Complete Spanish

Track 89

1. Making your own rules Method

The course has not covered every piece of Spanish content, and it was never going to. What it has done is take from every area of the language analytically, so that you can work out the rest yourself when you meet it.

This track is an experiment in exactly that. You are shown the language behaving in some way and asked to work out what is going on. Somebody else may have come up with the rule before, but you figure it out for yourself.

2. demasiado agrees with a noun, not an adjective Rule

The first puzzle. It changes in some places and not others.

demasiadas casas
with a noun: it agrees
demasiado agresiva
with an adjective: no change

Demasiados coches · Demasiado agresivo · Demasiado agresivos

So the answer comes from identifying what type of word follows, which the course has trained you to do all along. Demasiado is too, as in too many.

The word is long, but it breaks up: de más, "of more", plus -iado. And de más works on its own too: tengo cuatro de más is I have four too many, four spare.

3. Two-syllable a-words take el Rule

The second puzzle. Ala, agua and aula are feminine words, yet they take el.

el ala
the wing
el agua
the water
el aula
the classroom

It is not simply that they begin with a: la alfombra and la almohada do too. The rule is narrower: two syllables, beginning and ending in a.

You can prove they are still feminine: el agua fría, not "frío".

4. uno, alguno and ninguno drop the o Rule

The third puzzle. These lose their final o when a noun follows.

quiero uno
standing alone
quiero un coche
followed by a noun
uno → un
one, a
alguno → algún
some
ninguno → ningún
none, no

And it does not happen in the feminine: una mujer, alguna mujer, ninguna mujer.

No quiero ninguno · Quiero algún coche · No quiero ningún coche

5. Word type answers most questions Concept

All three puzzles turned on the same skill. Identifying what type of word you are looking at is mostly all you need to figure out what is going on.

Noun or adjective? Following a noun or standing alone? Feminine or masculine?

6. Control it, or it controls you Method

The point of the exercise, stated plainly: analyse what you come across, pick out what you do not understand, and tackle it so that you control it rather than the other way round.

Thinking this way, you get over your technical problems in the language very quickly. Solve the technical problems and then you can start to live freely in the language, and become somebody else in it who is also you.

And this is achieved not through memorising what is correct, but through analysing and understanding what is correct, and finding why.