Dan Berges

Comparing things is one of the first skills you need in any language. Is this restaurant better than that one? Who is the tallest in the family? Which phone costs less?

Ask any group of Spanish students which words give them the most trouble, and por and para will come up almost immediately. The problem is easy to state: both words often translate as for in English. But Spanish treats them as two completely different prepositions, each with its own set of jobs.

If you want to say what you would do, what you would like, or what could happen, you need the conditional tense. It is the Spanish equivalent of would + verb in English, and it shows up everywhere: in polite requests, in advice, in daydreams, and in hypothetical scenarios of all kinds.

Every language needs a way to say if this happens, then that happens. In Spanish, these if-then sentences are built with si (if), and they come in three types. The good news is that each type follows a fixed formula.

The imperative is the mood we use to give commands, make requests, offer advice, and give instructions.

If you're an English speaker learning Spanish, here's some good news: Spanish pronunciation is way more consistent than English.

Spanish verbs carry a remarkable amount of information in a single word. Unlike English, where we often need helper words and pronouns to express who is doing something and when, Spanish packs all of this into the verb itself.

Want to achieve a confident level of Spanish? Despite a deluge of apps promising to get you fluent in days, there’s still no substitute for taking a class. Even if you’ve mastered some basics with self-study, or have some lingering knowledge from school, many learners only start seeing real progress when they start live lessons.

Nouns can be classified in many ways. One important distinction is between individual nouns (sustantivos individuales) and collective nouns (sustantivos colectivos).

In nouns and pronouns, number marks express the idea of unity and plurality (one vs. more than one).

Gender is a fundamental property of Spanish nouns and pronouns that affects how other words in a sentence must agree with them.

A lot of times, when you start learning the subjunctive, you focus on verbs that induce it in a subordinate noun clause with a different subject (although you might not learn all this terminology):

Here's a quiz to test your por & para skills. If you need to review how por and para work, here's an article.

The future perfect tense in Spanish (futuro perfecto or futuro compuesto) is an essential verb tense that allows you to express actions that will be completed before a specific point in the future, or to speculate about past events.

The Spanish verb gustar follows a different grammatical pattern than its English equivalent "to like." Understanding how indirect objects work with prepositions clarifies not only gustar, but an entire category of similar verbs.

If you've scrolled through social media lately, you've probably seen ads promising fluency through AI-powered conversation practice.

Ready to take your Spanish skills to the workplace? Whether you're preparing for a job in a Spanish-speaking country, collaborating with Spanish-speaking colleagues, or simply want to expand your professional vocabulary, this guide has everything you need!

Every Tuesday I go to the supermarket. For real. Todos los martes voy al supermercado.

Listening to podcasts is a fantastic way to improve your Spanish comprehension and pronunciation skills. You can listen to them at home, at the gym, in the subway…

Learning a second language takes time and effort, but it can also be highly rewarding. Spanish is the official language of 20 countries, and it’s the most commonly learned second language in the United States.

An adjective is a word that describes or modifies a noun. In red house, red is the adjective, and house is the noun. In big car, big is the adjective, and car is the noun. In Spanish, they tend to go after the noun: casa roja, coche grande.

The days of the week in Spanish are: Lunes - Monday Martes - Tuesday Miércoles - Wednesday

Here are the most important colors in Spanish. We've used colors from the RGB system, which is an additive color model used to represent colors in digital devices.

Here are some fun expressions in Spanish that feature rhyming reduplication (kind of like “even Steven” or “easy peasy” in English).

Here is a short text using the future tense. Level: Intermediate/Advanced

Verbs ser and ir are, as we know, different verbs in Spanish. Here are both verbs conjugated in all six persons, in the present tense:

Spanish object pronouns are, in the third person, different for accusative (direct object) cases and dative (indirect object) cases.

Here is a list of five Spanish and Latin American popular music genres you should be familiar with:

Here is a list of fitness-related terms. They might be useful if you decide to hit the gym while traveling around Spain or Latin America.

Here are three interesting Spanish dialectal variations: 1. Castilian voiceless dental fricative.