Topic - Spanish Tips

Among the many versatilities of the Spanish language is the use of adjectives as nouns. By adding “el,” “los,” “la,” or “las” before an adjective or past participle of a verb, you get a descriptive noun referring to a person, place or thing.
El veloz - “the speedy” one
La Ventosa - “the windy” place
Los desesperados - […]

One of the most difficult things for Spanish speakers to master when learning English is when to use “in” and when to use “on.” Except in obvious cases, such as “on the table” or “in the box,” mistakes are about as frequent as correct uses.
Spanish prepositions are generally less troublesome (no phrasal verbs), although there […]

Object pronouns in Spanish are reasonably straightforward unless you’re dealing with third persons singular and plural, when some complications arise.
The object pronouns - me, te, lo/la/le, nos, os (Spain), los/las/les - are applied much as the English - me, you, him/her, us, and them.
Whether to use “lo” or “la” for “him” and “her” and when “le” […]

We dealt some while back with Mexico’s cavalier attitude toward the “official” use of conditional verb tenses, and how the conditional and imperfect subjunctive are applied interchangeably.  That entry omitted mention of  the verb “poder” - already quite  irregular.
It so happens that the equivalent “to be able” is also a cause of many headaches for Spanish speakers learning […]

One of the concomitants of Mexico’s large informal economy is a large number of hand-painted signs, and these provide undisputable public evidence that spelling - ortografía -  is not one of the people’s fortés.
The practical thing to do when making a sign for a shop or even a street stall would be to go to the professional signmakers - […]

A certain parallel could be drawn between British and American English, and the Spanish spoken in Spain and that of Mexico. Both languages underwent some minor changes in the New World, including the use of different words for certain objects, and some grammatical adaptations.
Some changes are merely the use of different names for things: whereas Americans say […]

A good many Mexicans, when returning from an extended stay in Spain, get into the habit of saying “hubiese” instead of “hubiera,” “hablase” instead of “hablara” – and some even pronounce the ‘s’ almost as an ‘sh.’
Now if there’s one thing that’s liable to get friends and family wound up, it’s talking as if you […]

As well as its two verbs “to know,” and two verbs “to be,” Spanish has two different words that can be translated as “for” and which occasionally cause some confusion for people learning the language. The principal difficulty can be illustrated in the following phrases: Lo compré para ti (I bought it for you); Lo hice por […]

Some mistakes among foreign speakers of Spanish are caused by the misuse of gender.
As a rule, feminine words end in an ‘a’ and masculine words in an ‘o’, and so do corresponding adjectives. But there are a number of exceptions, a common one being  “el problema,” which is masculine. It’s not unusual to hear foreigners use […]

Along with two verbs “to be,” Spanish also has two different verbs for “to know,” as well as two verbs “to have.” This may appear to complicate things, although it also allows for some subtle uses of language which aren’t immediately available when speaking English.
Of the two verbs to know, the irregular saber is generally […]