2. the memorizing of related words through patterns and context groupings;
3. the building of words, one from another, with suffixes, prefixes, and roots;
4. the methods for making transformations, when needed, of nouns, adjectives, verbs, and pronouns;
5. the use of transformation cues (e.g. ie, i, or se after a verb form; a/o after a noun, etc.);
6. the ways to use idioms and to avoid literal translation when it is not appropriate (xi).
The Spanish language must therefore be studied through the culture it expresses and through the linguistic code it uses to express it. It is the integration of the code into the culture and vice versa that determines the didactic methodology most appropriate for effective learning. If form follows function, function likewise follows form, in a dynamic osmotic process. As Ludwig Wittgenstein warned us: The Augustinian notion of the meaning of a word as the object for which it stands "does describe a system of communication; only not everything that we call language is this system" (3). Thus, even the concept of "denotation" vs "connotation" may be false: the "truth" is in the ear of the listener.
Davis remarked on our common misconceptions and prejudices about other people and other cultures: "Some are innocuous, others deadly" (13). Students (and even more so teachers) usually believe that there is one correct way to speak a language--including and especially their own. This prescriptivism led to the foundation of academies, such as the Real Academia Espa±ola. If, on the one hand, it ensures a certain "purity" and traditional continuity of the language, on the other hand, it puts a brake on its dynamic branching and enrichment. There is no "best" Spanish, anymore than there is a "best" English. "Castellano" is but a dialect of the Spanish elite. There is a large variety of dialects, each with its own genius, each repr...