Spanish verb tense names

In English, you say present perfect, but in Spanish we say pretérito perfecto, antepresente, and in the U. S. people also call it presente perfecto, These differences happen usually between Latin America and Spain, and sometimes between schools, like instituto Cervantes and Columbia or NYU. Here is a table showing these name differences.

I prefer to refer to verb tenses by its English name. The possibilities of getting confused are less.... as you can see.

Bello refers to Andrés Bello (1781-1865), a Venezuelan scholar.

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10 expressions that are not so easy to figure out (25)

Here are 10 more common random idioms, expressions, words, you may have trouble with if you hear them for the first time:

Meter las manos en el fuego, meter las manos al fuego

1) Don't mix with the rabble 2) yes mom, rabble, rabble (based on an old sitcom)

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Tornadoes

Tornado is a word with Spanish DNA:

tornado 

1550s, navigator's word for violent windy thunderstorm in the tropical Atlantic, probably a mangled borrowing from Sp. tronada "thunderstorm," from tronar "to thunder," from L. tonare "to thunder" (see thunder). Metathesis of -o- and -r- in modern spelling influenced by Sp. tornar "to twist, turn," from L. tornare "to turn." Meaning "extremely violent whirlwind" is first found 1620s. (from http://www.etymonline.com), I think this description is not 100% correct, but anyway.

We have some words in Spanish that share the same origin:

Torniquete /tor-ni-ke-te/ (MX). The plural is torniquetes

Do you see the similarities between a tornado and a torniquete?

Tornillo. /tor-ni-yo/ The plural is tornillos.

And to make the long story short, this is a tornado in English and, of course, in Spanish.

The plural of tornado in Spanish is tornados.

Again, do you see the similarities between a tornado, a torniquete, and a tornillo?

So now, can someone explain me why the English language media prefer tornadoes over tornados for it's plural? To a Spanish speaking person it looks awful! it sounds uneducated!

The same happens with potato (from Spanish patata).

Potatoes looks horrible!!! Tomatoes!!! Bufaloes!!! Mosquitoes!!! nooooooo!!!! Help us international grammar police!!!!!!!

In English, tornado has two accepted plurals, tornadoes and tornados. Why don't you guys stick to tornados? It looks much better! I swear!

Think about it, when you need to say the plural of cactus you say, "look mom, cacti!". (cactuses is also correct). When you want to say the plural of paparazzo, you don't say paparazzos, you use the proper Italian plural, paparazzi. So why don't you guys use the proper Spanish plurals as well? Like sombreros, luckily you don't say sombreroes!

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R and RR can make a big difference!

You have to be careful with R and RR, not only spelling words, but also pronouncing them! Here are some examples:

perito

perritos

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10 expressions that are not so easy to figure out (24)

Here are 10 common random idioms you may have trouble with if you hear them for the first time:

At this point I hope I'm not repeating some of the previous expressions!

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¿Gustas?

So books teach you that gustar is a third person verb, and it's equivalent to to like in English. Not always. In Mexico we use it instead of ¿quisiera? ¿le gustaría?

Here are some examples:

Gusta is for formal you (Usted). Gustas is for familiar you (tú). Gustan is for plural you (ustedes).

¿gustas? is used, for example, when you are eating or drinking something in front of a friend, and you want to be polite and offer him/she some of your meal.

¿Gustas un refresco?

In Mexico and Spain un refresco is a soda.

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Mediados del Año

So we are already half way through the year. How do we say that in Spanish? How do we say beginning of the year? end of the year? or middle of the week?

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