Studying Spanish For Newbies And Learners And Avoiding Embarrassing Errors

In this lesson I will give you some tips on learning Spanish for newbies and beginners and avoiding embarrassing mistakes. When I first started my foreign-language learning company, as many new entrepreneurs have to do, I wore multiple hats and even had to answer the phone. I have a funny little story that I want to share with you where I made some very embarrassing learning Spanish mistakes.
One day a customer telephoned the office. While on the phone, we somehow drifted to the topic of mistakes that English speakers make when learning English. And I told him about an incident that I experienced when I had first started learning Spanish.

The year must have been around 1999 or 2000. I had enough Spanish under my belt that I felt confident enough to practice with native Spanish speakers.

I remember a certain night in New York City because it was one of those really cold New York winter nights. I went out that night to a club in New York called the Copacabana. The Copacabana is a New York Latino night club that plays music such as Salsa, Merengue, and Bachata.

The Copacabana is the kind of club that Latinos call "muy caliente" (very hot) which, by the way, has nothing to do with the club's temperature. I am convinced that When Barry Manilow had a hit song in 1978 called "The Copacabana" he was talking about New York's Copacabana club.

He must've been. That's why he sang, "The hottest spot north of Havana, here, at the Copa, Copacabana, At the Copa... "Back to that cold winter night...

There was a line to get in the Copacabana that night. Long waiting lines are typical of popular New York clubs. While I was on line I happened to notice an attractive young Latina woman standing next to me. So I decided I'd kill some waiting time, practice my Spanish, and possibly meet a very attractive young woman.
I had heard her mention "Santo Domingo" to her friend with her. So after the usual beginner greetings of "Hola, como esta usted?" I asked her "Usted es Domincano?" "With a puzzled smile she responded "Dominicano, no." Dominicana," she clarified.

That's when I realized my blunder. I had actually asked her, "are you a Dominican man?"
Feeling embarrassed because of my mistake, I said to her "Estoy muy embarazdo." Her puzzled smile quickly turned into one of those "él-está-loco" laughs that now had me puzzled.

One of the quickest ways to learn spanish is to take the words that you already know in English and change them to Spanish using certain Spanish grammatical rules.

Unfortunately, this doesn't always work. At least, it doesn't work with the English word "embarrassed." There's an exception to the rule, but for the sake of simplicity, I won't go into the exception.
Just know that by telling her "Estoy muy embarazdo," I hadn't told her that "I am very embarrass
ed." Instead, what I had told translated closer to "I am very pregnant." That explained her sudden "el-esta-loco" laugh. The correct way to say "I am embarrassed" is to say "me da pena."
There are two reasons why I shared this story on learning Spanish for newbies and beginners and avoiding common mistakes with the customer who telephoned my office:

First, when learning a language you cannot be afraid of making mistakes. The more mistakes you make by speaking with native speakers the quicker you will learn.

Second, be on the lookout for false cognitives or "falso amigos" when learning Spanish. False cognates are words in one language that are identical or very similar to words in a second language, but whose meanings are very different.

Pat Jackson is the Founder of Learning Spanish Like Crazy - the only learning Spanish method that teaches real authentic everyday conversational Latin American Spanish. If you would like to get FREE Instant access to the first 2 MP3 audio lessons of Learning Spanish Like Crazy and get FREE instant access to 10 learning Spanish videos from one of our BEAUTIFUL native-Spanish speaking Latina instructors, then go here now: Learn spanish online That's.

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