Spanish 1/Chapter 2 (Activities)

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Chapter 2 (Activities)

Infinitives

Words to describe something you like or dislike

Other frequently used words

Cultural note

Cognates/False Cognates

Cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. False cognates look similar but actually have different meanings.

Cognates

False Cognates

Instrumentos

Cultural Insight (Dances)

Many famous dances have originated in Spanish-speaking countries. Below are lists of dances and their country of origin:

-Flamenco: Spain

-Tango: Argentina

-Merengue: Dominican Republic

-Salsa: Puerto Rico

-Cumbia: Colombia

Country focus (Estados Unidos)

The United States of America (Spanish: Estados Unidos), usually referred to as the United States, the U.S. or America, is a constitutional federal republic comprising fifty states and a federal district, as well as several territories, or insular areas, scattered around the Caribbean and Pacific. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to its east and Russia to the west across the Bering Strait, and the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific.

At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²) and with more than 300 million people, the United States is the fourth largest country by total area, and third largest by population. The United States is one of the world's most ethnically diverse nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the largest national economy in the world, with a nominal 2006 gross domestic product (GDP) of more than US$13 trillion (over 25% of the world total based on nominal GDP and almost 20% by purchasing power parity).

San Francisco was founded as a Spanish mission, but today is a major city home to over 830,000 people.

The nation was founded by thirteen colonies of Great Britain located along the Atlantic seaboard. Proclaiming themselves "states," they issued the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The rebellious states defeated Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War, the first successful colonial war of independence. A federal convention adopted the current United States Constitution on September 17, 1787; its ratification the following year made the states part of a single republic. The Bill of Rights, comprising ten constitutional amendments, was ratified in 1791.

Castillo de San Marcos, a fort in St.Augustine, Florida, the oldest European settlement in the USA.

In the nineteenth century, the United States acquired land from France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and Russia, and annexed the Republic of Texas and the Republic of Hawaii. Disputes between the agrarian South and industrial North over states' rights and the expansion of the institution of slavery provoked the American Civil War of the 1860s. The North's victory prevented a permanent split of the country and led to the end of slavery in the United States. The Spanish-American War and World War I confirmed the nation's status as a military power. In 1945, the United States emerged from World War II as the first country with nuclear weapons, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and a founding member of NATO. In the post–Cold War era, the United States is the only remaining superpower—accounting for approximately 50% of global military spending—and a dominant economic, political, and cultural force in the world. The United States is a multicultural nation, home to a wide variety of ethnic groups, traditions, and values.

Los Angeles, formely a Spanish pueblo, is today a major city home to 4.1 million people and is a major world center in tourism and culture.

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