Dan Berges
Understanding Spanish dialects: Key pronunciation differences explained
Here are three interesting Spanish dialectal variations: 1. Castilian voiceless dental fricative.
Spanish reflexive verbs for daily routines: from waking up to going to bed
Cuando era pequeño dormía mucho. Normalmente me levantaba a las ocho de la mañana y me acostaba a las diez de la noche.
How to say 'again' in Spanish: using 'volver a' + infinitive
Volver means the same as regresar: to return or to come back. Here are some examples:
How to say 'just' in Spanish: using 'acabar de' + infinitive
Acabar means the same thing as terminar: to finish or to end something. Here are some examples:
Summer vocabulary in Spanish
Here is a list of summer-related terms. If you go to the beach this summer, don't forget to take your Spanish textbook with you!
Juernes: A Spanish neologism
‘Juernes’ is a neologism (a newly coined word) used both in Spain and Latin America to refer to a Thursday that feels like a Friday. As you can probably guess, it’s built by combining the words ‘jueves’ and ‘viernes’
Spanish vocabulary: Tech and the internet
Here is a vocabulary list with some common tech/internet terms.
Is it "por la mañana", "en la mañana", or "de la mañana"?
Well, it depends. Here is how it works: When we talk about a general timeframe, without including a specific hour, we can use either por la mañana or en la mañana.
'La jura de Santa Gadea': 13th-century Spanish poem about El Cid (with vocabulary
Here is a 13th-century “cantar”, an oral poem that Castilian troubadours would recite in towns’ main squares and the like.
'Romance Sonámbulo' by Federico García Lorca: Spanish poem with vocabulary and explanation
Here is Federico García Lorca's Romance Sonámbulo, which was published in his collection Romancero Gitano in 1928.
4 essential dictionaries for Spanish language students
Gone are the days of bulky pocket dictionaries. The following websites offer powerful, modern, online dictionaries you can use at no charge:
Learning a foreign language will not prevent Alzheimer's, but it can delay its onset dramatically
Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia, a general term used to describe severe cognitive decline.
El agua está fría: Feminine nouns with masculine articles in Spanish
How would you translate “the water is cold”? It would be: El agua está fría.
Three ways to say "I'm heading out" in Spanish
Here are three verbs you can use to say you are leaving/you are heading out.
Quiz: Which Spanish-speaking country should you move to?
Here is a Buzzfeed-style quiz: answer a few questions and we’ll tell you which Spanish-speaking country you should move to!
Why is 'ir' so irregular in Spanish? The three Latin verbs behind one Spanish verb (artículo en español)
Generalmente decimos que el verbo ir procede del latín, concretamente del verbo ire. Sin embargo, su conjugación en presente en nada se parece al infinitivo:
The "Big Four" Spanish tenses
These are the four tenses you need to master if you want to speak Spanish fluently:
'Dicen que no hablan las plantas' by Rosalía de Castro: Spanish poem with vocabulary
Here is Rosalía de Castro's poem Dicen que no hablan las plantas. Rosalía de Castro (1837-1885) was a Galician poet who wrote both in Galician and Spanish.
Spanish verbs 'faltar' and 'sobrar' explained: Expressing lack and excess
Here are two interesting verbs in Spanish: faltar and sobrar. They are opposites. We use faltar to say we are short of something (or we lack or don’t have something) and sobrar to say we have an excess of something.
Why are the English and Spanish alphabets (almost) identical?
As we are sure you have noticed, English and Spanish share the same alphabet (and so do many other languages in the world). How did that happen?
How to type the letter ñ on all your devices
The letter ñ is unique to Spanish. It represents a voiced palatal nasal sound that also exists in many other languages.
Fall vocabulary in Spanish
Here is a list of Fall-related terms in Spanish. You can use some of them when you go apple-picking with your friends :)
Answering increasingly difficult questions in Spanish
If someone asked you these questions, would you be able to answer them?
A classic poem in Spanish: Nanas de la cebolla (Lullaby of the Onion)
Here are Miguel Hernández’s Nanas de la cebolla. He wrote them while in jail, in post-war Spain. He received a letter from his wife explaining how she and their baby were having very difficult times.
Zombie apocalypse vocabulary in Spanish
Here's a classic vocab list. It may seem silly, but some of these words may turn out to be extremely helpful should the zombie apocalypse strike.
Ir vs. irse
What’s the difference between ir and irse? Well, they are basically different verbs.
7 tips to improve your accent in Spanish
Unlike English, Spanish only has 5 vowel sounds, which always correspond with the 5 written vowels: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/ (A, E, I, O, U).
Ver vs. prever vs. proveer
The meaning of these verbs is pretty straightforward: you probably already knew ver; prever is just ver with the prefix pre, which means "before" (it comes from Latin, and it’s all over the place in English).
What did you do last weekend? In Spanish
Today, someone asked me: ¿Qué hiciste el fin de semana? This was my response:
5 Spanish punctuation reminders
In this article, we’ll be discussing five cases in which punctuation in English and Spanish slightly differ. Here they are: