Automobile vocabulary in Spanish. Talking about cars with people from another Spanish speaking countries is sometimes a big headache. The reason is that the vocabulary for this subject changes a bit from country to country for almost every element. In México, auto part names are often Spanglish words. Here are some examples: Mexico Spain […] More
It might surprise you that the current Spanish names for the 4 cardinal points come from English via French. North ⇒ norte (N) South ⇒ sur (S) East ⇒ este (E) West ⇒ oeste (O or W) All of them are masculine nouns. If Spanish cardinal point names are technically Spanglish, how did Spanish explorers […] More
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 ni loco, ni loca neither crazy no way. (Not even if I were crazy) ¿no que no? no that not?, not that not? not […] More
One of my students wanted me to watch the movie Rudo y Cursi together with him. He speaks Spanish very well, even better than many native speakers, but he wasn’t familiar with Mexican swearwords. That was the reason he couldn’t understand the movie the first time he saw it. I had no idea what was […] More
Mexico City, the largest Spanish-speaking town in the world. This is a day landing in Mexico City apparently from a flight arriving from Frankfurt. Let me try to explain to you what you are seeing here. First, this window shows the inner part of the city, towards the Zócalo, which you can’t see […] More
There are dozens of examples of words in Spanish that are spelled with a (silent) H, for which you can find at least one cognate in another language that is spelled with F. Most languages followed the original Latin spelling. I don’t like this, haha, why do we have to be different to the […] More
Para ti, para mí, para ella, para él, para todos, para nadie…¡para vos! I hope this commercial in Spanish from Argentina made for Coca Cola Femsa, helps you understand one of the uses of the preposition para. Similar commercial with subtitles. (also Argentine accent). Cola in Spanish means cola, ass, […] More
