words that end in -ate. These words transfer almost perfectly into an -ar verb in Spanish, for example (por ejemplo):

educate: educar (in Spanish educar also means to instill manners)
celebrate: celebrar
manipulate: manipular
perforate: perforar
investigate: investigar

And on and on! Which ones can you think of?

To put it together in a sentence, you could say:

I like to ________ (3 syllable ate word)
I like to decorate.

Me gusta _____________ (take off the -ate and change it to -ar for a Spanish -ar verb)
Me gusta decorar.

-Or-
I am going to _________(-ate English word)
I am going to communicate.

Voy a _________ (-ar Spanish word)
Voy a comunicar.

Generally speaking this will work for practically all 3-syllable or longer verbs, but not all. With one and two syllable verbs it may or may not work.  Do not attempt this with words that are nouns (like classmate, candidate etc) it will not work. Also, while this should be obvious, I just want to point out that the pronunciation is different! Why does this work? Because most of these English words have their etymology in Latin, and of course Spanish is a Latin (Romance) language.

Here is a list of English words that end in -ate.  Not all of them will work (some are nouns not verbs), but you can play around with them.

Let me know what you think of this Spanish tip of the month and of the feature in general!

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