Quick vocab review


Leaving-- To leave a place is salir; to leave a person or a thing is dejar.  Also pay close attention to the use of prepositions in the following examples:
 

Roberto saliódel hospital. (Salir can be translated "to go out;" and you go out of a place in English as well as Spanish)
Pati va a salir para Nueva York.
Gloria ha salido, y nadie sabe adónde fue.

Raquel dejó su cartera en la oficina de Pedro.
Yo recomiendo que Carlos deje a Gloria y busque una esposa más responsable.
 


Loving and Liking-- Encantar is an interesting verb, or at least its translation to English is.  When used with things, it translates "love."  When used with people, it means "like a lot."  Remember that grammatically it works like gustar (the literal translation is "to enchant,"  "to charm," or even "to cast a [benevolent] spell")

Amar is used only with people, and only when you really, really mean it.  It's the kind of word you only use a few times in your life.

Querer is the usual verb used to talk about loving people.  It doesn't imply physical wanting/desire (desear exists for that-- as well as various, cruder terms that you can find out on your own if so inclined), and it can even be used when you don't mean romantic love-- you can use this for friends, siblings, teachers, etc, as well as your boyfriend/girlfriend. (Women are a little more free with it than men.)

"Falling in love" is something you do to yourself (reflexive.)  Enamorarse can be literally translated as "to become enamored."

Examples:
 

Me encanta el vestido de Mercedes.  (I "love" Mercedes' dress)
A los Castillo les encantó Arturo.  (The Castillos really liked Arturo/ Arturo charmed them.)

Amo a mi esposo. (I love my husband-- a woman might say this when she's turning down someone who wants to have an affair, for example.  English speakers sometimes think "te amo" is a nice way of saying "I love you" to a casual boyfriend/girlfriend, but it's much more serious than that.  You might say "te amo" as part of a marriage proposal, or in some emotionally intense moment, or you might never say it in your whole life.  You definitely wouldn't use it to describe how you feel about your car, your new shoes, or even chocolate.)

Quiero a mi esposo. (Same basic meaning as "Amo," but less intense, and less likely to make people think she "doth protest too much.")
A mis hermanos los quiero mucho.
Aunque se conocieron hace poco, Angela dice que Raquel es su amiga más querida.

Arturo se enamoró de Raquel casi a primera vista.
 

Meeting-- In English, "to meet" can have two different meanings.  If you just say, "I met Joe in a bar," I don't know whether you already knew him and you chose to get together there, or whether your first-ever contact with him happened there.  In Spanish, those are two different words. (Both of which are frequently reflexive, since two or more people tend to meet EACH OTHER.)
 
Raquel conoció a Arturo en Buenos Aires.  (Raquel "first met" Arturo en B.A.)
Arturo y Raquel van a encontrarse en el café del hotel.  (Arturo and Raquel are going to "meet up together" in the hotel café.  It's still ambiguous whether they're planning it or they're "running into each other," but there's one less possibility than with the English "meet."  If and only if it's the first time, it's conocer.)
Kids--   Again, the word "child" in English has two meanings, each of which has a separate word in Spanish.  "Very young human being" is niño/a, but "son or daughter" is hijo/a.  If you happen to be the parent of a small male human, you can refer to him as either "mi niño" or "mi hijo," but if you are the parent of a forty-year-old man, he's "mi hijo" only.  There's no call in Spanish for weird phrases like "adult children of alchoholics," for example.  "Hijos" covers any age.

"Taller than me"--  In comparisons, I've noticed that colloquial English is getting in the way of good Spanish.  It's true that everyone says, "My brother is older than me."  This is so widely accepted that "My brother is older than I" sounds bizarre to most Americans.  However, "older than I" really is correct English; you're actually saying an abbreviated version of "My brother is older than I am."  Spanish is like correct English in this case.
 

Mi hermano es mayor que yo.
Roberto es más alto que yo.
Mis amigos vieron Destinos con más atención que yo, y por eso sacaron mejores notas en la prueba que yo.
 
AT -- The Spanish "a" means "to."  If you want to say someone's at school, at Pedro's house, etc, that's "en la casa de Pedro."  Ustedes estudian en la Universidad de Tejas en Austin.   (The confusion stems from one exception: "a las tres" for "at three o'clock.")