Here are 10 common random idioms you may have trouble with if you hear them for the first time: Expression Approximate literal translation (what you might think you actually heard) Explanation querer decir to want to say to mean. ¿Qué quieres decir? : what do you mean? en mi vida in my life never, never […] More
This was an AT&T commercial on the Spanish television in the United States that we had to watch many times a day for months. My students at that time asked me to explain to them what this singer was saying. Pauliina Rubio singing Causa y Efecto, the song on the AT&T […] More
Many fruits in Spanish have different names in different countries. One example is banana, in Mexico and Spain it’s called plátano, but in other countries, it’s called banana. This is a sample list of fruit tree names in Spanish. If you pay attention, very often, the tree’s name of a fruit with a femenine noun, […] More
This Charlie Chaplin movie, The Pilgrim, was made nearly a century ago, in 1923. It was not really made in Mexico, but more north in a California movie studio. In this scene, Charlie Chaplin is deported to Mexico. Charlie Chaplin really traveled in Mexico. He married 16 year-old Lita Gray, who had […] More
You have to be careful with R and RR, not only spelling words, but also pronouncing them! Here are some examples: with R meaning with RR meaning ahora now ahorra save (money, time) from ahorrar. boro boron (Chem.) borro I erase, I delete. From borrar. caro expensive carro car cero zero cerro mount, hill […] More
In English, you say present perfect, but in Spanish we say pretérito perfecto, antepresente, and in the U. S. people also call it presente perfecto, These differences happen usually between Latin America and Spain, and sometimes between schools, like instituto Cervantes and Columbia or NYU. Here is a table showing these name differences. Example English […] More
El cumpleaños There are many compound, masculine nouns in Spanish that are formed by a verb and a noun. Their noun component is usually plural, so it ends in “s,” but their overall grammatical number is singular. Examples of these words are: El cumpleaños, birthday, formed together with the verb cumplir, to fulfill, to accomplish, […] More
There are many standard expressions in Spanish and English that are exactly the same but reversed. Here are some of them: tarde o temprano, sooner or later (lit: later or sooner) sano y salvo, safe and sound (lit: sound and safe) tenedor y cuchillo, knife and fork (lit: fork and knife) vivo o muerto, dead or alive […] More
Nouns modifying nouns are common in English, but in Spanish we normally use adjectives to modify them. As a general rule, nouns modify other nouns in Spanish only by means of the preposition de. Examples: hoja de papel, sheet of paper, mesa de madera, wooden table, collar de perlas, pearl necklace. Still, we can […] More
Re-, rete-, requete-, archi-, recontra-, super-, hiper-, ultra- In conversational Mexican Spanish, it’s common to hear the prefixes re-, rete-, and requete-, which intensify the corresponding adjective or adverb to different degrees: feliz happy refeliz very happy retefeliz very very happy requetefeliz extremely happy rápido fast reterrápido very very fast requeterrápido extremely fast If it’s […] More
The manual of style of some Spanish language newspapers dictates the use of a word order that is not the usual word order. Spanish sentence structure is very flexible compared to English. Latin, the parent language of Spanish, is much more flexible than its child language. English has a very rigid word order, that’s why […] More
This is a sample list of proper nouns in Spanish. Very often, I speak using proper nouns that I take for granted, but some of my students just can’t figure out what they mean, even during a conversation and in context. Some proper nouns are easy to identify, like Jorge Washington but I’m listing them […] More
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