Looking forward to jamón ibérico, scorching beaches or meandering chats after class over tapas and vino (snacks and wine)?
Or… maybe you have no idea of what to expect from your study abroad trip to Spain. Does your mind …
I’ve always found train travel to be a delight.
Whether I’m rolling along the Costa Brava on a small cercanías (local suburban train) and gazing at the waves, or hurtling between the cosmopolitan heartthrobs Barcelona and Madrid on an AVE…
Do you feel bossy today?
Do you feel like telling someone what to do?
Or—better yet—what not to do?
I certainly hope so, since today we’ll talk all about how and when to use negative commands in Spanish.
Let’s not …
Love talking about number one?
There’s one little quirk of Spanish that might get in your narcissistic way—those pesky Spanish verbs with irregular yo forms.
The Spanish yo form is what you need to talk all about me, myself …
Spanish verbs have three possible endings: –ar, –er and –ir.
Here we’ll shine our spotlight on the regular –ir verbs.
If that’s what you’re interested in now, you’ve probably already slogged through the regular …
The waves of incomprehensible muck are coming at you, lapping at your ankles, picking up—
Hold up.
That’s no way to think of irregular Spanish verbs!
Rather, these guys are fun, lovely waves of muck which—however messy—can be sculpted …
Dancing is like flirting or joking:
If you know how to do it well, you can charm people into tolerating your terrible Spanish for longer, and get in some great practice.
Bachata—which originated in the Dominican Republic—is …
An anarchist communist friend in Spain tells me that someday we’ll all live together joyously without any concept of private ownership.
What’s mine will be hers, and yours, and theirs, and ours.
So, I asked, does that mean I can …
At some point in your travels to Spain or Latin America, you’re going to be reduced to pointing to explain yourself.
Instead of accompanying that pointing with just wordless blubbering, you can class it up with a bit …
What are you doing right now?
What’s happening around you?
To answer these questions in Spanish, you’re going to need a tense called the present progressive (a.k.a. the present continuous). It’s the tense you use when you want to …
Sure, maybe you’ve got some Spanish coming out of your mouth.
But what are your hands doing?
Are they still gesticulating like they belong to an English speaker?
Or, even worse, are they just hanging there uselessly?
When Spanish speakers …
Ready to travel through space and time?
The Spanish verb ir (to go) can be used—as can its English sibling—for talking about moving through space and through time into the immediate future.
This makes ir an enormously useful verb—it’s …
Using Spanish infinitives is like opting for basic vanilla instead of triple chocolate.
It’s like dancing bachata without spins, or sticking with the trusty old margarita pizza.
Infinitives are the plain, basic forms of verbs—but they’re also highly useful to …
Prepositions: Those vile linguistic critters crawling through just about every Spanish sentence.
They can seem tiny nuisances, but one false step with your prepositions and your Spanish gets very silly sounding, or, even worse, is rendered meaningless.
We have …
I guarantee you won’t break a sweat while learning the Spanish alphabet.
If you’re reading this, that means you have at least a passing mastery of one of the most foul writing systems ever wrought (wraht? rot?) on the world—that …
Absolutely anyone can learn Spanish.
I’m totally serious.
It doesn’t matter what your excuse is. Maybe you think you stink at languages. Maybe you think you’re too lazy. Maybe you flunked out of high school Spanish or maybe you can’t …
Every dictionary has its limits.
Your Spanish-English dictionary is doing you the disservice of taking you out of “Spanish mode.”
If you’re an advanced Spanish learner, translator and/or consumer of native texts and podcasts, you’ve very likely run …
You shouldn’t greet a king the same way you’d text your Honduran lover.
Nor should you end a letter to your accountant as you might sign off an email to a friend.
It’s fabulous that you know hola (hello) …
Bolivia is not the first destination people tend to fantasize about visiting in Latin America.
Not when they could experience salsa in Colombia, tango in Argentina and of course the continent’s beaches, jungles, glaciers and samba …
How would you shout “Hey, there are whales over there!” in Spanish?
Well, I’ll tell you—this is the total guide to one of the most useful words in the Spanish language: haber.
In English, the most common way to …
Grammar troubles got you down?
¡No llores más! (Don’t cry anymore!)
Wait, or is it ¡No lloras más!? Arrrgh!
For the record, the first is correct, as you can verify by Googling Spanish versions of the song.
If …
In my first week of high school Spanish, I carefully memorized this sentence:
Yo quisiera un refresco, por favor.
(I would like a soft drink please.)
But in the years that I have since spent out ordering drinks in …
How do I boil an octopus?
One of the major and under-appreciated joys of learning a language is that you’ll acquire phrases whose equivalents would rarely come up in your own language.
For example, living in Spain I always seem …
Tango addict?
Just getting into tango or other Latin dances?
Perhaps you are still skeptical—or doubting your ability to learn Spanish language and dance.
No matter where you are at, you can harness any interest in dance (whether you will …
Think you can live it up right in Lima or Cuzco with just the Spanish you learned in high school?
It’ll work for a while, but when the slang starts flowing, you’ll get a crash course in a whole new …
There was a time when Spain’s prescriptivists would tell you that the Spanish of Northern Spain was the only “real” Spanish and that all other versions of the tongue were deformed.
Thankfully that time has passed, and prescriptivists from all …
One of the great pleasures of taking on a new language is discovering its top writers.
Revered Spanish-language literature is motivating because you get more out of it than just language practice, and because there is unique color to …
If you hail from a language without formal and informal forms of you (like modern English), you’re probably perturbed by having to navigate complex distinctions of friendship and respect in just about every Spanish sentence.
The good news …
“Don’t sit down to dinner without popping in your dentures,” says my granny.
“Don’t try to pound in a nail with your face,” is what I always say.
The bottom line is, you need tools to get things done.
So …
This post goes out to my fellow Spanish learners who are looking for more than language.
Especially to those of you who are a bit beyond ser vs. estar—those who can watch a movie in Spanish without subtitles and …
On my first university study trip to a Spanish-speaking land, one of my American peers let slip that her real goal was not to study at all, but rather to find romance and, heck, maybe stay in Santiago forever…
Want to discuss some alternate past reality?
Have you got an opinion to share about bygone days?
To delve into the past, you’ll eventually need to slip some imperfect subjunctive (a.k.a. the past subjunctive, el imperfecto del subjuntivo) …
What could be better than a sweat-drenched night of twirling and shaking to the driving beat of salsa’s clave?
Just one thing, maybe: All that, plus understanding the people and song lyrics. Oh, and maybe being able to …
A tutor can be the lifelong partner you never know you needed.
For the lifespan of your Spanish language learning journey, that is. Which should be pretty long, if you’re dead-set on achieving fluency.
You may be groaning, “Ugh, but …
Maybe you’re one of the 2.5 million tourists descending on Cuba each year for the year-round warm beaches, ropa vieja (shredded beef) and parties.
Or, maybe, as is the case with me, more and more Cubans just seem to be …
Hey, you. Headed to Spain?
Whether you have a few rusty phrases of high school Spanish, or you’re a perfectly fluent speaker of Mexican, Argentinian or some other variety, you’re going to want to brush up on the …
Sure, you think you can quack like a duck.
But can you quack in the language of Cervantes?
Or are you going to be at a total loss for quacks someday, when a dapper duckling hops out of an Andalucian …
