Yesterday I was inviting a man to a special meeting at our church. We are using the fact that we have applied new paint and bought new items for the church to invite the people from the neighborhood. They saw us painting the outside of the building, now we want to give them an opportunity to see what we have done to the inside.
This man said that we have “una nueva iglesia.” Then he paused and said, “No, mejor una nueva imagen.” As a Baptist, I don’t believe in worshiping idols. I almost jumped in and said that we don’t have idols in our chuch. Imagin can mean idols. Then I realized he meant a new look.
Imagen can mean a look/appearance, idol or image.
In its most benign form bien means good. ¿Como está? (How are you?) Bien. (Good, fine.)
Bien can also mean muy. Those shoes are bien feo (very ugly).
Make it plural, bienes, and you have goods, material possessions.
I am not sure if jaque mate is really a Spanish, French or Arabic term. Jaque is used as check in chess. Mate (Spanish pronunciation) is the same word we use as mate in chess. Jaque mate is checkmate. Chess, by the way is ajedrez.
Today I went to a tailor to see about having some suits altered. There were several suit shops near the one I went to and some of them have chess related terms as the name of the business. Jaque, Jaque Mate and the one I went to was AjeDress (ajedrez). I guess there is the association of chess being a gentleman’s game and therefore connected with nice suits.
If you live on la mera esquina, you live right on the corner. The adjective mero means mere, pure or can also mean simple. The whole idea is that it is the pure form of something. Kind of like a simple ingredient, or single ingredient. The purest form.
Nuevo means new. It refers to things that are new, such as a new coat. When the item it is applied to is plural nuevo also becomes plural, zapatos nuevos, literally, shoes news. It of course can be masculine or feminine depending on its object, nuevo or nueva.
When you have something to tell it is nuevas. Nuevas is used for the news or buenas nuevas, good news.
Cotidiano means daily or every day. I have no idea where this meaning comes from. I head the word last night and realized that I have heard it before, but never knew what it meant. Now that I looked it up, I still don’t know much about it.
Hacer has a multitude of meanings. When tied together with time, such as, hace tres años, it means since or ago.
I must have missed this lesson in school because I don’t ever remember learning any rules for how hacer is used in this way. It is something you hear often though. It does not take long to learn how to use it.
English speakers want to put the “ago” at the end of the sentence, so you will hear them say things like “tres años atrás.” You just have to remember to stick the word hace at the start of your sentence and it flows much better.
