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IK :TEACH YOURSELF BOOKS N. Scarlyn Wilson SPANISH This ant; SPANISH ThisbookhopestomakethetaskoflearningSpanishpleas- ant as well as profitable. It provides a good grounding in theessentialsofthelanguageandtellsthereadersomething aboutSpain. Anyonewhohasworkedcarefullythroughthe lessonsshouldbeabletomakehimselfunderstoodinSpanish- speaking countries and tackle a book or newspaper in Spanish. TEACH YOURSELF BOOKS Anyonewhoworksthroughthisvolume intelligentlyshould be able to read and speak Spanish. No adult student of Spanish should fail to obtain this excellent course of instruction. Journalofthe Incorporated Association ofAssistant Masters SPANISH N. Scarlyn Wilson M.A. V TEACHYOURSELFBOOKS Hodder andStoughton Firstprinted iq3q Twelfth impression igyj Copyright Notice: No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. This volume is published in the U.S.A. by David McKay Company Inc., 750 Third Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017 isbn o 340 05819 6 Printedin Great Britain for Hodder andStoughton Paperbacks, a division ofHodder andStoughton Ltd,MillRoad, DuntonGreen,Sevenoaks, Kent (Editorial Office: 47 BedfordSquare, London WCi jDP) by Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press), Ltd., Bungay, Suffolk PREFACE Spanish, whether for cultural or commercial reasons, is well worth studying. It is spoken not only in Spain, but throughout Latin America, with the exception of Brazil, and even there, where the official language is Portuguese, you could make yourself understood. That is, of course, if you can also make yourself understood to a Spaniard. It is the purpose of this book to enable you to do so. When you have worked through it, you should be in a position to read any Spanish novel or newspaper, to speak enough of the language to be able to converse and to write it comprehensibly, though your rendering will not be fault- less. This book follows in the main the model of Teach Your- selfFrench, publishedinthesameseries. There areseveral reasons for this. In the first place, I hope that some who studied that volume may be encouraged to tacklethisone, and, knowing the ways of the first, they will find it the more easyto embark upon its companion. Secondly, what provedsuccessfulinonecase, mayreasonablybeconsidered likelytoproveacceptablein.another, sothat peoplecoming fresh to this book should be able to make as good use of it as those who studied Teach YourselfFrench. At first sight it would seem that, by following the methods of another volume, I lay myself open to a charge ofplagiarism. Thisaccusationleavesmywithers(whatever they may be) unwrung. For, as I was responsible for modernising Sir John Adams' admirable Teach Yourself French, I see no reason why I should not be allowed to borrow from myself. After all, as the lunatic very luminously observed : " If I can't bang my head against my own"mantelpiece, whose mantelpiece can I bang it against? vii PREFACE This—book, then, follows the same lines as Teach Yourself French so far, that is, as the different natures of the two languages will permit. It aims at steering a middle course between dreary sentences about Grandmother's thimble and phrases 01 idiomatic slang. For those, by the way, who do want to acquire racy up-to-date idiom, I would recommend the perusal of Brighter Spanish, by Sr. L. de Baeza (Bles), andof Brush Up Your Spanish, bythe same author (Dent). Obviously, however, one must first have something to brush. It is the modest aim of this book to provide that foundation, to give any student of it a knowledge of the essentials of Spanish, to tell him something about Spain, and to fit him to learn a good deal more about both. If this purpose is in any way achieved, it will be largely due tothe help given me bySrta. Miren de Albizuri of Bilbao, especially in the preparation of the Spanish passages for translation. I am also obliged to Mr. Gil Nevaz, whose suggestions have led to some corrections and improvements in this edition of the book. N. Scarlyn Wilson. — P.S. There are certain differences between the Spanish ofSpain and the tongue of S. America. Still, the structure and essentials are the same, though the pronunciation and the use of certain words are not identical. But anyone who has gone from Somerset to Lancashire will be aware that such divergenciesare not confined to Spanish. Guapo, for instance, means handsome to one man and brave to another. With us, to greet does not mean the same thing to the Scot as it does to the Englishman. But we contrive to understand one another. So does it matter? INTRODUCTION HOW TO USE THE BOOK The purpose of this book is to enable the student to learn Spanish, and that without any help other than that which this book provides. It is not a formal grammar. Never- theless each fact ispresented asit isrequiredinthe process of preparing the student, in the smallest possible number oflessons, for the task of reading Spanish. The two parts of the book are complementary. Part I contains most of the actual instruction, together with a series of exercises in turning Spanish into English and vice versa. The Spanish-English exercises, up to Lesson XV, are distinguished by the letter a, the English-Spanish by the letter b. Part II contains a Key to all the exercises in Part I. In addition, it supplies by means of Notes a good deal of information to cover any points of difficulty arising in the various exercises. Part I contains sufficient information to enable the student to tackle the exercises. Part II throws light upon difficulties which can only be fully realised after an attempt has been made to do them. Both Parts should be carried on abreast, since any given exercise in Part I implies a knowledge of everything in Part II prior to the Key to the actual exercise concerned. The book should be worked through systematically. Thus, for instance, Exercise $a in Part I should be written out and corrected by means of the Key to it in Part II, before 56 is attempted. A careful comparison of his version with the correct one will help greatly to increase the student's understanding of the points explained in the lesson. When uncertain how to turn an English sentence into Spanish, the best course is to refer to the preceding set of Spanish-English sentences, which will nearly always provide a model on which to work. ix x INTRODUCTION It may be advisable to halt and revise after every five lessons. A good way of doing this is to study each lesson in Part I, as at the first reading, but for exercises to turn to the corresponding section in Part II, and then use Part I as the key to correct these. This gives entirely fresh practice, since what was formerly English-Spanish now becomes Spanish-English. Students who find the exercises difficult might work in this way After studying each lesson carefully, translate : the Spanish into English and check by reference to Part II. Then, instead of turning back to Part I, stay at Part II, and do theSpanish-English there, using Part I as the key. Thus the student would write the English for 5a in Part I and correct it by 56 in Part II. Then he could write the English for 56 in Part II and correct it by 56 in Part I. By this means he could go through the whole book doing nothing but Spanish-English, afterwards work- ing through a second time, but in the regular way. Students who find little difficulty in going through the book in the normal manner might revise the whole by doing all the exercises in the form of Spanish-English exercises. This book, then, can be used in many ways, in each of which the student will find within it all that he needs to test his work. The Vocabulary at the end is Spanish-English only. From a choice of two or three Enghsh equivalents for a Spanish word it is easy enough to choose the one that suits the English translation. But to choose the right Spanish word out of two or three to fit into a Spanish version of an English sentence is much more difficult. The proper place in which to look for the Spanish equivalent of an English word is one's memory rather than a dictionary, for the reason that the words in our memory are there because we have actually used them. Experience tells us what they mean. But a word borrowed from a Spanish-English dictionary may be quite wrong. The word " office/ for example, may be rendered, as a dictionary will show, by oficio. But to use it for a man going into his office is quite wrong. The word we want is oficina or, possibly, despacho. By using this book and storing the word in our minds