We noticed something recently with our daughter. She watches Dora the Explorer in both English and Spanish. She occasionally will play out one of the adventures. If she is playing out a Spanish adventure she will insist on the English words be spoken in English. But, it is like she does not know the difference between the two languages.

She has always done well in separating the two langugages until the last couple of weeks.

While I don’t think this will limit her language learning, it is interesting to see her four year old thinking being played out.

Encuesta is a survey or poll. This is a word that is hard to forget when you learn it. It sounds like an inquest.

Aislar is to isolate oneself. The way I remember this word is it sounds like to make an island.

I first heard the word aislar applied to a 16 year old boy who was upset with his girlfriend. His mother told me that he was disconnected from his friends at that time, él se aisló.

Technically a tumbaburros is a large bumper that would be used to knock donkeys out of the way when driving. Sometimes called a cattle guard bumper for protecting your grill if you happen to hit a large animal.

But that is not what is being referred to when a Mexican talks about a tumbaburros. They are referring to large reference books and particularly the Real Academia Española dictionary. The idea that it is big enough to be used as one of these types of bumpers. Or just hitting a donkey with this dictionary would be enough to knock him over.

I already knew this word, but what got me to thinking about it was when walking through a mall yesterday I saw a restaurant called El Tumbaburros. Their tag line was “La Real Academia del Taco.”

While you probably know that mapa is a map, did you know that the word plano is also a map? And, that they are both masculine words?

Plano means a plan or a layout of something.

Silbar is to whistle, to make a noise with your mouth when you pucker and blow.

Silbo is the noun, whistle, the actual noise.

A silbato is a whistle. An instrument used to produce a whistling noise.

Averiguar is to study, analyze or ascertain. It can have a very simple meaning of to find out or can be complex like investigate.