Blog 2- February 18, 2008

The second chapter covered topics such as articles, using gustar, noun adjective agreement, the use of estar, present tense, and plurals.
Articles are pretty easy. If the noun is feminine you use la or una. If the noun is masculine you use el or un. You also have to use the plural forms of these articles if the noun is plural: unos, unas, las, los. Also the verb gustar is unusual. To conjugate gustar you either use gusta with singlular nouns or infinitives or gustan if the following noun is plural. Next you simply add the indefinite article of me, te, le, nos, or les depending on who likes what.
The verb estar was also discussed in this chapter. It deals with direction or the current personality or emotion of a person. It is conjugated estoy, estas, esta, estamos and estan.
The present tense is also quite simple. For -ar ending infinitive verbs you simply drop the -ar ending and add o, as, a, amos, or an. For -er ending iinfinitive verbs you drop the -er and add o, es, e, emos, or en. For -ir ending infinitives you drop the -ir and add o, es, e, imos, or en,

On the cultural side of the spanish language I have learned in chapter two the various areas of the United States where a large population of spanish-speaking people reside. I was not aware that the state of Illinois was home to a large population of spanish-speaking people. I also learned that Spanglish is the combination of the English and Spanish language and has its own phrases that are unique to both languages.