Isn't She Gorgeous!

Spanish vocabulary is a pain in the neck, isn’t it? The Spanish for leather is el cuero and en cueros is, unsurprisingly, a Spanish slang term for naked. Cuero is also a Latin American adjective meaning gorgeous; so, effectively, es un cuero would mean, ‘she is a babe/stunner’ or ‘he is a hunk!’ Confused? Well, bear with me, for visualization is the tool for the laziest of learners the world has ever seen and it is this technique that we are going to see at work today. Let’s see if it’s possible to remember all these meanings the lazy way. We are going to establish here that the mind absorbs best when left uncluttered.

How much Spanish could we absorb in 10 seconds?

¡Es un cuero!

Photo credit: Peretz Partensky licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

Just close your eyes and picture a sexy, beautiful girl going to Cuba in an aeroplane. Try to add as much nonsense to this imagery as you can comfortably manage. The girl could be wearing a certain top in your favorite color (an animal-print thong, maybe?), she could be a blonde or a brunette, she could be wearing your favorite perfume, or she could have that raspy-voice that turns you on...just let your imagination run wild. The whackier and more outrageous your imagination, the stronger the visual handle and consequently, the stronger the retention.

Helps? This is what they call visualization. Just visualize the image for 10 to 15 seconds and you are done! This is the power of the sub-conscious. You tend to remember words more naturally this way because human mind retains pictures and videos better than words. You might need to repeat this exercise with some words over a few days or maybe weeks to ensure permanent retention; nevertheless, vocabulary acquired this way not only sticks for longer, it also takes relatively little effort to begin with! And the energy thus saved could well be channelized into acquiring more Spanish by other means. One infinitely useful way of utilizing this time would be watching Spanish programming on television, YouTube®, or elsewhere to maintain a steady inflow of lots and lots of Spanish.

Spanish and English don’t map word-for-word!

Visual association is also important for you to acquire Spanish vocabulary independent of a corresponding English meaning. Why is this important? So, if we know that a ‘car’ is carro in Spanish, isn’t it just wise and less complicated to just memorize the extremely simplistic word-to-word association and get done with it? Well, in this example, maybe yes. But heaven knows that every language is unique. In every aspect. Spanish wasn’t carved out of English nor the other way around. So, more often than not, words in Spanish don’t always “stand for” a specific word in English. It’s the same story when translating from English to Spanish as well. That’s the reason why reps are never such a good idea for learning Spanish words.

Take an example, ser. If you look it up in a Spanish-English dictionary, you will soon know it’s the Spanish for the ubiquitous English verb, ‘to be’. However, if you assumed ser means ‘to be’ and hence ‘to be’ means ser, you are way off-base because what’s ‘to be’ in English can be expressed in Spanish in two different ways depending on the context and while one way is using ser, there exists another one using estar. Did you see how your word-to-word cramming technique falls flat in this example? Now, I don’t intend to confuse you with the ser-estar dilemma; that discussion is interesting though but warrants an article of its own. For now, it just serves to drive home the idea that the only logical way to acquire Spanish vocabulary is by understanding and memorizing (using the visualization technique illustrated above, if you will) the context and the “idea” that word stands for.

So, its always a better idea to understand and remember that carro is a motorized vehicle with gears and four wheels that is not different from a car. But it is “not” a car! Carro exists in Spanish regardless of whether or not ‘car’ does in English. I know this seems to be a stupid way of remembering a word that means nothing but ‘car’ in English but in doing this, you are developing a habit that will only help you deal with the ambiguity thrown by words such as ser. What all this philosophical talk means is that learning Spanish should be independent of your knowledge of English or any other language and visualization helps you achieve just that.

The key, once again, is that your Spanish must not depend on your English! So, while your dictionary might say that an olla stands for a ‘saucepan’, you’d be better off using whatever visual aid you can muster to understand and learn that it is essentially a rather cylindrical utensil with a long handle often used for boiling milk, etc. Could this be the reason why kids all over the world are taught using picture-books or picture-dictionaries regardless of what language they are learning? Even your mind is known to retain and recall pictures more comfortably than written words. We are naturally wired for such retention. Of course, word-to-word associations do exist, especially words from Spanish and English that share a common origin. But even for such words, using visualization would only help fluency because while producing Spanish, you wouldn’t be translating your thoughts from English into Spanish.