Watch Your Spanish – Ver Or Mirar?

The Spanish vocabulary has two words for it, the English has at least three. We are talking about the act of perceiving something with the eyes. Quite often, multiple words can mean the same thing and yet can rarely be swappable; on the other hand, the same word can have different meanings and nothing but context can help one discern the right one! The English verbs, “to watch,” “to look,” or “to see,” have subtle differences and we know that. Coming to Spanish, all those verbs mean must morph into either mirar or ver. So, how does one decide which of the two to use in which context? Actually, it’s easier than you thought!

To see or not to see

Te vi en la pulga
Photo credit: John Hume licensed CC BY 2.0

Ver is what we are talking about here but before we proceed, let’s reinforce something: No two languages can ever be translated word-for-word. Instead of learning the equivalent of “to watch” or “to see” in Spanish, a better approach is to learn and understand the Spanish equivalent of the actions those verbs define. Every language has a nuance and rhythm unique to it and that can never be condensed in any literal translation.

So, the question here is not how one translates, say, “to see” into Spanish. Question is, what Spanish word corresponds to the very action that “to see” represents. Anyways, without much further ado, let’s get back to our ver. This is the Spanish verb that corresponds to the act of seeing something or someone with no deliberation. In English these acts could either be covered by “to see” or by “to watch.” Let’s review some examples:

• Vamos a ver la película. (Let’s go watch a movie.)
• Te vi en la pulga. (I saw you at the flea-market.)
• Vamos a ver qué pasa. (We’re going to see what happens.)
• ¿Quieres ver el partido? (Do you want to watch the game?)
• Voy a ver a mi abuela mañana. (I am going to see my granny tomorrow.)
• Veo lo que quieres decir. (I see what you want to say.)

As these examples illustrate, you obviously use ver whenever you are seeing or watching someone or something. Moreover, ver is also the verb of choice when the seeing is more about meeting someone instead of just seeing. Also, abstract situations where actual “seeing” is not involved also take ver as evident in the last example.

Look at you!

Whenever there’s any bit of deliberation involved, the act of seeing becomes looking and, in Spanish, calls for mirar. This might seem similar to watching or even seeing, but looking is a more intent and focused endeavor. Look at the following examples:

• ¡Mírame! (Look at me!)
• Yo la miraba cada vez que entró. (I looked at her every time she came in.)

As you see, with mirar, it’s more about gazing or staring than about just seeing or glancing. One might argue that watching a movie should also take a mirar as it involves focus and deliberation but that’s just another rule of the Spanish grammar must be dealt with without expectations of any reasoning.

Este hotel mira/da al mar
Photo credit: Ralph Peter Reimann licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

Another situation where mirar is invoked is when talking about a building’s orientation. The following example should illustrate this without much fuss:

• La casa de mi amiga mira a la huerta. (My friend’s house faces the orchard.)
• La entrada de este hotel mira al mar. (This hotel’s entrance faces the sea.)

Another common verb used in Spanish for these situations is dar (literally, “to give”). Perhaps the idea is that the building “gives into” whatever lies ahead. The usage is exactly the same as mirar:

• Las ventanas de su dormitorio dan a las colinas. (Her bedroom windows face the hills.)
• Mi sala da al comedor. (My front room faces the dining room.)

So it’s obvious that in this sense, both dar and mirar can be used interchangeably with no problem whatsoever. However, since this article is primarily about mirar and ver, let’s stay on course.

Time for the trick

Now we know now that ver is for general seeing but it also covers watching which is actually a rather focused and deliberate act in English. And at the same time, mirar is for intensive gazing or staring but still doesn’t cover the act of watching despite a similarity in their definition.

So where does this leave us? Rather confused and worried about remembering them exceptions and rules, right? Well, what’s the fun in cramming up those rules and getting all mixed up when a recall is desperately needed? There’s got to be some workaround. some shortcut. Some magic spell that could help you remember these rules and their exceptions without any effort of memorization and boost your confidence. Come on, you don’t want to be recalling those grammar rules and translating while having a natural conversation – that’s a huge bottleneck to fluent speech.

Well, the trick is simple. Just remember to use mirar in all cases where the act of watching, seeing, or looking can be replaced by “to look at” in English. Everywhere else, ver is what goes. Forget about all the garbage about focussed viewing and general viewing. Just the following mantra:

• Can use “look at” – mirar
• Can’t use “look at” – ver

Miramar is the Spanish for “sea-facing”
Photo credit: Son of Groucho licensed CC BY 2.0

It’s that simple! Now coming back to watching movies, since you don’t “look at” a movie, it takes ver:

Vimos una película aburrida anoche. (Last night, we watched a boring movie.)

If you just happened to see an old friend while shopping at the mall, you would use a ver because you just “saw” her, not “looked at” her:

La vi en el mall el fin de semana pasado. (I saw her at the mall last weekend.)

It’s all about whether “look at” sounds more appropriate than anything else. If it does, you know you have a case for mirar. Otherwise, just stick to ver.

The only bit this trick doesn’t cover is, “to face,” when talking about buildings and structures. That one takes mirar (or dar if you will) and you just got to remember that. But it shouldn’t be a hassle if you read enough Spanish anyways. It might help to guess why so many sea-side resorts and hotels are named Miramar all over the world, more so where Spanish is spoken or understood widely. Of course, this has got to do with the fact that the resort or hotel thus named is a sea-facing property and the name is just a means to emphasize that USP!

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Chatroom Spanish Decoded

Learning Spanish is impossible without proper immersion but can online courses and blogs like this one give you that? Never. Undoubtedly, the best way to immerse in Spanish is to live in Spain or Latin America. But it’s rarely practical for most of us. So what’s the next best thing? Make Spanish-speaking friends online and chat with them in nothing but Spanish! But are you ready for the chat with someone who speaks nothing but Spanish yet? Granted you can read Spanish newspapers and understand some telenovelas for most parts but, again, are you ready for a chat with a native Spanish speaker yet? You’re in for a rude shock!

A whole new Spanish out there

Time to shelve all that you learned so painstakingly thus far and step off the standard path for a minute. This is the big, bad world of virtual friends and uninhibited chats where time and distance hold no meaning. This is where the best nightlife is at and this is where some of the most authentic street lingo is practiced.

For best results, it’s imperative that your chat buddy speaks nothing but Spanish, not one word. So it’s got to be either Spanish or mute. Imagine your frustration when you are struggling to understand them and even more to express yourself every now and then. Imagine your frustration at having to open up Google Translate® after every message!

Well, that might not bother you if you have already achieved a reasonable proficiency after months of studying. Besides, for every little bit of a rough patch here and there, there’s always Google Translate®, so how bad can it really get anyways! You really think that? Think again, for the Spanish you’d read in those chatrooms would look nothing like Spanish! It might as well be a different language altogether – maybe Martian, who knows! Now imagine your frustration when you realize the words used in those chatrooms are beyond what even that well-trusted Google Translate® could get its head around.

Text-message Spanish is very different from textbook Spanish
Photo credit: Dean Jarvey licensed CC BY 2.0

Come to think of it, do you text the way you were taught in your schools? You know the English you read in the books and magazines is one thing and the English you type while chatting and texting your buddies is quite another. Look at this example:

wanna cum? idk

What do you think an unsuspecting foreigner (who knows no chatroom-English) would make of it? Does it even look English? Only you know what it means:

Do you want to come? I don’t know.

And there’s no reason why this cannot happen with Spanish. The Spanish you learned in the classroom would never help you get your head around this seemingly ugly churn of letters:

vns? sip

Yes, that’s Spanish. And it’s composed of pretty familiar words, only inspired by the chatter’s laziness. You might be more comfortable with it in a more formal avatar:

¿Vienes? ¡Si! (Coming? Yep!)

See, how it’s a whole new Spanish when you’re chatting or texting with the natives? Yeah, chatrooms have always been a world away from the classrooms.

Chatroom Spanish

Chatroom Spanish is nothing like classroom Spanish
Photo credit: Justin Dolske licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

The lists that follow in the sections below give the standard Spanish equivalent of some of the most common chat shorthands and also the English meaning wherever necessary. No sweat, they are just as easy and logical as their English counterparts. Nothing cryptic about them once you see how they were derived.

Speaking of logical derivation, remember that Spanish doesn’t have a exact equivalent of the English “h” sound? The closest you have is the kind of guttural sound of “j” as in jardín (garden). Knowing this, it shouldn’t be surprising that the quintessential English laugh in the chatrooms, “hahaha” or “hehehe”, morph into jajaja and jejeje in Spanish.

Wasn’t that a no-brainer? It all is; after all, it’s only real people who are chatting out there and shorthand is only a very real human tendency. In that aspect, people speaking Spanish are just as lazy as those speaking English and that’s why these shorthands have evolved into a jargon of their own.

The x-factor

Remember the “x” notation from those multiplication tables in English? Yes, that one from those boring math classes. That letter has, for some reasons, evolved into the well-familiar sign of multiplication throughout the English-speaking world and that’s why you read “4 x 5” as “four times five”. This word, “times”, in this sense, translates into Spanish as por which is why we’d read “4 x 5” as cuatro por cinco in Spanish.

Based on this analogy, native speakers have derived a whole jargon of chat shorthand replacing any occurrence of por, per, or par with the letter, “x”. See these words:

• xq/pq – porque /¿Por qué?
• xa – para
• xfa – por favor (in rapid street speech, this phrase often shortens to porfa; you’ll rarely hear a native speaker use the phrasebook-proper por favor)
• xo – pero
• xdon – perdón (note the loss of accent mark in chat lingo)

For some reasons, “x” also often replaces the letters, “ch”, in chatroom Spanish. Not sure if this has got anything to do with the relationship between the words, “Christmas” and “X-Mas” but does that really matter much? Here are some examples:

• exo – hecho
• mxo – mucho

Plain vanilla abbreviations

As with English, not all shorthand expressions in Spanish are creative and thoughtful. Quite a few are just simple abbreviations using the initials of all words in the expression being used. Examples in English would be “tc” for “take care” or “gn” for “good night”. Check out some of them in Spanish:

• tq – te quiero
• tqm – te quiero mucho
• t – te
• m – me
• p. ej. – por ejemplo
• d – de
• b – bien
• tqi/tki – tengo que irme (I have to leave/go)
• q – qué/que
• hl – hasta luego
• m1ml – mándame un mensaje luego (send me a message later / text me later)
• nph – no puedo hablar (I can’t talk)
• npn – no pasa nada (nothing’s happening)
• asdc – al salir de clase (after the class)

Some more abbreviations

There are also cases where words and expressions are simply condensed without necessarily using just the initials. In English, we have plenty of them, such as “cum” for “come” and “wanna” for “want to”. So, how could Spanish not have them!

• toi/toy – estoy
• tas – estás
• cnt – contesta
• bs/bss/bso – beso/besos
• mñn – mañana
• amr – amor
• bb – bebé (baby)
• sbs? – ¿Sabes?
• pa – para
• finde – fin de semana
• pdt – piérdete (get lost)
• qand – ¿Cuándo?/cuando
• c – sé (I know; this is how the letter “c” of the Spanish alphabet is pronounced, hence the choice as this shorthand)
• dfcl – difícil
• dim – dime (tell me)
• dnd – donde/¿Dónde?
• asias – gracias
• bbr – beber
• dcr – decir
• hla – hola
• msj – mensaje
• fsta – fiesta
• vns? – ¿Vienes? (Are you coming?)
• spro – espero
• tb – también
• tas OK? – ¿Estás bien?

Since when did Spanish get a “k”?

Never. But its sound still echoes in Spanish guised as either “ca” or “qu”. Hence, it’s only logical that “k” be invoked whenever words containing this sound are to be abbreviated in chat and text.

• ksa – casa
• ksi – casi
• aki – aquí
• km – como/¿Cómo?
• kntm – cuéntame (tell me)
• kls – clase
• kyat – cállate (shut up)

The number game

Quite a few shorthands in Spanish use numbers for the similarity of their pronunciation to that of the syllable they replace in the expression in question. See them in action here:

• salu2 – saludos
• a2/a10 – adiós
• b7s – besitos
• 100pre – siempre

Some more chat fun

Some words are just modeled after popular colloquial English expressions simply because they lack direct equivalents in Spanish:

• sip – si (yep)
• nop – no (nope)

Some just follow a simple logic of replacing a syllable with an English letter that represents its pronunciation. For example, even though Spanish doesn’t have the letter, “w”, you still get these abbreviations in chat lingo:

• wpa/wpo – guapa/guapo
• iwal – igual

Also, the letter, “ll”, is often replaced by “y” for ease of typing:

• ymm/ymam – llámame (call me)
• eys – ellos/ellas

As obvious, the letter, “h”, being silent, has no place in chat lingo and is usually omitted:

• q acs? – ¿Qué haces? (What are you doing?)
• ems – hemos (we have)
• aora – ahora

Armed with this list, you can now confidently venture into any discussion with those lovely Latinos, well-assured that their Spanish will no longer be Greek to you!

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Easy Spanish – 1,000 Words Is All It Takes!

Learning Spanish doesn’t have to be an ordeal if the right resources are employed at the right time in the right manner. While we have discussed the various tricks of acquiring new vocabulary in the past, it’s high time we discussed the size of vocabulary required for a desirable outcome. How many Spanish words must one master in order to get reasonably comfortable with the language? How many words before one can start discussing their hobbies with a native speaker? How many words before one can open that Spanish novel for easy reading? How many words before one can pick up an El Universal® and actually absorb some news?

Let’s attempt to answer all these questions and more here. In essence, it all boils down to the number of Spanish words one must be thoroughly acquainted with in order to achieve a certain level of proficiency in the language. But before we venture into the complex world of “word-frequency”, we need to understand a few definitions.

What is a word?

Just a string of letters? Well, yes and no. Of course any meaningful string of letters is a word by definition but for the purpose of our discussion we need to establish which words count and which don’t. Some linguists use the term, “lexemes” to define this situation. We, in keeping with our undying principle of jargon-free simplicity, stick to “words”.

A small Spanish vocabulary is enough for most purposes
Photo credit: Jennifer Morton licensed CC BY-ND 2.0

Let’s say, someone told you that “walk” is an essential word to learn in English. It’s a simple word at a glance and extremely easy to almost overlook the fact that this simple word is as much a verb as it is a noun? So, which “walk” is important? The act of moving at a slow but steady pace with never having both feet off the ground simultaneously (“I’m walking toward the bus”)? Or, the very foot-excursion itself (“It’s a short walk from here”)?

Here, even though there might be one word for both scenarios, there’s a well-defined difference in their usage and they may or may not have the same equivalent in another language. They carry different senses. For the purpose of this discussion, they are two different words despite their exactly similar spellings – walk, the verb and walk, the noun. The word, “walk” in two different scenarios is technically said to be two different “lexemes”.

Similarly, let’s take “walk”, the verb. Does that just imply the form, “walk”? Or, does it also include “walked”, “walks”, etc.? Strictly speaking, they are all different words and yet the same lexeme, “walk”. So, for the sake of simplicity here, when we call a verb like “walk” essential to basic vocabulary, we would inherently include all its forms across tenses, moods, genders, and persons as a single unit – a single word.

Now that we have established what the idea of a word is in this context, we should be comfortable enough to start exploring exactly how many of them is essential to a reasonable proficiency in the Spanish language.

The bare-essential Spanish vocabulary

Spoken Spanish needs far fewer words than you think!
Photo credit: rain city licensed CC BY-ND 2.0

Many linguists, over the past several decades, have tried to perform extremely intensive studies around the subject of “word-frequency” with several languages. While the final results of these studies have mostly been varied and subjective, they have all confirmed one idea that should matter the most to language learners – that 20% of the vocabulary roughly accounts for 80% of all communication in that language, give or take. That’s good news!

One of the most credible and heavily referenced studies was conducted by Mark Davies, a linguistics professor at Brigham Young University in 2005. Davies holds a bachelor’s with double major in Spanish language and linguistics, a master’s in Spanish linguistics, and a doctorate in Iberoromance philology and linguistics! No wonder he is quite an authority when it comes to languages, Spanish in particular.

The study in question was concluded in a paper titled, “Selected Proceedings of the 7th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium.” Here’s a gist of what it concludes on the size of one’s Spanish vocabulary (as a count of highest-frequency words in the language) and its benefits:

• 1,000 – A vocabulary of this size should let you make sense of around 77% of all written and close to 90% of all verbal communications.


• 2,000 – This vocabulary should let you catch roughly 85% of all written and 93% of spoken Spanish.


• 3,000 – This should easily get you close to 90% of all written and 94% of spoken Spanish.

Cool, isn’t it? Just 3,000 words and you’re almost there! Of course, these are just theoretical numbers and real-life proficiency would pose many more issues, rate of speech and accent being a couple of them, than just a knowledge of a few thousand Spanish words. But they are inspiring nonetheless. You may need to ask the speaker to slow down or even pause and explain certain constructs to you – you can still hold a decent conversation that only gets better with time and practice!

Like discussed earlier, words in this context are not just words in the traditional sense. They are ideas as represented by lexeme. So, if ir (to go) is listed as an essential Spanish word, conjugated forms (voy, va, etc.) are also automatically implied. Well, this still sounds like a bargain, doesn’t it? Imagine being able to understand almost 90% of all street speech armed with just 1,000 Spanish words!

The conclusions above can be further simplified for the layman as below:

• 250 words – The core of Spanish; the bare-essential in order for you to construct basic sentences


• 750 words – The inventory of regular street speech amongst native speakers


• 2,500 words – Enough for you to express almost anything in fits and starts


• 5,000 words – The active inventory of the average native speaker with no higher education


• 10,000 words – The active inventory of the average native speaker with reasonable academic qualifications


• 20,000 words – Ample to get you through bodies of literary works by recognized Spanish language authors

This should give you a fair picture of what your individual goal needs to be in terms of Spanish vocabulary acquisition. Life’s always a whole lot easier when goals are condensed into palatable numbers.

Spanish vocabulary: A balanced diet

Spanish vocabulary, like that of any other language, is a collection of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs (also conjunctions, etc.). Hence, while it’s easy to say you need to acquire 1,000 words, it’s far more important to ensure those 1,000 words include a fair mix of each of these groups. Just like a healthy diet should have an optimal balance of proteins, carbs, and fats, a healthy vocabulary must have a fair balance of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs too.

Let’s say you’re gunning for a 90% cover with an inventory of around 3,000 words. The study by Davies suggests that you break it down as roughly:

• 2,040 nouns (68%),


• 780 adjectives (25%),


• 180 verbs (6%), and


• 40 adverbs (1%)

Do remember, though, that for each of the 180 verbs you are also expected to know every possible conjugation in order to be proficient in the language. Similarly, for each of the 2,040 nouns, it’s a given that you also include the feminine, the masculine, the plural, and the singular forms without counting them as separate “words”.

If you scour through Google®, it’s easy to find several resources giving ready-made lists of top 1,000 or top 2,000 high-frequency words in Spanish which you can add to your flashcard decks for review and recall. One such list is available for free download along with a free email subscription to Always Spanish (check the blue subscription box in the sidebar section to the left). Do remember, however, to not just memorize these lists word-by-word. It’s strongly advisable to learn new words “in context”.

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Fresas And Nacos: The Preppies And The White-Trash Of Mexico

No linguistic study of any human culture can ever be complete without a fair understanding of that culture’s social stereotypes. Yankees, redheads, hicks, yuppies, preppies, Valley Girls...you can’t fully understand the Americans unless you understand their clichéd stereotypes. In a similar fashion, if you are learning Mexican Spanish, it won’t hurt to get acquainted with the stereotypes that define their lifestyle and culture. While stereotypes are rightly frowned upon for their prejudices, using them without being judgmental can immensely help understand some of the most colorful and interesting aspects of a culture.

When it comes to Mexican Spanish, stereotypes run deep and are often at the very heart of most prejudices and social humor. While these can come off as potentially offensive if one is not sensitive enough while bringing them up, they are too ubiquitous to be ignored. Mexico has a whole spectrum of such stereotypes and at the two extreme ends of this spectrum are the clichés that have divided the Mexican society for generations. These are the nacos and the fresas, the souls of too many social jokes and parodies in the country.

The fresas

Generalization is the salient feature of any social stereotype and those of Mexican Spanish are no exceptions. While fresa is Spanish for strawberry if the dictionaries had their way, it’s also a Mexican Spanish slang term for what the Americans would call a preppy. Mostly used by the teenagers, this is a stereotype of the superficial, high-class Mexican – snobbish, arrogant, shallow, selfish, fussy, and tasteful.

A typical fresa haunt
Photo credit: Michael Rael licensed CC BY 2.0

Fresas are usually either wealthy or act like they were. They tend to imitate the American culture in an attempt to sound and appear cool and elite. The hallmark of their vernacular is a generous sprinkling of English phrases on their Spanish; “¡Qué cool!,” “O sea (Like, used as a filler),” “super,” “vales mil (you are very important),” “fresh,” and so on. Other than such adulteration, the fresa accent is also typically faked to sound different from the otherwise slow-pitched Mexican accent. There’s a difference in their tone and they typically consist of a more “proper” vocabulary.

Fashion is the first tell-tale sign of a fresa as they are mostly clad in top brands like Armani, Lacoste, Banana Republic, American Eagle, Abercrombie & Fitch, Zara, Polo Ralph Lauren, Hollister Co., Furor, and Wayfarer. In a nutshell, they would be found imitating the style and dressing of the characters in Rebelde Way, a popular TV show in Mexico. Often, wannabe fresas would be seen in cheaper knock-offs of these brands in an attempt to appear rich and classy. Fresas would mostly be found shopping in expensive malls and using cards more than cash for payments.

Stereotyping continues with other non-linguistic fresa traits as well, music being one of them. A fresa would typically follow bands like Nikki Clan, Rebelde, Luis Miguel, Mecano, Pandora, Maná, RBD, Timbiriche, Kudai, Sasha, and Flans.

Though this word is now well understood across Latin America thanks to the growing dominance of Mexican television, other Latin American countries have their own terms for stereotypical parallels. One such example would be the Venezuelan sifrina which refers to a rich, spoilt girl. The regular Spanish for popcorn, cotufa, is also a Venezuelan slang term for a “dumb blonde” stereotype with no direct association whatsoever with the subject’s hair color. Coming back to Mexico, fresa kids are also, more traditionally, referred to as niños bien (fine kids) or gente bien (fine people).

The nacos

At the other far end of the socio-economic spectrum, you have the nacos. Generally, they are less educated, pretentious, classless, and uncouth – the “white-trash” of Mexico. Their language is more vulgar, laden with swear-words and double-entendres. This is in sharp contrast with the fresas, who consider it a statement of class to speak refined Spanish and use English words and phrases in their speech.

The word itself goes back to the colonial times of Mexico when the Church used to be the single most important institution in the Catholic Mexican society. A regular church attendance was one of the ways to continue being respected and considered elite in the society. So, to make life easier for themselves, the wealthier families would have their naco (servant) run to the church and reserve their seats well before the mass began.

Mercado Jamaica (Mexico City): A typical naco haunt
Photo credit: Luigi Guarino licensed CC BY 2.0

Nacos typically follow mariachi, banda, or norteño music, such as Los Tigres del Norte, and down cheap tequila. Their favorite food is street tacos and they enjoy lucha libre (free wrestling) and soccer. They are not very brand-conscious when it comes to their clothing and style. Many dye the front of their hair blond and wear a mullet at the back. Brands like Chivas are their pick and they rarely buy anything American.

While the fresas are too particular about toting around the latest gadgets, especially American-made, nacos rarely go for anything non-Mexican or expensive. They watch only Spanish movies, especially old ranchera flicks, as Hollywood doesn’t appeal to them. They are often completely ignorant about even the most widely-known Hollywood celebrities like Nicole Kidman!

In Guadalajara terms, while a Plaza Galerias would be the typical fresa haunt, nacos would rather be found shopping at Mercado Libertad in San Juan de Dios or the working-class neighborhood of Oblatos. Cheap supermarkets are where the nacos are at. Flashy malls are only for those who are or want to “appear” rich.

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