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Spanish Verbs Made Simple(r) - Hillcrest Elementary

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examples, it offers a feature found surprisingly rarely in <strong>Spanish</strong> dictionaries,<br />

pronunciations of individual words. The RAE’s dictionary, while authoritative,<br />

does not have examples (or pronunciations). The “Rolls Royce” of <strong>Spanish</strong><br />

dictionaries is the two-volume Diccionario de uso del español by María Moliner,<br />

frequently referred to simply as Moliner. A CD-rom version is available and<br />

includes conjugations of individual verbs.<br />

3. Prepositions Accompanying <strong>Verbs</strong><br />

Just as in English we insist on something and laugh at somebody, <strong>Spanish</strong> verbs<br />

are often associated with specific prepositions. Thus, corresponding to the two<br />

English examples, in <strong>Spanish</strong> one generally says insistir en and reírse de. When<br />

learning the definition of an individual verb, it is a good idea to learn at the same<br />

time the associated preposition(s).<br />

4. Historical References<br />

INTRODUCTION 9<br />

At various stages in the text references are made to the historical development of<br />

<strong>Spanish</strong> and its relation to other Romance languages and Latin. While many are<br />

limited to footnotes, there are also several extended historical and methodological<br />

notes. The motivation for all such references is to help provide answers to the<br />

“why” questions which occur to many students—e.g., why do some verbs have<br />

vowel changes (yo cuento) but only in certain conjugations (nosotros contamos)<br />

and tenses (yo conté)?

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