Two guitars
Inés wants to play Entre dos aguas and visits a guitar workshop in Granada. She hears a flamenco guitar and a classical one, then chooses the cypress guitar.
Dos guitarras
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About this article
What you'll learn
Present tense, querer, and words for the guitar, flamenco, and the workshop.
Inés wants the bright sound of Paco de Lucía's Entre dos aguas. In a Granada workshop she compares a cypress flamenco guitar with a classical nylon-string guitar, learns that flamenco has cante, toque, and baile, and also meets Andrés Segovia and the Concierto de Aranjuez. She leaves with the flamenco guitar.
After reading
Article learning block
Phrases, words, grammar, and quick practice from this text.
Phrases for training
Add useful phrases to SRS or mark them as already known.
La gente toca la guitarra en las fiestas
newPeople play the guitar at parties
With instruments, tocar always takes the definite article: tocar la guitarra, tocar el piano. Dropping it, toca guitarra, is an English habit rather than a Spanish one.
It is the most common mistake English speakers make with this verb, and the article never disappears.
La guitarra española tiene seis cuerdas
newThe Spanish guitar has six strings
Tener is irregular: tengo, tienes, tiene, tenemos, tenéis, tienen. Tengo is a one-off; tienes, tiene and tienen change the e to ie, while tenemos and tenéis keep the plain e.
Tener is one of the handful of verbs you cannot get through a day of Spanish without.
Nace en Andalucía, en el sur de España
newIt is born in Andalusia, in the south of Spain
Spanish tells history in the present tense: nace, crean, declara, muere. English would use the past here; the present makes the events feel close.
The whole text is written this way, so recognising it stops you mistaking history for the news.
rasguean las cuerdas con fuerza
newthey strum the strings hard
Rasguear is to strum: to sweep several strings at once with the nails. The technique itself is el rasgueo. Its opposite is el punteo, one note at a time.
Rasgueo and punteo are the two words a Spanish speaker reaches for to describe how someone plays.
Una guitarra puede sonar alegre
newA guitar can sound cheerful
Sonar changes o to ue wherever the stress falls on it: suena, suenan. Nosotros and vosotros keep the plain o: sonamos, sonáis. After puede the verb stays in the infinitive, sonar, so nothing changes there.
The text uses suena, suenan and sonar within a few lines, and only the stem tells you which is which.
En España muchos niños aprenden guitarra
newIn Spain many children learn guitar
Aprender guitarra means to study the instrument as a subject. For the act of playing you say aprender a tocar la guitarra, with a before the infinitive.
Aprender a plus an infinitive is the pattern for every skill: aprender a nadar, aprender a conducir.
Key words
Vocabulary that carries the school-day topic.
The strings
las cuerdas
the strings
Feminine: la cuerda, las cuerdas. The same word means a rope, and in an orchestra la cuerda is the whole string section.
One word covers a guitar string, a rope and the violins of an orchestra.
Wood
la madera
wood
Feminine: la madera. It is the material. Wood you burn is la leña, and a living tree is el árbol.
Spanish splits into three words what English calls wood, and choosing the wrong one is noticeable.
The pick
la púa
the pick
Feminine: la púa. It is the small piece of plastic you hold to strike the strings; a musician may also say el plectro. Flamenco players mostly use their nails instead.
The accent on the u breaks the diphthong, so the word is read pú-a, in two syllables.
The workshop
el taller
the workshop
Masculine: el taller, los talleres. It is any workshop where things are made or repaired, from a guitar maker to a car mechanic.
El taller is also the word on the sign you look for when your car breaks down in Spain.
Flamenco singing
el cante
the singing, in flamenco
El cante is flamenco singing specifically. Singing in general is el canto or una canción, so el cante is a word you meet almost only in this context.
Flamenco has three parts and each carries its own word: el cante, el toque and el baile.
Gitano
gitano
Roma, gitano
Gitano is the Spanish word for the Roma people of Spain, and it is the word the community itself uses. The Roma of Andalusia are central to the birth of flamenco.
Almost anything written in Spanish about flamenco uses this word.
Grammar in context
Patterns from the text worth noticing after reading.
The most famous
el instrumento más famoso de España
the most famous instrument in Spain
The superlative is el or la plus más plus the adjective. After it Spanish uses de where English uses in: el más famoso de España, la mejor de la clase.
That de catches English speakers out every time, because in Spain would be en España in any other sentence.
para plus infinitive
una púa para tocar muy rápido
a pick to play very fast
Para followed by an infinitive says what something is for. The verb stays in the infinitive and is never conjugated: una púa para tocar, dinero para comprar.
It answers the question what for, and it is the shortest way to give a reason in Spanish.
Nouns in -ción
la tradición musical
the musical tradition
Every noun ending in -ción is feminine: la tradición, la canción, la conversación. In the plural the written accent disappears because the stress no longer needs it: las tradiciones, las canciones.
It is one of the few gender rules with no exceptions, and it hands you hundreds of words at once.
muy or mucho
muy rápido, mucha gente
very fast, a lot of people
Muy goes before an adjective or an adverb and never changes: muy rápido, muy tristes. Mucho goes with a noun and agrees with it: mucha gente, muchos niños, mucho sentimiento.
Both come out as very or a lot in English, so only the word that follows tells you which one Spanish needs.
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