Construyendo Vocabulario : Spanish Vocab Activities

These Spanish vocabulary tips and exercises will enlighten the intermediate and/or advanced student of how rich the Spanish language is in verbs. It will also help him to build and extend his vocabulary from certain base words. Many of these verbs are reasonably easy to guess at, since you can find one word inside another. All you have to do is to break down the word.

Here are examples of some Spanish verbs which fall within this method.

Atardecer – to grow dark, or to draw towards evening.(literally: evening to fall)

When you break this verb down : a/tarde/cer you get the noun tarde evening .In the same way, you can break down the word ‘anochecer’, which also means 'to grow dark' ( literally for night to fall); a/noche/cer gives you noche – night. The verb 'engordar' which means 'to get fat' can be broken down into en/gorda/r to give you the word gorda – fat.

Try the word asegurar. How would you break this word down, and which word would you get? Asegurar means “to assure, to guarantee and to insure.'

Answer: a/segura/r. The word derived here is the adjective segura - sure

From segura, you can move on to other new words like the adverb seguramente – surely, and the noun seguridad – security.

Here is another word you can work at breaking down: embotellar

Answer: em/botella/r The word derived is botella-bottle.

Here is an exercise where you can attempt to guess the meaning of the verbs in italics. The context of the sentence will help you.

1. No pudo ver bien la casa porque eran las nueve y anochecía.
2. Ahora voy a estar a regimen porque quiero adelgazar
3. Cuando estuve en vacaciones en Barcelona comí tanto que engordé mucho.
4. El chico era tan guapo que me enamoré en seguida.
5. Eran las diez de la noche y yo quería regresar en casa porque oscurecía.
6. Juan bebío tanto vino a la fiesta que se emborrachó.

1.I could not see well because it was nine o’clock and night was falling..

2.Now I am going on a diet because I want to lose weight.

3.When I was on vacation in Barcelona, I ate so much that I gained a lot of weight.

4.The guy was so handsome that I fell in love immediately.

5.It was ten o’clock at night and I wanted to return home because it was getting dark.

6. Juan drank so much wine at the party that he got drunk.

From these Spanish vocabulary exercises, you will realize that many Spanish verbs which appear to you to be difficult can be easily broken down and you can find the meaning by looking at the letters in the middle.