ysobel: (Default)
masquerading as a man with a reason ([personal profile] ysobel) wrote2013-09-03 01:38 pm

...or not!

Yesterday I chugged through two lessons of the animal unit -- relatively easy, since I sort of knew most of them already somehow. (cat, dog, elephant, turtle, horse ... the only one I hadn't known was duck, el pato, which I filed away as "sort of like pâté but with -o".

Today, I was all set to chug through more, and ... well ... one I knew (bear, el oso), and two were fairly straightforward (animals, los animales, and penguin, el pingüino). The others not so much. I can do Spanish-to-English translation somewhat readily for some (araña, spider, is sort of similar to arachnid, and cangrejo, crab, starts out similar to cancer), but I am hopeless for pájaro, bird, and can't really do E-to-S for those. (ara*mumble* and can*mumble* doesn't really cut it.)

Sigh.

ETA: cerdo, pig. ratón, mouse. mono, monkey. toro, bull, is ok. conejo, rabbit, sort of.

Also: palabras, words. las llaves, keys. How to remember, argh.
asciident: (Default)

[personal profile] asciident 2013-09-03 10:55 pm (UTC)(link)
You sing, so I'm going to assume you're familiar with "clef"? It's French for (musical) key. Door key is clé. They all stem from the same Latin word.Most cl- words got changed in Spanish to start with ll-. clef, clave, llave.

I don't know if that helps, but maybe.