¿Por qué? 101 questions about Spanish
Book - 2016
"¿Por qué? 101 Questions about Spanish is for anyone who wants to understand how Spanish really works. Standard textbooks and grammars describe the "what" of Spanish - its vocabulary, grammar, spelling, and pronunciation - but ¿Por qué? explains the "why". Judy Hochberg draws on linguistic principles, Hispanic culture, and language history to answer questions such as: Why are so many Spanish verbs irregular? - Why does Spanish have different ways to say "you"? - Why is h silent? - Why doesn't Spanish use apostrophes? - Why does Castilian Spanish have the th sound? Packed with information, guidance, and links to further research, ¿Por qué? is an accessible study guide that is suitable for Spanish... students, instructors, native speakers, and the general reader. It is a valuable supplementary text for serious student of Spanish at all levels, from beginning to advanced. ¿Por qué? also covers topics usually left to specialized books, including the evolution of Spanish, how children and adults learn Spanish, and the status of languages that co-exist with Spanish, from Catalan to Spanish sign language to the indigenous languages of Latin America."--
Saved in:
- Subjects
- Published
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London ; New York, NY :
Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
2016.
- Language
- English
- Main Author
- Physical Description
- xxiii, 326 pages ; 25 cm
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- ISBN
- 9781474227919
9781474227926
- Part 1. Spanish in context
- 1. Spanish today
- 1. Who speaks Spanish?
- 2. Who's in charge of the Spanish language?
- 3. Why is Spanish often called castellano?
- 4. What are the different dialects of Spanish? Part I: Spain
- 5. What are the different dialects of Spanish? Part II: Latin America
- 6. What is the status of the minority languages of Spain?
- 7. What is the status of the indigenous languages of Latin America?
- 8. How is Spanish still evolving?
- 9. Can all Spanish speakers understand each other?
- 10. How important is Spanish on the Internet?
- 2. From Latin to Spanish
- 11. How old is Spanish?
- 12. How did Latin become Spanish? Part I: Vocabulary
- 13. How did Latin become Spanish? Part II: Phonology
- 14. How did Latin become Spanish? Part III: The noun system
- 15. How did Latin become Spanish? Part IV: The verb system
- 16. How has Latin continued to influence Spanish?
- 3. Spanish and Romance
- 17. How have other Romance languages influenced Spanish?
- 18. Is it true that Portuguese speakers can understand Spanish but not the other way around?
- 19. How is Catalan different from Spanish?
- 20. What is Ladino?
- 21. What other languages are related to Romance?
- 4. Spanish and other languages
- Pre-Roman languages
- 22. If Basque isn't related to Spanish, what is it?
- 23. What other languages were spoken in pre-Roman Spain?
- 24. How did the pre-Roman languages influence Spanish?
- Post-Roman languages
- 25. How did the fall of the Roman Empire affect Spanish?
- 26. What impact did almost eight hundred years of Arabic occupation have on Spanish?
- 27. How have the native languages of Latin America affected Spanish?
- 28. How has English affected Spanish?
- 29. How is Spanish sign language related to Spanish?
- 5. Learning Spanish
- Spanish as a first language
- 30. How do children learn Spanish? Part I: Sounds and words
- 31. How do children learn Spanish? Part II: Grammar
- 32. What kinds of mistakes do native speakers make in their Spanish?
- 33. Does speaking Spanish change the way you think?
- Spanish as a second language
- 34. Is it too late for me to learn Spanish?
- 35. Is Spanish the easiest language for a speaker of English to learn?
- Part 2. Inside Spanish
- 6. Spanish vocabulary
- The Spanish lexicon
- 36. How many words does Spanish have?
- 37. What are the most frequent words in Spanish?
- 38. Where does Spanish vocabulary come from?
- 39. Why does Spanish have so many charming derivational endings?
- Specific areas of vocabulary
- 40. Why do most Spanish negatives begin with n?
- 41. Why does Spanish have two words that mean 'to be' (ser and estar) and two words that mean 'to know' (saber and conocer)?
- 42. Why does Spanish have two words that mean 'that' (ese and aquel)?
- 43. Why are Spanish prepositions unpredictable?
- 44. Why does Spanish have two words that mean 'for' (por and para)?
- 7. The written language
- The Spanish alphabet
- 45. What happened to ch and //?
- 48. Where does n come from?
- 47. Why does Spanish have both b and v?
- 48. Why is h silent?
- 49. Why doesn't Spanish capitalize days of the week and months of the year?
- 50. Is Spanish spelling phonetic?
- Accents and diacritical marks
- 51. Why does Spanish have so many accent marks?
- 52. Why do some words keep an accent in the plural, some gain an accent, and some lose an accent?
- 53. Who invented the inverted exclamation and question marks?
- 54. Why doesn't Spanish use apostrophes?
- Writing in the machine age
- 55. How do you write txt msgs in Spanish?
- 56. How do you write Spanish on a computer?
- 8. The sounds of Spanish
- Vowels
- 57. Why does Spanish only have five vowels?
- 58. Why does Spanish have those five vowels?
- Consonants
- 59. Why do Spanish speakers roll their r's?
- 60. Can all Spanish speakers roll their r's?
- 61. Why do Spaniards use the th sound? (And what about z?)
- 62. Where does the /x/ sound come from?
- 63. What are seseo, ceceo, and yeismo?
- Words
- 64. Why is it hard for Spanish speakers to say Spain?
- 65. Why does Spanish stress the last syllable of teneDOR 'fork' but the next-to-last syllable of cuCHIIIo 'knife'?
- 66. Is there a version of Pig Latin for Spanish?
- 9. Names, nouns, and pronouns
- Names
- 67. Why are Spanish names so long?
- 68. Does Spanish have a 'son of ending for last names?
- 69. Why are Pepe and Paco the nicknames for José and Francisco?
- Nouns
- 70. Why does Spanish have masculine and feminine nouns?
- 71. Are the same words masculine and feminine in all Romance languages?
- 72. Why do so many masculine nouns end in -a?
- 73. Why is vacaciones plural?
- Pronouns
- 74. Why doesn't Spanish (mostly) have a word for 'it'?
- 75. Why does Spanish have so many words for 'you'?
- 76. How do Spanish dialects differ in their words for 'you'?
- 77. What are leísmo, loísmo, and laísmo?
- 78. How can su mean 'his,' 'her/ 'their,' and 'your'?
- 10. Where the action is: Spanish verbs
- General considerations
- 79. Why does Spanish have -ar, -er, and -ir verbs?
- 80. Why conjugate?
- 81. Why does Spanish have so many irregular verbs?
- The present tense
- 82. Why do only some verbs have the "boot" pattern?
- 83. Why do so many verbs have irregular yo forms in the present tense?
- The past tense
- 84. Why does Spanish have so many ways to talk about the past?
- 85. Why are there so many more irregulars in the preterite past tense than in the imperfect?
- 86. How can Spanish use the same word for was and went?
- The subjunctive
- 37. How can the subjunctive be used for actual events?
- 38. Why does Spanish have two past tense subjunctives?
- 89. Why does Spanish have a present and past subjunctive, but no future subjunctive? (a trick question)
- 90. Why is the subjunctive so irregular?
- Other tense and uses
- 91. Why are the future and the conditional different from other tenses?
- 92. Why are Spanish commands so complicated?
- 93. Why does Spanish have so many "backwards" verbs like gustar?
- 94. How can hay mean both 'there is' and 'there are'?
- 11. Building sentences: The syntax of Spanish
- 95. Why is the basic word order of Spanish subject-verb-object?
- 96. How can an adjective's position change its meaning?
- 97. Why does Spanish have the "personal a"?
- 98. Why are object pronouns sometimes placed before verbs, and sometimes after them?
- 99. Why does Spanish have the "la la" rule? (Or does it?)
- 100. Why does Spanish double mark indirect objects?
- 101. Why does Spanish have double negatives?
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index