Buenos días, In a recent survey to students and readers about their struggles with Spanish, I got some really interesting comments: “Why does everything I do seem so disconnected? I feel like I am a box holding all of the pieces of a puzzle that my brain refuses to assemble.” “When I try to communicate … Read More
Some of you know I became a dad last year. My daughter is almost 1 now, which is hard to believe. A few months ago, something started to change in what helps her calm down when she’s upset. Until recently, she loved it when I’d sing Beatles’ songs. Yellow Submarine was her favorite. But now… … Read More
I know this sounds a little dramatic, but it’s true: The WAY you learn Spanish can make or break whether or not you eventually become a “Spanish speaker”. Now, there is no perfect way to learn. But there ARE some things you can avoid. And avoiding them will help you not give up 18 months from now … Read More
When I first started learning Spanish, the term “artificial intelligence” mostly conjured up images of Will Smith fighting robots. Now, it’s in our pockets and can write our code, explain our kids’ math homework, and write this newsletter (just kidding). The question is: Before things turn to I, Robot… Should you take advantage of AI … Read More
Hola! This is the 100th edition of Saturday Spanish (!!). Thank you so much for being a reader. Like learning Spanish, this newsletter has been a long-term project where “progress” is hard to measure. Each one of these takes me about 3 hours to write, edit, upload, and send… so it would be a lot … Read More
Pop quiz: Can you understand the sentence below without translating it in your head? Esta casa es verde y la otra es blanca. If yes, consider this: on day one of learning Spanish, that is not something you could have done. You would have needed to translate it word-for-word. But now, the meaning was clear right away. No mental … Read More
Please don’t fact check me on this… But here’s something I suspect native speakers of all languages do: They connect their words. They don’t always leave a clear boundary from one word to the next. And the speakers of the language you’re learning? They are pros at this. The ends of Spanish words are like … Read More
If you’re reading this, you know enough English to have a big head start when learning Spanish. Our two languages share thousands of words, and have the same general sentence structure. But there’s still plenty of differences – enough to make Spanish pretty puzzling to the English-speaking brain. Most likely, there’s something that’s confusing you right … Read More
Just behind Mandarin Chinese, Spanish has the second-most native speakers of any language. It’s also spoken in a territory that ranges thousands of miles, on multiple continents, and across an ocean. So it’s no wonder that there’s such a variety in the way people speak. If you embrace it, it makes the language endlessly interesting. … Read More
When I was around 15, I read a classic of the language learning genre: How to Learn Any Language by Barry Farber. Farber’s tales of learning Indonesian on a cargo ship and interpreting for Soviet refugees lit a fire under my nascent interest in languages. More than 15 years after reading it, there’s one main … Read More