1001 Palabras Inglesas

Sometime ago I took the time to share a favorite book I have for expanding my Spanish universe -1001 Most Useful Spanish Words - A great little book, I can stick it my pocket or messenger bag, and whenever I have some slack time work on vocabulary.

What makes it slick is that it contains useful and essential vocabulary - it's not a dictionary. What I especially like is each word is accompanied by a contextual usage - one or two sentences that demonstrates its meaning. The bonus is it also gives me lessons on sentence structure, direct and indirect object pronouns, grammar and conjugations in general.

Since then I've found the its mirror opposite, also by Seymour Resnick , and also aptly tilted "1001 Palabras Inglesas - más útiles para hispanoparlantes".This book is as fun and useful as the other - it let's you come at things from a reverse engineering point of view, as if your were a Mexican learning English. It's set up identically, just bass ackwards.

What makes particularly useful, though, are the examples where one word in English has two different meanings in Spanish. Most of us are familiar with to be ser/estar and to know saber/conocer but there are more subtle ones that are great to come across. In these cases, Seymour provided contrasting example sentences:

For example: Get - conseguir and obtener both convey similar get meanings in English and Spanish, but bajar isn't interchangeable with those verbs to get off. Seymour's examples illustrate this well: "It will be hard to get all of these things in one store" - Será difícil conseguir todas estas cosa en una tienda. "Please tell me when I have to get off" - Haga el favor de decirme cuando tengo.


Best of all, both books are a bargain - $2.00 each! ¡Que bueno!

Google, Twitter and Spanish users

Google estaría construyendo un buscador de 'twitteos' - reads a post on a website that purports to be all about Google in Spanish. (acerca de google en español). Quite a fascinating site for a Google power user learning Spanish it's possible to learn twice as much at one time!

1001 Most Useful Spanish Words

A very declarative title for this post, and not really one I think I could ever make. It's actually a title for a very worn, almost tattered, book in my collection that in itself has proved useful to me. As one strives to expand one's vocabulary, one may be tempted to read a dictionary, but this can get old really fast and usually it's not presented in a context that solidifies comprehension. What I like about Seymor Resnick's little tome is that every word in it is presented in an example sentence, and many of them are just a bit dry or quirky (we're not sure if dry and quirky were Seymour's intent). A few examples:
Pecado. m. sin No es un pacado tan grave. It is not such a serious sin.
Vida f. life ¿Qué es la vida? La vida es sueño. What is life? Life is but a dream.
Asado roasted Me gustan las castañas asadas. I like roasted chestnuts.
Cuerpom. body Sacaron varios cuerpos después de la explosción. They carried out serveral bodies after the explosion.
Tirar to throw, pull No tires arena, chico. Don't throw sand, kid.

I really came upon this book in a roundabout way - I was making a purchase a few years ago on Amazon.com and was a few dollars short to qualify for free shipping - Seymour stepped in to help me with this low price keeper. And he's helping me still. ¡Muchas gracias, Seymour!