This extensive Spanish language reference explains the logic behind more than 3,000 frequently used verb phrases and combinations that make Spanish speech sound native. Each entry includes a definition of the phrase including its register, synonyms, antonyms, complementary expressions, grammatical patterns, and examples of how the combinations are used in easy and difficult structures. Most entries also point out other factors to be taken into account, such as whether an expression is to be used in isolation, after explaining a cause, or if it shouldn't be used at the beginning of a sentence. The book presents generative patterns for combinations based on conceptual metaphors and grammar structures, details families of expressions as separate charts, and contains an index by complement.

Featuring a wide range of varieties of Spanish, this volume includes both peninsular and New World Spanish and draws on both written and spoken corpora. Based on sound research in cognitive linguistics and written entirely in Spanish, this valuable reference will be useful to advanced students of Spanish, teachers of Spanish, translators, and writers.

Sample Entry

ABUNDARAbundar en detalles: Ofrecer mucha información. Esta expresión se utiliza en contextos neutros o formales. En forma negativa (no abundar en detalles) se usa para expresar de manera irónica que alguien no quiere ofrecer tanta información como necesitamos.

S: El informe sobre el golpe de estado V: abunda CR: en detalles sobre la intervención de la CIA

El estudio abunda en detalles estadísticos sobre la inmigración, pero no explica ni sus causas ni sus consecuencias.

La testigo reconoció que era amante del acusado, pero no abundó en detalles sobre su relación.

Contraste:Informal: Paquita llegó a casa borracha y con un ojo morado. Explicó a su marido que se había caído y nada más.Formal: La víctima llegó a su casa intoxicada y con señales de abuso físico. Explicó, sin abundar en detalles, que eran resultado de una caída.

Expresiones relacionadas:1. Entrar en detalles (frecuentemente no entrar en detalles): Discutir un tema en profundidad. ‘No entrar’ significa quedarse fuera, por lo tanto, no entrar en detalles significa no explicar ningún detalle, mientras que no abundar en detalles significa hablar poco sobre un tema.

El estudio abunda en detalles estadísticos sobre la inmigración, pero no explica ni sus causas ni sus consecuencias.

*El estudio entra en detalles estadísticos sobre la inmigración, pero no explica ni sus causas ni sus consecuencias.

Hasta ahora hemos tratado el tema de la absorción de este mineral de manera superficial. Ahora entraremos en detalles.

*Hasta ahora hemos tratado el tema de la absorción de este mineral de manera superficial. Ahora abundaremos en detalles.

Amman and Russia call for immediate ceasefire

French riots extend to immigrant communities

Lawyers call for fair trial of Guantanamo prisoners

China aims at increasing trade with Russia

20 casualties in an earthquake in Pakistan

Headlines—print and broadcast—have gone global. As a result, news and information from authentic sources make a useful resource for foreign language learners.

Advanced Media Arabic systematically introduces authentic texts and audio files from a wide variety of media sources. This textbook helps students develop analytical and translation skills in Arabic and expand their reading, writing, listening, and speaking capabilities. The book emphasizes the semantic and stylistic aspects of media Arabic rather than its grammar and aims to equip students with the ability to listen to and converse about current events.

Organized by theme, each of the ten chapters covers current issues like:

o Diplomacyo Electionso Trade and Industryo Violence and Disordero Law and Ordero Economyo War and Military Actiono Natural Disasterso Terrorismo Arabic television talk shows

Each chapter provides important vocabulary; examples of language in context; exercises for reading and listening comprehension, writing, and translation; and a section for discussion and debate.

The listening material—60 minutes of spoken material—is available for free online at www.press.georgetown.edu.

Downloading Audio Files from press.georgetown.eduPlease click on the link under “Sample Content” to download a compressed zip file of all ten MP3 audio tracks that accompany the book. Files can be downloaded using a Mac or a PC. We recommend playing the files using iTunes or Windows Media Player. Please note that Georgetown University Press does not provide technical support for audio downloads.

For Mac, files will automatically be saved to your “Downloads” folder. (For older Macs, you may need to unzip the files using Stuffit.) To add files to iTunes, open iTunes, and click File>Add to Library and navigate to your file location.

For PC, save the compressed file to your desktop. Once the file has downloaded, go to the folder location on the desktop. Double-click the .zip file icon to unzip the file. Another folder will appear on the desktop. Open to reveal “Lahlali audio” folder. Open that folder to see all ten MP3 files. Import the files in to your music player from your file location by selecting all ten audio tracks, right-click and select Add to Playlist.

PLEASE NOTE: There are no audio files for lessons 6 and 7. Those lessons have reading passages only.

Headlines—print and broadcast—have gone global. As a result, news and information from authentic sources make a useful resource for foreign language learners.

Advanced Media Arabic, Second Edition systematically introduces authentic texts and audio files from a wide variety of media sources. This textbook helps students develop analytical and translation skills in Arabic and expand their reading, writing, listening, and speaking capabilities. The very successful first edition has been updated in a variety of ways, including:• New texts and audio for each module, including radio as well as TV materials • A new module on “The Language of Revolutions” and another on “Language andCulture” • New and more extensive exercises • New audio and vocabulary lists• Updated color design for the interior

Each chapter provides important vocabulary; examples of language in context; exercises for reading and listening comprehension, writing, and translation; and a section for discussion and debate.

The listening material—more than 80 minutes—is available for free online at www.press.georgetown.edu

During the Cultural Revolution, Mao exhorted the Chinese people to “smash the four olds”: old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas. Yet when the Red Guards in Tiananmen Square chanted “We want to see Chairman Mao,” they unknowingly used a classical rhythm that dates back to the Han period and is the very embodiment of the four olds. An Anatomy of Chinese reveals how rhythms, conceptual metaphors, and political language convey time-honored meanings of which Chinese speakers themselves may not be consciously aware, and contributes to the ongoing debate over whether language shapes thought, or vice versa.

Perry Link’s inquiry into the workings of Chinese reveals convergences and divergences with English, most strikingly in the area of conceptual metaphor. Different spatial metaphors for consciousness, for instance, mean that English speakers wake up while speakers of Chinese wake across. Other underlying metaphors in the two languages are similar, lending support to theories that locate the origins of language in the brain. The distinction between daily-life language and official language has been unusually significant in contemporary China, and Link explores how ordinary citizens learn to play language games, artfully wielding officialese to advance their interests or defend themselves from others.

Particularly provocative is Link’s consideration of how Indo-European languages, with their preference for abstract nouns, generate philosophical puzzles that Chinese, with its preference for verbs, avoids. The mind-body problem that has plagued Western culture may be fundamentally less problematic for speakers of Chinese.

One of the most challenging—and entertaining—aspects of learning another language is the idiom. Those quirky phrases, steeped in metaphor and colorful cultural references, enliven conversation and make your cross-cultural communication familiar, fun, and meaningful. ¡Dichos! (Sayings) brings us a vibrant compendium of both age-old and brand-new expressions from across Latin America, compiled by the language enthusiast whose Breaking Out of Beginner’s Spanish transformed thousands of readers’ interactions with the Spanish language.

¡Dichos! is divided into thematic sections covering topics ranging from games and relaxation to politics, macho men, and Mondays. Spanish speakers can also use the book to identify the spot-on/best slangy English equivalent for a Spanish-language idiom. Packed with gems like La barba me huele a tigre, y yo mismo me tengo miedo (My beard smells of tiger, and I’m even afraid of myself) and Para todo mal, mezcal; para todo bien, también (For everything bad, mezcal; for everything good, likewise), this book is the ultimate tool for taking your language skills to the next level as you navigate nuance with humor and linguistic agility.

One of the most challenging—and entertaining—aspects of learning another language is the idiom. Those quirky phrases, steeped in metaphor and colorful cultural references, enliven conversation and make your cross-cultural communication familiar, fun, and meaningful. ¡Dichos! (Sayings) brings us a vibrant compendium of both age-old and brand-new expressions from across Latin America, compiled by the language enthusiast whose Breaking Out of Beginner’s Spanish transformed thousands of readers’ interactions with the Spanish language.

¡Dichos! is divided into thematic sections covering topics ranging from games and relaxation to politics, macho men, and Mondays. Spanish speakers can also use the book to identify the spot-on/best slangy English equivalent for a Spanish-language idiom. Packed with gems like La barba me huele a tigre, y yo mismo me tengo miedo (My beard smells of tiger, and I’m even afraid of myself) and Para todo mal, mezcal; para todo bien, también (For everything bad, mezcal; for everything good, likewise), this book is the ultimate tool for taking your language skills to the next level as you navigate nuance with humor and linguistic agility.

p.B. J. Whiting savors proverbial expressions and has devoted much of his lifetime to studying and collecting them; no one knows more about British and American proverbs than he. The present volume, based upon writings in British North America from the earliest settlements to approximately 1820, complements his and Archer Taylor's Dictionary of American Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, 1820-1880. It differs from that work and from other standard collections, however, in that its sources are primarily not "literary" but instead workaday writings - letters, diaries, histories, travel books, political pamphlets, and the like. The authors represent a wide cross-section of the populace, from scholars and statesmen to farmers, shopkeepers, sailors, and hunters.

Mr. Whiting has combed all the obvious sources and hundreds of out-of-the-way publications of local journals and historical societies. This body of material, "because it covers territory that has not been extracted and compiled in a scholarly way before, can justly be said to be the most valuable of all those that Whiting has brought together," according to Albert B. Friedman. "What makes the work important is Whiting's authority: a proverb or proverbial phrase is what BJW thinks is a proverb or proverbial phrase. There is no objective operative definition of any value, no divining rod; his tact, 'feel,' experience, determine what's the real thing and what is spurious."

In the United States today there is lively discussion, both among educators and employers, about the best way to prepare students with high-level language and cross-cultural communication proficiency that will serve them both professionally and personally in the global environment of the twenty-first century. At the same time, courses in business language and medical language have become more popular among students. Language for Specific Purposes (LSP), which encompasses these kinds of courses, responds to this discussion and provides curricular models for language programs that build practical language skills specific to a profession or field. Contributions in the book reinforce those models with national survey results, demonstrating the demand for and benefits of LSP instruction. 

With ten original research-based chapters, this volume will be of interest to high school and university language educators, program directors, linguists, and anyone looking to design LSP courses or programs in any world language.

Much recent scholarship has sought to identify the linguistic and social factors that favor the expression or omission of subject pronouns in Spanish. This volume brings together leading experts on the topic of language variation in Spanish to provide a panoramic view of research trends, develop probabilistic models of grammar, and investigate the impact of language contact on pronoun expression.

The book consists of three sections. The first studies the distributional patterns and conditioning forces on subject pronoun expression in four monolingual varieties—Dominican, Colombian, Mexican, and Peninsular—and makes cross-dialectal comparisons. In the second section, experts explore Spanish in contact with English, Maya, Catalan, and Portuguese to determine the extent to which each language influences this syntactic variable. The final section examines the acquisition of variable subject pronoun expression among monolingual and bilingual children as well as adult second language learners.

"[A] superb collection of studies that substantially increases our understanding, not only of variation in subject personal pronouns, but also of variable morphosyntactic processes generally.... clearly relevant to all students and scholars who wish to understand the complexities of linguistic variation and dialect contact." -- Robert Bayley, professor of linguistics, University of California, Davis

"Students and scholars will find that this volume is an essential reference in the field of Spanish language variation. If the study of final /s/ has led Spanish sociophonetics, the study of subject pronouns stars in sociogrammar. This volume presents a 3D analysis of how subject pronouns are used and acquired in Spanish. This comprehensive volume is not only of interest to those concerned with Spanish grammar, but also to anyone interested in pro-drop languages. The vision of Carvalho, Orozco and Shin has harmonized an excellent collective volume." -- Francisco Moreno-Fernández, professor of Hispanic linguistics. University of Alcala (Spain) and Instituto Cervantes at Harvard University.

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"If you seek innovative, theoretically and empirically driven research into syntactic variation, open this book and read on. Here a variationist focus on alternating sound and silence, something and nothing, or subject pronouns and nulls generates striking insights into the nature of Spanish and those who speak and learn it." -- Richard Cameron,, University of Illinois at Chicago