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Lesson 1

This document introduces Spanish vocabulary words for the first lesson, including greetings (hola, adiós), pronouns (yo, tú, él), numbers 1-10, and some basic phrases. It provides guidance on pronunciation of specific letters like ll and ñ. Examples are given to demonstrate using the new words, such as "Hola, señorita". The document emphasizes learning numbers and pronouns as foundations for building basic sentences going forward.

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Daniela Bedolla Gudanowski
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31 views

Lesson 1

This document introduces Spanish vocabulary words for the first lesson, including greetings (hola, adiós), pronouns (yo, tú, él), numbers 1-10, and some basic phrases. It provides guidance on pronunciation of specific letters like ll and ñ. Examples are given to demonstrate using the new words, such as "Hola, señorita". The document emphasizes learning numbers and pronouns as foundations for building basic sentences going forward.

Uploaded by

Daniela Bedolla Gudanowski
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Lesson 1

This Week's New Words:

 adiós - goodbye
 bien - good, well
 él - he, him
 ella - she, her
 ellas - they (female)
 ellos - they (male)
 hola - hello
 gracias - thank you
 lo siento - I'm sorry
 nosotros - us, we (plural)
 señor - sir, mister
 señora - madame
 señorita - miss
 tú - you (informal)
 usted - you (formal)
 ustedes - you (plural, formal)
 yo - I

Numbers 1-10

 0 cero
 1 uno
 2 dos
 3 tres
 4 cuatro
 5 cinco
 6 seis
 7 siete
 8 ocho
 9 nueve
 10 diez

Pronunciation

The Spanish alphabet is fairly similar to our own (English, or depending on where you're from,
American). Each lesson will explain a few more letters. This week, I'll explain the interesting
letters (or combinations thereof) from this week's words (above).
ll
The ll in Spanish is always pronounced like the English y in yes. Thus, the Spanish word
ella (she, her) is pronounced like eh-ya.
ñ
The ñ is the same sound as the ny pair in the word canyon. Thus, señor is pronounced like
sen-yor.
h
The Spanish h is always silent. Thus, hola is pronounced ola (as in cola without the c).
a, e, i, o, u
The Spanish vowels each have only one sound, regardless of what letters they precede or
follow, or accent marks on the vowel. The a is always pronounced as in the English word
car. The e has the sound of the e in bed. The Spanish i is the same as the English long e
or ee as in see. The o is always pronounced as the o in the word cold. The Spanish u has
the sound of the English oo as in too or the English ue as in blue.
r
As opposed to the English r, which is formed in the back of the mouth with the back of
the tongue, the Spanish r is formed using the tip of the tongue on the upper palatte,
behind the front teeth, more like the English d.

Being the first lesson, this week you're just learning some of the basics. The main emphasis is on
pronouns (yo, usted) and numbers (cero through diez). Also, you're being introduced to some of
the most common greeting and short phrases, such as hola ("hello") and lo siento ("I'm sorry").

Without knowing any verbs, there aren't many sentences to be made with the words we have, but
here are some (short) examples with what we know:

Hola, señorita. - Hello, miss.


Lo siento, señor. - I'm sorry, sir.
And yes, that's about all we can do right now, but these are still good examples of Spanish
grammatical structure. Notice how similar the above sentences are to English - hola comes first,
and then the subject, señorita. You can form the same kinds of sentences using adiós and
gracias, and señora, in addition to the example sentences above. However, you can't make a
sentence like this:
Hola, usted.
What the above sentence literally says is "hello, you", and while it may be possible to think of
times in English when you might say that, in Spanish the sentence is meaningless, and people
will look at you funny if you say Hola ustedes! in the middle of a group of Spanish-speaking
people.

Numbers. Numbers, as you should all know, are important. That's why I've included some in the
first lesson. For the moment, you only know the numbers between 0 (cero) and 10 (diez), but that
will change. What can you do with the numbers cero through diez? Count your toes! Uno, dos,
tres, cuatro, cinco, seis, siete, ocho, nueve, diez.. Recite your phone number! cinco, cinco, cinco,
ocho, seis, cero, dos (555-8602). Tell someone how many sisters you have (dos). What you can't
do with the numbers cero through diez is make numbers bigger than diez by stringing them
together. Dos cero is not the same as 20, although if you were in a pinch, you might be able to
make someone understand that 20 was what you meant. Don't worry, we'll get to the rest of the
numbers (1-1000) in the next few lessons.
Pronouns. Pronouns (yo, tú, usted, él, ella, nosotros, ustedes, ellos, and ellas) aren't anything
that you can actually use yet, because I haven't given you any verbs. But as we progress,
pronouns will be very important, so I'm introducing them now. The Spanish pronouns are used
almost always exactly the same way they are in English. In English, you would say

I went to the store.


In Spanish, you would just substitute yo for I in the sentence above (we'll pretend that the rest of
the sentence is really in Spanish) and end up with
Yo went to the store.
Trust me, how one uses these pronouns will make much more sense when we learn some verbs.

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