Although loan words and cognates help us identify/translate words into English, there are many things in written/spoken Spanish that are difficult (at least to me...). Spanish phrases. If I'm trying to decipher what exactly a phrase means, I translate it word-by-word, which usually isn't even close to the actual meaning. The same goes for spoken Spanish.
If I'm given a piece of literature in Spanish (not the watered down versions), my only hope for understanding is translating familiar verbs and cognates into English. Sometimes the phrases even confuse the meanings of verbs/nouns I thought I knew.
English has so many phrases: "by the way", etc......
Spanish does too.
How do we learn phrases? Do we treat them like vocabulary, learning them like a normal vocabulary word? or like separate words?
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We'll learn some of those phrases and expressions this semester. Learn them as a fixed expression and try to use them as much as possible. It takes practice and patience.
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