Learn To Recount Your Imagination In Spanish

They say, imagination is the cheapest luxury one can afford. What few realize is that it can also be one of the most effective tool for learning Spanish. Whenever we deconstruct a sentence, we essentially break down an overwhelming behemoth of a sentence into tiny, easily understandable fragments that our minds instantly assimilate. The sentence that we are going to break down here has nothing grand about it but would prove immensely helpful if...

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A Novel And A Movie To Teach You Mexican Spanish

Como agua para chocolate is a very commonly heard expression in some Spanish-speaking countries, particularly Mexico, and was the inspiration behind the title of a novel by the much-celebrated Mexican screenwriter, Laura Esquivel. Mexico is the birthplace of chocolate; in many Latin American countries (and of course, in Mexico as well) hot chocolate is a staple traditionally made by melting chocolate over a pot of boiling water and the phrase, como...

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Some Costa Rican Words For Your Private Organs

Regardless of who you are and how you are learning Spanish, one of the first things that strike you as irresistibly interesting is the glossary of naughty words. There are known to be countless learners, quite unsurprisingly, who have researched and assimilated the vulgar and taboo vocabulary even before they learn how to say, “¡Buenos días!” in Spanish! Even some us might as well be one of them. And this is only human; anything forbidden charms...

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How To Watch Spanish Movies For maximum Benefit

If you wish to fight, you need to practice; reading about techniques alone won’t help. Similarly, reading about easy Spanish learning techniques alone is not going to make you speak or understand natural Spanish ever. Even if you can read Spanish perfectly well, you’ll most likely have a square, cookie-cutter accent if the only input you received was the one from those studio-recorded DVDs and tapes off expensive language courses. This is where...

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Google Images – The Best Dictionary The World Can Afford?

Not sure about you but quite a few successful polyglots have spent a shameful amount of time hunting for the perfect Spanish dictionary before finally stumbling upon one right under their nose. Before we even start with any details here, let’s break this to you – traditional Spanish-English-Spanish dictionaries are all often full of incorrect information and are perhaps your biggest enemy if you are using them to just expand your Spanish vocabulary...

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When Incorrect Spanish Is The Preferred Spanish

The sentence deconstructed here will illustrate Mexican colloquialism, the Spanish preterit conjugation of an irregular verb, and a demonstrative pronoun, all at once. For anyone learning Spanish, deconstructing simple sentences and reviewing them whenever possible is always way better than mugging up lists of Spanish words with their out-of-context meanings. We’ll also see here, how deliberately violating those rules of grammar and using incorrect...

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Fresh Spanish From The Mexican Barrio

The sentence that we are going to dissect today is a typical illustration of how Spanish sounds in the living rooms and the narrow alleys of Mexico. Loaded with not one but two local Mexican Spanish slang words, one of which might as well be the de-facto national expression of the country, it just doesn’t get any more Mexican than this! Other than its rich linguistic content (which is what must matter the most to those learning Spanish), there’s...

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Kill Frustration With The Language Dojo

Ever wondered why an overwhelming number of Spanish learners end up quitting hardly a few months into their programs? Even better, ever wondered why you felt like quitting learning Spanish out of sheer frustration? Where did that zeal go? Where’s that battle cry you flagged off your Spanish language program with? Today, we’ll extensively talk about a blog that answers just these questions and more! We can comfortably wager that reading the radical,...

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Let Beyoncé Sing So You Learn The Spanish Adverb, Ya

The Spanish word, ya is notorious for giving immense pain to those learning Spanish even in their third or fourth year. Honestly, most of us have struggled with this word enough to have even quit Spanish for at least a while out of sheer frustration! One particularly exhaustive lesson on About.com is dedicated to this topic and so are hundreds of others elsewhere on the Internet. So, learning is never an issue; the issue is with recalling it...

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Vez Or Tiempo? Let This Latin Grammy Winner Teach You

Ever found yourself struggling with the quintessential dilemma every newbie learning Spanish faces at some stage: The choice between vez and tiempo? Both of them, says your dictionary, translate into “time” in English. Well, grammar dictates that vez is to be used when talking about instances or frequency of occurrences (e.g., this time, once, another time, twice, in turn, etc.) while tiempo fills in for all other situations. Fair enough, now how...

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Learn Gustar With Luis Fonsi

Not sure about all but quite a few rookie learners have often had a particularly tough time understanding the Spanish verb, gustar, which roughly – only roughly – stands for, “to like”. Well, knowing how to use gustar is no rocket-science and certainly not the hardest aspect of learning Spanish. The hard part is recalling the usage while actually conversing in Spanish. One song by Luis Fonsi appears to have been crafted specifically...

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A Nursery Rhyme For The Spanish Reflexive

Kids enjoy learning and so do we. The only difference is while we know we are learning when we are because of all the conscious efforts we are putting in, kids rarely do. How many of you ever realized you were subconsciously absorbing new vocabulary and new grammar rules while you were having fun singing along those innocent-sounding nursery rhymes as kids? To kids, they are little more than fun-filled jingles. To the Spanish learner in us, they...

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2 Songs To Learn Those Pesky Stem-Changers

If you always hear puedo (the present tense first person singular form of poder) whenever the context is “I can”, you will have to actually try hard to come up with an incorrect podo while speaking. This is the self-correcting trait of any matured language seasoned over time like Spanish. Given the right amount of input, your Spanish can correct itself without you depending on some complicated grammatical label, such as “stem-changing verb”, and...

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