Book to Bump Up Your Spanish

We were talking earlier about books we’re recommending to people, and it occurs to me that the book that I gave most recently as a gift is called Breaking Out of Beginner’s Spanish.

Have you seen this book, Grant?

No.

It’s great. It’s by Joseph K. Keenan, who was born in the United States but has lived in Latin America for the last 30 years.

And it’s a fantastic book. It’s in English. It’s very, very accessible, and it helps you, even if you have a tiny bit of Spanish, to kind of bump your Spanish up in a way that’s very enjoyable.

I learned from this book, for example, the term enjentarse. It means to just be peopled out. The word gente means people in Spanish.

Say you’ve worked all day with a whole bunch of people, and then you go to a party, and there are a whole bunch of people there, and you say, ay, me enjente. I’m just, I’m peopled. I’m peopled. I’m done.

I’ve got to go home and curl up in a ball and be by myself for a while.

Yes, yes. I’m in people. Got to go. Me en gente. I love that.

And I also learned from this book something that surprised the heck out of me, which is in Mexico, you don’t ever want to use that rhythmic pattern that’s so familiar to us in this country of shave and a haircut, two bits.

Oh, why not?

In Mexico, parts of Mexico and in parts of Latin America, that rhythmic pattern is the rhythmic pattern of a naughty phrase that I’m not going to say in English or Spanish.

Wow, I didn’t know that.

Yeah, so you don’t want to knock on somebody’s door with that pattern or honk at somebody with that.

So you learn all kinds of fun things like that.

So you don’t have to know that much Spanish to appreciate this book.

And it was published 20 years ago, just came out with a new 20th anniversary edition of Breaking Out of Beginner Spanish by Joseph J. Keenan.

Cool. Thanks.

If there’s a book that has helped you learn more about yourself, the world, or our language, give us a call, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.