"Bien" and "mal" against "bueno" and "malo"

Hi there!

Many students struggle to understand the difference between these two couples of words:

Which are the main differences?

- Bien and Mal are adverbs. They follow a verb. For example:

"Yo estoy bien", "Ellos están mal".

And note that they do not need gender neither number concordance with subject or object. They only have one way to be written in any case, "bien" and "mal".

- Bueno and Malo are adjectives. They follow a noun. For example:

"Él es alto", "Ella está contenta", "Ellos son altos", "Ellas están contentas".

In this case, they need to have gender and number concordance with the subject / object, as they are adjectives. So you have these four forms: "bueno", "buenos" and "buena", "buenas".

Here is an additional short explanation that may help you. 

And here another one! It also talks about the adjective form "buen" and the adjective "grande", which works similarly.

Hope this helps. Thank you for reading ! :)

Malqui-Machay, the last resting place of the Inca

¡Hola!

Today I read an interesting article on Miami Herald, talking about the 'lost' treasure of the Inca Empire before the Spanish Conquest. It is said that the Inca had stashed a huge treasure of gold in the mountains. It was a ransom to get back their Emperor, Mr Atahualpa, from the Spaniards. But the ransom was not delivered, because the Emperor died before being able to do the exchange.

This is what has been said so far. However, Ms Estupiñán (a historian who has been studying about the Incas for 30 years) recently suggested another version, after doing some discoveries by reading a 4,000-pages book.

Amazingly, that book is written in Spanish. :O You should check it out and try to understand at least one letter. Honestly, I have not been able to get a word of it. =) And it took Ms Estupiñán almost a year to transcribe the 7-pages Testament of Atahualpa's son, also written in Spanish like this.

Hope you enjoy the article, thanks for checking it and have a nice day! :)

Talking over the phone

¡Hola!

Today I want to tell you about the different ways we have to answer and talking over the phone, let's see some situations!

Answering the phone:

¿Sí? (everywhere) / ¿Bueno? (America) = Yes? (Who is there?)
¿Quién es? = Who is there?
¿Hola? (Spain) / ¿Aló? (América) = Hello.

The person who calls may reply saying "Hola" or, if that person knows with who is talking after hearing his/her voice, maybe the name of the person. Ex: ¿Antonio?

Asking for someone:

¿Está (name)? = Is (name) there?
¿Podría hablar con ... (name)? = May I talk with ... (name)?
¿Se puede poner... (name)? = Can (name) take the phone and talk with me?

Leaving a message:

¿Le quiere dejar un recado? / ¿Quiere que le diga algo de su parte?
= Do you want to leave him a message?

Saying bye: There is no special way of saying bye over the phone, just:
"Gracias, adiós" or "Hasta pronto" sounds good enough.

I hope it is useful for you. ¡Hasta pronto!

Some video examples below:

Phone conversation (American Spanish). The pronunciation is a bit exaggerated, a short 2-min video, but the good side is that it could be a typical conversation, and it is easy to understand.

Phone conversation (Spanish from Spain). This conversation is done at a normal pace. It is a 5-min short film. Actually, it might be hard to understand the whole conversation. But still, you can learn about the situations that we checked out in this post.

The Sephardic Spanish, a part of Spain

Sephardic Spanish were Jewish people who lived in Spain for centuries before 1492. They held important position in the Government and other important institutions in the country. Moreover, it is said that most of the counselors of Alfonso X El Sabio (The Wise) were Sephardi.

For them, Spain is Sepharad, a promised land in the Bible (Obad. 1:20). When they arrived to Spain, the country was really in a golden period of its time, being a source of culture and a bridge to new knowledges coming from the Arab world, thanks to the Spanish translator monks.

              

In 1492, Spain was in a period of time when it was still building itself as a country unified under only one kingdom. Before that, more than 2 had been ruling different parts of the territory. At around that time, the Catholic Kings became the Kingdom of Spain, and therefore they needed to reorganize some aspects of the Kingdom. Moreover, they were concerned about Sephardic people, because of their economic and social power, while not being Catholic... Therefore, they let them choose to convert to Catholicism, or leave the country. Although many people (really or just admittedly) converted and remained in Spain, some of them decided to leave the country... However, they left it full of sadness, because of their deep roots with Spanish culture and people.

                      

It needs to be said that these event is not exclusive of Spain. It is the only one that happened in Spain and, actually, it is one of the last ones that happened in Europe. Before this one, England and France, among other countries, had done it in a forceful way to Jewish people for the same or similar reasons.

After hundreds of years, these amazing people kept their Spanish roots and carried Spanish language with them. However, it was separated from Spain before it made huge changes and became the current Spanish.
For that reason, "Judeoespañol", or Sephardic Spanish, is more similar to the Middle Age Spanish than the current one. In the next post, I will talk about this language. I am amazed to listen to it, it is a language treasure and, in my opinion, its people is very creditable.

Some references to learn more (please be aware these are long articles):

- Sephardic Jews
- Sephardic laws and customs
- History of the Jews in Spain


¡Gracias y hasta pronto!