your first 50 words in Spanish, French and Italianlesson 1 |
If you're trying to pick up a little bit of several languages, there isn't a better language family to be working with than the Romance languages. Their grammars are relatively simple and with a few hints you'll see that the vocabulary is largely familiar to educated English speakers. In this primer, you'll learn a little bit about noun, adjective and verb usage. More importantly, you'll learn how to greet people, introduce yourself and get a cup of coffee. So whether you're going to Western Europe and need to know how to get around, or you're studying one (or more) of these languages and want to put your learning together, this primer's a great place to start.
A word to the wise: Studies show that language learning ability drops off markedly after half an hour to forty-five minutes of learning new material. So after half an hour, you should review what you've learned, rather than pushing on. Better yet, go get a cup of coffee and see how much you can remember of what you'd say if you were talking to the barista or cashier in Madrid, Paris or Rome.
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For this little primer, we'll be interspersing content from elsewhere on the site with a little transitioning to bring the different vocabulary items together. For your first lesson, you're going to learn a few words and a doozy of a concept: masculine and feminine nouns. As you'll see, masculine and feminine has nothing to do with gender. It's just a way of dividing up words according the way they behave and the way other words behave around them. Fear not, while it's a headache and a hassle, it's not impossible to learn about gender. The best way is to learn some word combinations so that when you're really ready to learn about gender, you'll already have been using it and it will make more sense. You'll see in a minute. For now, let's get started with our first word.
Spanish día is like diary, a book you write in daily.
Pronounce it "dee-uh".
French jour is like journal, a paper that comes daily.
Pronounce it "zhoor" (almost like the last syllable of "measure").
Italian giorno sounds almost like journal without the "l".
Pronounce it "jor-noh".
Remember: día as in diary, jour and giorno like journal.
After day, the next word is, logically:
The Romance word for "night" is nocte, like "nocturnal". It changes according to a fairly predictable pattern. We're going to throw in a few bonus words here to show you.
Start with nocte (night), octo (eight), lacte (milk), facto (fact) (these are objective forms in Latin) and you get:
Spanish noche (no-chay), ocho, leche, hecho
Italian notte (note-tay), otto, latte, fatto
French nuit (nwee), huit, lait, fait
The "oct" in "nocturnal" becomes "och" in Spanish, "ott" in Italian and "uit" in French. As you can see in the list, there are other patterns. We're not going to learn them all now, but if you remember one-fourth of this entry, you'll know enough to remember:
English night, Spanish noche, Italian notte, French nuit.
You ask yourself, what kind of day or night? Why not a good one?
If you do good work - or do well on a video game - you're supposed to get a bonus.
Chop off the end and you get:
French bon.
Pronounce it "bohn," like you're saying "bone" but have a head cold.
Add a "u" in the middle, "o" on the end, and you get:
Italian buono.
Pronounce it "bwoh-no".
"o" becomes "e" and you've got:
Spanish bueno.
Pronounce it "bweh-no".
Working through the puzzle is a little tricky, so just say:
bonus, bon, buono, bueno - it's a good thing!
Now it's time to start putting things together:
So far you already know "good" and "day." To say something's a "good day," it would seem like you'd just put them together. Well, sort of.
French bon jour is a good day; pronounce it "bohn zhoor".
In Italian they say buon giorno; pronounce it "bwone jor-no". Where'd the "o" on buono go? The same place as the "o" on the end of "bueno" in
Spanish buen día; pronounce it "bwehn dee-uh".
Because buono and bueno where in front of nouns, the "o" dropped. We'll talk more about this when we talk about "good night". For now, you just need to know:
bon jour, buon giorno, buen día
That wasn't so bad. Now comes that tricky gender thing I warned you about. The last bit of advice is the most important: Don't try to understand it all. Use the phrases the way I teach them to you and the grammar bit will gell when you're ready to move to the next level.
Just to remind you, the Romance word for night comes from nocte, like nocturnal.
A funny thing about these words for "night" - they're what we call "feminine." What does that mean? Well, it means, for starters, that they're not masculine words, which "day" is. Now, why is "day" masculine and "night" feminine? Historical linguists can tell you, but the answer is long and complicated.
The important thing to know is that masculine and feminine are grammar words. You could just as well say "day" and "night" words and the system would work, because what's really at stake is not the gender of the word, but the endings you tack on adjectives that modify it.
So far, we know the "day" form of good - it's bon, buono, bueno. And we know you take off the "o" in Spanish and Italian if it's in front of a noun. So, the "día" is "bueno," since "bueno" comes after in the sentence. But, it's a "buen día," because "buen" comes right before the noun. This is how it works for masculine or "day" words.
For "night," or feminine words, the "o" in Spanish and Italian changes to "a":
Spanish buena noche; pronounce it "bweh-nah no-chay".
Italian buona notte; pronounce it "bwoh-nah noh-tay".
In French, you usually add an "e" if the adjective ends in a consonant. For bon, you also have to double the "n" (or it would sound like "bone"; it's supposed to sound like "bunn"), which gives you:
French bonne nuit; pronounce it "bunn(uh) nwee".
Whew! That was a lot of grammar! But trust me, it doesn't have to be hard. For now, just learn the expressions, and when you need to learn the rules, they'll make sense because you've been following them already!
Here, then, is what you need to know. Read through the other stuff once or twice and then put it on the back burner.
bon jour, buon giorno, buen día
bonne nuit, buona notte, buena noche
Congratulations! You've made it through your first lesson. You haven't learned a lot of words, but you've been exposed to some pretty challenging concepts. So go get yourself that cup of coffee. Practice your Italian and get a latte or espresso. And be sure not to do the next lesson until you've had a break, had a chance to let things settle in and done a quick review.
Are you all rested and ready now? Then once it's up, you'll be ready for lesson 2.
multilingua.info main page - Spanish/French/Italian main page - 1st 50 words in Sp/Fr/It
For a quick start in the three major Romance languages, try out the "By Association Series," with its keys for learning a basic Romance language vocabulary in as little as a week.
And check out our other resources at The Language Pages.