Dealing with Words You Don’t Know

You have only been studying Spanish for a limited amount of time, there are countless words you have never seen before, and many of these words appear in literary texts. For example, in the following passage, the first paragraph of Cien años de soledad, novel by Gabriel García Márquez, there are probably ten or more words that are new to you.

Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota cuando su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo. Macondo era entonces una aldea de veinte casas de barro y cañabrava construidas a la orilla de un río de aguas diáfanas que se precipitaban por un lecho de piedras pulidas, blancas y enormes como huevos prehistóricos. El mundo era tan reciente, que muchas cosas carecían de nombre, y para mencionarlas había que señalarlas con el dedo.

              Because of this gap between your vocabulary and that of the author, while you read probably have a general idea as to what the paragraph talks about, there are important details that you miss. In casual reading, we often just continue, accepting the fact that our knowledge of detail (even when reading text in our native language) is imperfect. When reading literature closely, however, details are important, The temptation thus is to turn to the dictionary and to look up, one by one, all the words we don’t know, Certainly, dictionaries are essential when reading literature. However, it may not be necessary to consult the dictionary for every word we don’t know; however, using a bilingual dictionary does require some skill. Here are some suggestions about what to do before opening the dictionary and then about ****

1. Begin by using what you know. One obvious first step for cognates—words that are similar in both languages. In the García Márquez passage from above, words as coronel, frente, remota, prehistóricos should pose no problem to English speakers.

2. Guess intelligently from context. If, on the basis of known words and those you can recognize as cognates or words of the same family, you can get a feel for the general topic of the paragraph, then it may be possible to deduce logically the meaning of certain words.

3. Check the dictionary carefully. When you do need to have recourse to the dictionary, it is important that you not be too hasty. Some definitions are very simple to find. For example, if you look up años you’ll probably find a single definition, “years.” On the other hand, if you go to the word frente, there are three choices, “front, front part, face.” By checking the text one and the words “firing squad (pelotón de fusilamiento) that one can decide that the right choice would be “in front of.” Finally, many times you are dealing with a group of words. The expression “From time to time (that does not appear in the passage)” cannot be translated into any language by translating each individual word. The expression must be translated as a unit. The dictionary provides help with these expressions. Under time a good bilingual dictionary will tell you that “from time to time” translate as “De vez en cuando.”

Of course, these three skills—recognizing cognates and words families, guessing from context, using the dictionary—complement each other. The more you read, the more skilled you will get at combining these approaches so that you will understand more words and more expressions in less time.