Spanish/ All You Need To Know

This week we were entertaining some Spanish speaking out-of-towners, and I could not think of a single word to say to get the conversation started. In honor of this humbling experience, today's post is on how to say Nice to meet you (Mucho Gusto) and  Likewise ( Igualmente) if the Spanish speaker beats you to the "Nice to meet you" part. That is all you really need to know, because conversations that go beyond this tend to go down hill.

I picture a big goose ( because that is what I felt like when I forgot these greetings) talking to another big goose. Neither goose speaks very well, so the first goose just points to the other big goose and says,"Much goose" It could be a reference to the bird's size. I don't know. The other bird is equally as poor of a communicator and tries to say something like, "back at ya" or "ditto" but all that comes out is "Equal."

Irregular Present Tense Spanish Verbs/ Only In The Yo Form

Some present tense verbs only have a messed-up spelling when it is conjugated in the YO form.

Here are the 5 most common for Spanish beginners:

Salir => Yo Salgo

Traer => Yo Traigo

Oir => Yo Oigo *

Poner => Yo Pongo

Hacer => Yo Hago

The first thing you should have noticed is that all of these words end in GO. GO should make you thing of  STOP. And STOP has all the first letters of these irregular verbs. If you picture a stop sign being cut in Half, you have the H of hacer.

For those who need a visual, see below:

If you cut a stop sign in half, you also end up with 5 sides...the same number of irregular verbs in this list.

* Oir is goofy in all of it's conjugations but I used it here because it is messed up in the yo form and I needed the  O to spell STOP. Here is the complete conjugation of OIR

Yo Oigo
tú oyes
usted oye
nosotros oímos
ustedes oyen

Irregular Stem-Changing Present Tense Spanish Verbs

Learning a list of the irregular Spanish verbs in the present tense is the first big challenge in Spanish.

This is how I break it down:

When I think of the word irregular, I think of people because all people are irregular.

The word PEOPLE tips me off to the 3 changes that happen to the verbs that are irregular.

some verbs have an E that changes to an I

some verbs have an E that changes to an IE

and 

some verbs have an O that changes to an  UE

Since we are thinking of people, have you noticed that people are ether Doctors, QVC shoppers, or they are full pep. If you share this observation, then it will be easier to remember 10 common irregular present tense verbs.

The Doctor  verbs have an E that changes to an I

The QVC and PEPP verbs change from E to IE

to remember the o to ue verbs I use this mnemonic: Al Can Judge Dorm Violence

Which means: Al (almorzar) Can (contar) Judge (jugar) Dorm (dormir) Viol- (volver) Ence(encontar)