Think of France – the beautiful countryside, the elegant cities, the fashion, the cheese and of course, the wine!!   Wine, le vin, is an essential part of French life, often drunk at lunchtime,  as an aperitif, and definitely with dinner.  So it is a good idea to know how to talk about and order wine when in France.

First, there are some important choices to be made.  Do you want to drink red wine, vin rouge, white wine, vin blanc, some rosé or champagne?  Then you need to choose between a bottle, une bouteille, a glass, un verre or a carafe, un pichet (often in a restaurant they will serve the house wine in a “pichet”)

Je voudrais un verre de vin blanc et une coupe de champagne, si’l vous plait. 

I would like a glass of white wine and a flute of champagne, please.

 

Avec le fromage, je vais commander une bouteille de vin rouge. 

With the cheese, I am going to order a bottle of red wine.

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Hola, Salut, and Ciao,

It’s time for a video post here at the Rocket Languages blog. Today Mauricio Evlampieff, the host of Rocket Spanish, is going to teach you how to pronounce vegetables in Spanish.

Mauricio loves cooking and has wanted to do a video post on Spanish cuisine for a long time.  In this video lesson Mauricio will teach you the Spanish names of both common and exotic vegetables. Enjoy!

Feel free to visit the Official Rocket Languages YouTube channel for more great language videos.

Hola,

It’s time to get all nostalgic and talk about the past…

It’s very difficult to have a conversation in any language without having to refer to the past.  I have a friend who speaks “fluent” Spanish, but really he is just fluent in hand gestures, pointing behind him for past tense and in front of him for the future!  We’d like to help you be a little more fluent than that!

In Spanish there are two main ways to talk about the past tense; they are the preterite and the imperfect.  Let’s focus our attention on the preterite, which sound scary but isn’t – it’s easier than having to revert to hand gestures!

You will know when to use the preterite tense because you’ll be talking about something that happened ayer (yesterday), anoche (last night), la semana pasada (last week), etc. something that happened at a definite point in the past.

Ayer hablé con mi amigo – Yesterday I spoke to my friend.

La semana pasado fuimos al cine – Last week, we went to the movies. (more…)

Today’s post is about how to make friends with grammar.

No! Don’t turn off the computer!

I won’t make you diagram sentences or recite parts of speech or anything. I just want to tell you a little bit about how useful grammar can be, and encourage you to spend some time learning the grammar of your target language.

Just as we can live in a house our whole lives and never understand the plumbing or examine the foundation, we can quite happily talk, listen, write and read in our first language without understanding or talking about grammar.

Some people also learn second and third languages through copying others, speaking, reading and writing in the language, without studying grammar. (more…)

Bonjour!  Aujourd’hui nous allons apprendre à parler de l’heure.   Today, we’re talking about time – arranging a time to meet, or talking about when something happened.

If you’d like some more information on talking about time, and how to pronounce these new words, why don’t you take a look at our free French time lesson – and as they say – there’s no time like the present!!!

To be able to arrange to meet someone, you need to know your numbers from 1 to 12 so you can make sure you don’t miss out on that important date!!

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Hola!

In today’s video post Mauricio is going to teach you some common, and not so common, Spanish animal names.

Get prepared for your next visit to the zoo and learn what a monkey, zebra, kangaroo, and other animals are called in Spanish. This video is not only perfect for beginners and children, but there are probably also a couple of animals that even advanced Spanish learners may not have encountered yet!

Enjoy!

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¡Hola! Do you know what an article is?  Is it:

• a) something you read in a newspaper or magazine
• b) the word “the”
• c) the word “a” or “an”?
• Correct answer = all of the above!

Today we are going to look at b) and c) only though – the and a/an – these are our definite and indefinite articles. (more…)

Salut!

Je suis très heureuse de vous revoir!  Hi there, I’m very happy to see you again! Happiness is a wonderful emotion; let’s look at describing some other emotions in French!
As I said above “je suis heureuse”, this is the feminine version of “heureux”.

• Je suis heureux parce que j’ai fini mes examens! – I am happy because I have finished my exams!

Many of these adjectives to describe your emotions change in the feminine form, for example:

• Je suis jaloux becomes je suis jalouse – I am jealous

• Je suis fatigué becomes je suis fatigue – I’m tired

• Il est amoureux becomes elle est amoureuse – he is in love / she is in love (more…)

Hello! Today we are going to give you one of our favorite tips for helping people to progress in a new language, and to increase confidence: You’re going to write!

Do you remember the first time you picked up a crayon or a pen and wrote something that had meaning? Maybe it was just your name, or a card for your mother.

Chances are, seeing that writing on the paper and knowing you had done it made you feel very proud. And so it should; being able to write something that another can understand is a pretty big accomplishment – it took our species a few million years to figure it out!

And now it is up to you to evolve a little further… (more…)

French quiz:

Last week we tested how good you are asking where something is in French. This week we are taking it a step further and are testing whether you know how to follow directions in French. Basically this quiz focuses on the type of language you will hear after you ask the “where is” question. Language like “to the left”, “go straight” and “on the corner of” for example. If you’d like a quick brush up on directions in French check out our free lesson.

Spanish Quiz:

Do you know which Spanish verb to use when if you are talking about time? How much do you know about Spanish verbs in the preterite tense? How good are you at conjugating verbs in Spanish? Now is your chance to find out! This week’s Spanish quiz is on basic Spanish verbs. If you’d like a quick refresher visit our free Spanish verb lessons.

So, click on one of the images below to start your weekly quiz, and don’t forget to share your score on Facebook and Twitter, so that everyone knows how well you’ve done.

Good luck!

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