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Des in Spanish.

In this podcast Cynthia and I realised something very important. That was that the verbs with DES in Spanish don’t always have a logical explanation to them.

Of course, we have the same kind of verbs in English, only in English they tend to have many and varied prefixes. Sometimes there’s a pattern, sometimes there most certainly isn’t.

Some examples.

So, let’s take a look at some of the verbs that start with DES in Spanish and see how they work:

Destruir = Destroy

Here we have an example of a verb that starts with DES in Spanish and in English.

The opposite number.

What is interesting about the verb Destruir is that it has its antonym/antónimo in Construir.

So, as we see, by changing the prefix we change Destroy into Construct. Perhaps it will be easier to see the connection by looking at these words:

Destrucción-Construcción.

Can we do that each time?

So, the question is, ‘If we can create the antonym of this word by whipping off the DES in Spanish and adding CON, can we do that with all if the verbs that start with DES in Spanish?’

The simple answer is NO!

Take a look at these examples:

Desmayarse = to faint.

This is a stand alone verb and ‘Conmayarse’ doesn’t exist as a word. Rather the antonym of the verb ‘to faint’ is: Recobrarse or Recuperarse.

Deshacer = to undo.

In this example, we just need to take off the Des in Spanish to create the antonym which is Hacer= to do.

So, unfortunately, there is no hard and fast rule to know what to do with these verbs that start with Des in Spanish.  There are some patterns but, for the most part, they cannot be counted on every time.

It’s the same in English.

Of course the same thing applies to the Dis verbs in English too.  Sometimes you can take the Dis off and you get the antonym. Here is an example:

Disagree.

Agree.

However, there are just as many exceptions:

Disable – Enable

Discard – Retain

Disbark – Embark

Learn the verbs with Des in Spanish one by one.

The bottom line is that, just as we do in English, in Spanish we will have to learn each of the verbs individually.  There really is no hard and fast rule that will help you out.

In this podcast we will be doing our best to highlight some of the key verbs with Des in Spanish. In the Helpsheets there’ll be even more!

Esperamos que te guste.

Gordon y Cynthia:)

Video for This Spanish Lesson

Audio for This Spanish Lesson

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 10:22 — 9.5MB)

Why check my Spanish listening skills?

There really is something very strange about what happens to people when they embark on the task of learning Spanish. In our experience, the vast majority of students only want to read and write most of the time. Of course, we know fine well why this is. Reading and writing is a very safe part of learning a language. We have time, we can ponder at our leisure about the meaning of something or how we should structure a particular sentence.

What is more, when you read and write you can repeat the same sentence over and over again until you get it to what you perceive to be a good level. It’s all just so very comfortable for us as learners. Don’t you agree?

Listening and Speaking makes no allowances.

What most learners are afraid of, however, is having to listen or to speak Spanish. Why? Because these two mediums of communication are the least forgiving. There is little chance for us to repeat and repeat our sentences until we get them right. When we listen in a live situation, for example, we either catch the idea or we don’t. When we are speaking off the cuff, we either say what we want to say correctly, or we cock it up.

And that is frightening to us. We don’t like getting things wrong. In fact, we would go as far as to say that making a mistake in Spanish is, for many sensitive students, a cardinal sin. For that reason, they avoid any Spanish listening or speaking situations.

It’s a vicious circle.

The problem with avoiding Spanish listening or speaking opportunities is that we never get any practice at it and so never get any better. We study away, scribbling in our books and reading everything we can get our hands on and yet, when we are faced with any test of our Spanish listening or speaking skills, we react like the rabbit in the headlights and clam up.

It doesn’t need to be that way.

If you can relate to this in any way, then fear not! Help is at hand. At the end of many of our Podcast series’ we produce a ‘Test your Spanish Listening Skills’ podcast. We pitch them at different skill levels and they provide you the opportunity of listening in to find out how much you can pick up and understand.

The great thing about these Podcasts is that you CAN repeat-listen as many times as you like. It’s amazing how much more you pick up of the fine detail when you listen three, four or five times.

Even more helpful is listening firstly without the transcript, so that you get as much of the information as you can and then following up by listening along with the transcript.  This system of listening and reading the words at the same time is a fantastic way of training your ear to pick up on, and going forward, understand the words that most cause you an issue. We can’t recommend it highly enough.

If you are wondering how to get hold of the transcripts for these Podcasts, then just go to our website and check out the Helpsheets page.

We hope you enjoy the podcast and testing your Spanish listening skills.

Gordon y Cynthia 🙂

Video for This Spanish Lesson

Audio for This Spanish Lesson

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 11:43 — 10.7MB)