La Clase de Español - The Spanish Class

Short Story 3: La Esposa Sorda/ The Deaf Wife

¡Buenos Días!

For those who have been individually following, I hope you have been enjoying these stories.

For those in Secondary school, I know CSEC is coming up in a few months, and although the exams have been modified to accommodate the current pandemic, reading through these shorts will help you with all the aspects of the exam: reading, writing, and listening. So feel free to share these (today’s story and the two from the past two weeks) with anyone you know that is preparing for their Spanish Exams. This story is from Argentinian writer and psychotherapist, Jorge Bucay. You can find it at this link:

http://descargas.pntic.mec.es/cedec/lenguayliteratura_2/contenidos/u09/relatolaesposasorda.pdf along with some questions if you would like to practice your comprehension skills. For this exercise, I would like you to take note of the Present Tense in which the story is written, how questions are asked in Spanish, and also how Commands are used.

Let’s take a quick look at the top interrogative words in Spanish. These are: ¿Qué? (What?)—make sure not to confuse this with “que” (than); ¿Dónde? (Where?); ¿Quién? (Who?); ¿Cómo? (how?)—this can also serve as “what,” but also, not to be confused with “como” (like); ¿cuál? (Which?), and ¿Cuánto? (How much?). Note that all interrogative words have an accent mark. That is important because without the accent mark you will end up saying something very different to what you intend. Try to learn these and tuck them in your memory bank. Now, to your story:

Although this story is quite simple, I think the intention of the author is to teach us a little about psychological projections—that impulse to deny our own faults or weaknesses by seeing it in others. ¿Pero quién sabe?

Have a great rest of your Sunday.

¡Chao!