Welcome to the second installment of a category of posts I do called Learn Spanish for Real: Spanish Slang, Colloquialisms, and Curse Words!  This post will be a sort of continuation on the first one in that we’ll be examining the same sentence from the same video, but a different word.  The words in question, “carajo”, is a light Spanish curseword currently in use in most parts of the Spanish-speaking world.

Today’s Word: “Carajo”

This is a clip from one of my most-recommended movies for Spanish students to learn conversational Spanish from because not only does it have excellent subtitles in both Spanish and English (the Spanish ones are word-for-word and the English ones are a solid translation of the Spanish that you can use for reference when learning it) but it’s also a very good movie that gives you a great deal of insight into certain parts of Colombian culture and teaches you a ton of their colloquial Spanish with slang galore as well as quite a few Spanish curse words. It’s called Maria Full of Grace and is available very cheaply from Amazon on DVD.  Additionally, I have a list of sites where you can watch Spanish videos with Spanish subtitles, including several such shows on Netflix (probably the best source of such videos now, them and YouTube).  Also, if you’re particularly interested in learning Colombian Spanish, I strongly recommend you check out a podcast called Español en 3000 – it’s excellent and focuses mainly on Colombian Spanish.

Now, I would like to provide you some context so you can understand the scene, the conversation, how the word is being used, and why:

In this particular scene our protagonist, Maria, has just quit her job at the flower factory because her boss had repeatedly refused her requests to go to the bathroom because she was sick to her stomach (she’s pregnant but doesn’t know it yet) which then resulted in her throwing up all over the flowers which he made her clean up despite knowing that they were ruined and would have to be thrown out (he told her this then told her to clean them off anyway).

Shortly after this we come to the scene you see above where she’s at a party with her friends, drinking and dancing, and one of her friends is telling the rest what happened and that Maria got fed up with her boss and quit. Her boyfriend then proposes a toast (“brindis” means “toast”, from “Esto se merece un brindis” which means “This calls for a toast”) and says

“Porque es una berraca, carajo.”

Which could best be translated as, “Because she’s a badass, damnit.” (what does “berraca” mean? see my post on berraco/berraca here!)

Now, “carajo” is a fairly common curseword throughout the Spanish-speaking world.  It’s in common use in all Spanish-speaking countries (including Spain) to the best of my knowledge, however the severity of it varies from one country/region to another and even from one social group or class to another.  Generally it’s not thought of as being too strong anymore, particularly in Spain where it’s also a slang term for “penis”.  It could usually be considered a rough equivalent to the English “damn”, “damnit”, or “hell” depending on how it’s used (see examples below).

Some common phrases you may hear using the word “carajo” and their rough English equivalent:

• “¡Carajo!” – “Damnit!”
• “¿Qué carajo?” – “What the hell?!”
• “¡Vete al carajo!” – ” Go to hell!”
• “¡[any statement], carajo!” “[any statement], damnit!” (this is how it’s being used in the example phrase above)
• “¿Qué carajo es esto?” – “What the hell is this?”
• “No veo/escucho un carajo.” – “I didn’t see/hear a damned thing.”
• “¿En qué carajo estabas pensando…?” – “What the hell were you thinking…?”
• “No me importa un carajo.” – “I don’t give a damn.”

What does “carajo” literally mean?  What did it come from?

Well, originally it referred to the crow’s nest on a Spanish galleon.  Now, this was one of the least desirable posts on the ship because sailors would tend to get very sea sick up there due to the ships movements being amplified at the top of the mast (basic physics: mast acts as a lever arm, any movement at its base translates into faster movement over a greater distance at its tip).  Nobody wanted to go to the carajo.

Consequently it was frequently used as punishment: sailors would be “sent to the carajo”, they’d be told to “go to the carajo” (“¡Vete al carajo!”), hence the origin of the phrase “Vete al carajo” meaning something like “Go to hell”.  This in combination with the fact that “carajo” (the place and the word) just took on a very negative connotation in general led to it evolving into a sort of general purpose curseword like our “damn” or “hell”.

I hope you found this interesting and useful, and remember, if you’d like to learn more everyday colloquial Spanish (not just curse words, I promise!), check out the links below to additional resources and related articles (on my site and others).

Additional Resources and Further Reading

A great way to learn to speak and understand modern, everyday Spanish is through Spanish-language popular media such as movies, TV shows, books, etc., but the problem is that people just don’t know how plus there are some tools that can help you do it much more effeciently, here are two things I strongly recommend that address both those problems:

1. Yabla.  This is a service that collects popular media in various languages and then integrates it into their custom online software platform that’s specifically designed to help students learn the language being spoken in the videos.  Spanish is their biggest language that they have the most videos and material for.  The videos can be searched and sorted by topic, length, difficulty, and dialect, then once you select one you’ll have verbatim Spanish subtitles and an English translation, both of which you can selectively turn on and off.  Clicking any Spanish word in the subtitles pulls up its definition in the dictionary to the right of the video and automatically adds it to your flash cards.  Every video has quizzes of varying difficulty where certain Spanish words in the subtitles are blanked out and you have to fill them in while listening to the video.  You can also pause and play the video back at ¼, ½, ¾ etc. speed.  This is such an excellent service and it’s super cheap at only $9.99 per month, plus you get a free trial without even needing to sign up (just check out the “free videos” they offer as samples) and they do offer special discounts for teachers and organizations.  Check out their site here, or go to my review of Yabla here for lots more information including many screenshots of the software in use so you can see how it works.

2. The Telenovela Method.  This is a book I wrote which is currently in its second edition and teaches people how to do the method that I used to get conversationally fluent in Spanish in six months, which is to use popular Spanish-language media.  There’s a method to doing this in that you can’t just sit there passively and somehow absorb the language (of course that doesn’t work) but instead you must study the material: I tell you how to do that.  I’ll show you how to learn the vocabulary and grammar painlessly by using stuff that you find interesting and entertaining (pick anything you want, whatever show, series, movie, or book that interests you).  It’s called the “Telenovela Method” not because telenovelas (Spanish soap operas) are preferred but because that’s what I started out with ten years ago and learned Spanish from myself.  Please check it out here on Amazon, it’s currently got 19 reviews, of which 18 are 5-star and 1 is a 4-star rating.

As I mentioned, I have a whole category of blog posts, which this article is part of, that teach you general conversational Spanish, focusing on slang, expressions, colloquialisms, and profanity called: Learn Spanish for Real: Spanish Slang, Colloquialisms, and Curse Words.

There are two excellent Spanish-slang references/dictionaries I can recommend you: Urban Dictionary (yes really – it’s a bit informal but I’ve found it’s more likely to have whatever Spanish slang word I’m trying to look up than any other single source) and Así Hablamos, a user-generated source of Latin American slang and colloquial speech.

Interested in Colombian Spanish, specifically?

Again, I really recommend you consider subscribing to the podcast Español en 3000 (this link goes to my review of them, or you can just go straight to their site here if you prefer).

Check out the series of posts I did on it based on the time I was in Colombia (3 months in total in 2018, split between Bogotá, Medellín, and Cartagena):

• Learn Colombian Spanish #1: Pronunciation of “y” and “ll”
• Learn Colombian Spanish #2: “Qué pena” Does Not Mean “What a shame”…Like in Every Other Country
• Learn Colombian Spanish #3: Everyone is “a la orden”
• Learn Colombian Spanish #4: “Su merced”

I learned to speak conversational Spanish in six months using TV shows, movies, and even comics: I then wrote a book on how you can, too

I have a whole method and a book I wrote about it called The Telenovela Method where I teach you how to learn Spanish from popular media like TV shows, movies, music, books, etc. that you can all find online for free.  It was the #1 new release in the Spanish Language Instruction section on Amazon for nearly a month after it came out and currently has 17 reviews there with a 4.9/5 stars average.  It’s available for $7.99-$9.99 for the e-book version depending on who you buy it from (Kindle version on Amazon is now $7.99) and $16.99 for the paperback (occasionally a bit cheaper, again, depending on who you buy it from).

It’s currently available in both e-book and paperback from:

• Amazon
• iBooks (the iTunes store)
• Kobo
• Barnes & Noble
• Google Play Store
• Goodreads
• Scribd
• Ciando

Cheers,
Andrew

The previous edition of Learn Spanish for Real was (if you’re interested)…

Learn Spanish for Real #1: “Berraco / Berraca”, from Colombia! | Slang, Expressions, and Curse Words

Every language has a short list (a few dozen or so) of standard “answers” or “responses” to indicate commonly expressed sentiments (e.g yes, no, maybe, I don’t know, good luck, etc.).  Knowing these and being able to whip the correct one out immediately and automatically in response to someone goes a long way towards sounding like a native and making people feel comfortable speaking to you.  Spanish is no different, so I decided to make a list of what I thought were the most common Spanish phrases and expressions.

Below is a list of the most common such responses and comebacks in Spanish with an explanation for each.  This is one of the few circumstances where I’d actually recommend you just memorize the whole list as you’re guaranteed to use these with great frequency whenever you’re talking with native speakers.  At the bottom of this list I’ll tell you how to learn more on your own.

Es Un Decir

This is a handy expression in Spanish you may find yourself frequently using when you’re misunderstood, particularly if you feel like you might have said something potentially offensive or weird.  It means something like “it’s just a saying” or “it’s a way of speaking”.  Example:

“‘No des papaya’ es un decir colombiano que quiere decir que no permitas a alguien aprovecharse de ti.”  Which means…

“‘No des papaya’ is a Colombian saying that means don’t let someone take advantage of you”.

Para Que Conste

“Constar” means “to be clear, certain, or evident” and that’s a pretty good explanation of how this particular expression works, though it’s not used in quite the same way we would use one of those words.  “Para que conste” means that something is obvious or evident, and is usually used with the same meaning as our expressions “for the record” (“que conste” means “let the record show”) and when used as a response to something it means “you promised and I’ll hold you to it” in the sense of “it’s on the record, I won’t forget about it”, e.g.

“Te llamo mañana.” = “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Conste.” = “You promised, I’ll hold you to it.”

“Para que conste, nunca dije eso.” = “For the record, I never said that.”

¿Y Qué?

This literally means “and what?” so you can probably guess how it’s typically used: it’s how they would say “so what?” in Spanish.  Mind you, as in English with our expression “so what?” it can potentially have a rude connotation to it and is considered a bit brusque.  Example:

“¡Tu grande vaca morada se cagó en mi césped!” = “Your giant purple cow shat on my lawn!”

“¿Y qué? Es fertilizante, así…de nada” = “So what? It’s fertilizer, so…you’re welcome.”

¿Y?

Used the same way that we would use “And??” in English, meaning something like “so what?”, as in “and…what??”.  Example:

“¡Pero la mierda sólo es en una grande pila! ¡Mira!” = “But the shit is just in one big pile! Look!”

“¿Y? Sólo untala por.” = “And? Just spread it around.”

Da Igual / Da Lo Mismo

These two phrases mean the same thing and essentially amount to “it doesn’t matter” or “what’s the difference?”.  “Da igual” means literally “it’s equal” and “da lo mismo” means literally “it’s the same thing” but they’re both used whenever one wants to say that something doesn’t matter or that it doesn’t make a difference. Example:

“¿Quieres el carro rojo o el blanco?” = “Do you want the red car or the white one?”

“Da igual.” = “Doesn’t matter.”

O Sea

This is one of the most common Spanish phrases.  It means something like “you know” or “in other words”.  You’ll notice the use of the subjunctive here (if you don’t understand that completely already, be sure to see my article called The Subjunctive Explained) so “sea” means something like “could be” or “would be” and “o”, or course, means “or”, so with “o sea” you get something literally like “or that could/would be” which we would say a bit easier with the expression “in other words”.  Got it? Example:

“Pues, la respuesta pueda ser “sí”, pueda ser “no”, o sea…no sé.” = “Well, the answer could be yes, it could be no, that is to say…I don’t really know.”

Claro/Claro que Sí

Another very common Spanish expression, it literally means “clear” but is 100 times more commonly used to mean “sure”, “of course” or “naturally”.  “Claro que sí” essentially means the same thing and translates to something like “Of course yes” as in “of course the answer is yes”. People will frequently use this particular expression in one-sided conversations, especially on the phone, to show that they’re still listening with the occasional “claro”. Examples:

“¿Vienes?” “Claro.” = “Are you coming?” “Of course.”

[On the phone]

Them: “Blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah…blah blah!”

You: “Claro.”

Them: “Así, blah blah!! blahblahblahblahblah.”

You: “Claro.”

Them: “¿Sabes?” (“You know?”)

You: “Claro.”

Them: “Blah blah es blah! ¿No pienses?” (“Don’t you think?”)

You: “Claro.”

Get it? 😀

Para Nada

It literally means “For nothing” but is the way that you would say “No way”, so it’s just another way of saying “no”, really.  Example:

“¿Vas a comer tu vaca grande morada?” = “Are you going to eat your giant purple cow?”

“¡Para nada!” = “No way!”

En Absoluto

This one can sometimes be cause for confusion for some beginners because it’s actually a negative but doesn’t look like it because it doesn’t have the word “no” in it.  It does not mean “absolutely” which is what it looks like, it actually means “absolutely not” (no, I don’t know why they did this, but they did). Example:

“Así, ¿no vas a comprar ese carro?” = “So, you’re not going to buy that car.”

“En absoluto, es demasiado caro.” = “Absolutely not, it’s too expensive.”

¡Imagínese!

The best equivalent of this would be “imagine that!” and would be used in similar circumstances, it’s a bit formal and would be used in situations where saying something like “holy shit!” would be inappropriate.

Something interesting about this one is that it’s reflexive (notice the “se” on the end) with the verb itself (“imaginar“) being in the formal singular 3rd person imperative form (“imagíne”).  If you were speaking to someone that you would use the tú form with, then you’d say “imagínate” instead.

Example:

Grandma: “¡Tienen teléfonos ahora que pueden tomar fotos!”

You: “¡Imagínese!” = “Imagine that!”

En Tus Sueños

Literally and actually means “In your dreams”, yet one more way of saying “no”. Example:

“¿Quieres quitarte la ropa y bailar como Shakira para mí?” = “Do you want to take your clothes off and dance like Shakira for me?”

“En tus sueños.” = “In your dreams.”

Estás Loco

Means what it looks like: “you’re crazy”, used in precisely the same way that we would.  Also used where we would say “you must be kidding!”.  Example:

“Debes usar un carro en lugar de tu vaca morada.” = “You should use a car instead of your purple cow.”

“¡Estás loco!” = “You’re crazy!”

¿Verdad?

“Verdad” literally means “truth” but is frequently used to mean something like “Really?” or “Is that so?”.  Examples:

“Manejo una vaca grande morada.” = “I am driving a large purple cow.”

“¿Verdad?” = “Really?”

“Sí, verdad.” = “Yes, really.”

Ni Loco

“Ni” literally means “nor” (unless uttered by The Knights Who Say ‘Ni’, in which case that’s an entirely different context) so you can see how in this case “ni loco” means “not even if I were crazy”, so one more way of saying “no” emphatically.  Example:

“¿Alguna vez consideraría comer dos kilos de queso a la vez?” = “Would you ever consider eating two kilos of cheese at once?”

“¡Ni loco!” = “Not even if I were crazy!”

Ya Basta

A common Spanish phrase whenever someone is angry.  As you probably already know, “ya” means “already”.  And since “Basta” means “enough”, you can easily see how the expression “ya basta” would mean “enough already”.  Example:

“¡Papa!  ¿Ya llegamos? ¿Ya llegamos? ¿Ya llegamos? ¿Ya llegamos? ¿Ya llegamos? ¿Ya llegamos?” = “Dad! Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”

“¡Ya basta!!!!” = “Enough already!!!!”

¿En Serio?

“Serio” means “serious” –> “en serio” means “seriously?”.  Simple.  Use it where we would use “seriously?” or “really?”.  Example:

“Vine al trabajo por vaca morada.” = “I came to work on a purple cow.”

“¿En serio?” = “Seriously?”

“No.” = “No.” 😀

¡Qué Barbaridad!

“Barbaridad” means “barbarity”, that is “something barbaric”, a cruelty, some terrible event.  So “qué barbaridad” means something like “what a barbarity!” and would be used when we would say “how terrible!” or “oh my god” in response to a bad event that has just taken place, such as a natural disaster. Example:

“¡Japón acaba de sufrir un terremoto terrible!” = “Japan has just suffered a terrible earthquake!”

“¡Qué barbaridad!”

¿Cómo no?

This just means “Why not?” and is used in exactly the same way we would use that expression, it’s just another way of saying “yes”. It can also be used to mean “Why not?” in the literal sense of a question asking someone why they’re not doing something. Examples:

“¿Quieres venir?” = “Do you want to come?”

“¿Cómo no?” = “Sure, why not.”

“No quiero venir.” = “I don’t want to come.”

“¿Cómo no?” = “Why not?”

Es El Colmo

“Colmo” means “height” as in “the height of stupidity”, meaning to the very greatest degree.  The expression “es el colmo” or “eso es el colmo” means “that’s the last straw” or “that’s it [in the sense of it being the last thing you’re going to take, the final insult, etc.]”. Example:

“Tu vaca morada ha comido todos mis azaleas…eso es el colmo, ahora voy a comer tu vaca.” = “Your purple cow has eaten all my azaleas…that’s the last straw, now I’m going to eat your cow.”

“¡Mooooo!” = “Nooooo!”

Bonus!  “Para el colmo” means “to top it off”, and the way you say “the last straw was” is “El colmo para…”, e.g. “The last straw for me was when he came to work naked” would be “El colmo para mi era cuando vino al trabajo desnudo.”

No Puede Ser

Very simple, “poder” means “can or to be able to” and “ser” means “to be”, so with “no puede ser” we end up with “it cannot be” or “that can’t be”. Example:

“He comido tu vaca morada. Jajaja.” = “I’ve eaten your purple cow. Hahaha.”

“¡No puede ser!” = “It cannot be!”

No Me Diga

It literally means “don’t tell me” and is frequently used in that sense to mean something like “don’t tell me that” but it’s usually not meant that you literally don’t want them to tell you something, but as an expression of exasperation in the same way that we would use the expression “don’t tell me that”.  The tú form for use with people you’re familiar with would be “no me digas”.  Example:

“Necesito una vaca morada nueva.” = “I need a new purple cow.”

“Lo siento, pero estamos agotados.” = “I’m sorry, but we’re all out of stock.”

“No me diga…” = “Don’t tell me that…”

Está Bien

This is how you say “ok” without saying “ok”, which is, by the way, a very common expression in the Spanish language and is probably the English expression that has the widest cross-language penetration in the world (meaning that it’s commonly used in more languages than any other English expression).  It’s also what you would use to say “that’s good” (that’s the literal translation of the expression, by the way: “está” = “is” and “bien” = “good”) or “alright” or “fine with me” etc.  You get the idea. Examples:

“Ya me voy.” = “I’m leaving now.”

“Está bien, hasta luego.”= “Alright, see you later.”

“Ya me voy, ¿está bien?” = “I’m leaving now, ok?”

“Está bien.” = “Ok.”

De Acuerdo

Just another way to say “ok”, essentially.  “Acuerdo” means “agreement” and “de acuerdo” literally translates to something like “in agreement”, as in “I’m in agreement” or “I concur”, though it doesn’t quite have the same formality as those expressions and usually just means “ok”.  It’s typically used in situations where some sort of accord or compromise is come to, as in agreeing to meet at a certain place at a certain time or how much to pay for something, etc.  Examples:

“¿Te ve a las once, entonces?” = “I’ll see you at eleven, then?”

“De acuerdo.” = “Ok.”

“Cuesta veintiocho pesos.” = “It costs twenty-eight pesos.”

“De acuerdo.” = “Deal.”

Déjese De Cuentos

Means something like “cut the crap” or “shall we dispense with the bull?”.  “Dejar” means “to leave” and is being used in the imperative here as a command, so you’re being told to leave something, and “cuento” means “story” but is also used to mean a lie like we might use “tale” in “a tall tale”, and you see it used like this in the expression “contar cuentos” which means “to tell tales” (“to lie”).  You see it used the same way here with “déjese de cuentos” where you’re being told to dispense with the tall tales.  Example:

“Puedo venderte ese carro por sólo cien mil pesos.”= “I can sell you this car for only a hundred thousand pesos.”

“Déjese el cuento, ¿cuanto puede bajar?” = “Cut the crap, how much can you come down?”

¿Cómo?

This means something like “What? How’s that?” and is used to express mild surprise at something you just heard.  “cómo” literally translates to “how” so this isn’t just a statement of surprise but it’s also a question that should elicit a response, so you’re not only expressing your disbelief but you’re also asking how it is that this thing came to be.  Example:

Dr. Evil: “Me abstengo de lanzar los misiles nucleares por…¡un trillón de dólares!!”

El Presidente: “¡¿Cómo?!”

Seguro

“Seguro” literally means “safe” or “secure” but in this context it means “sure” and is used the same way we would use “sure” as a response meaning “yes”.  Example:

El Presidente: “¿Aceptas un cheque?”

Dr. Evil: “Seguro.”

No Me Importa

Literally means “it’s not important to me” and it’s the most common way of simply saying “I don’t care” in Spanish, it’s an expression that you’ll definitely hear a lot regardless of the regional dialect in question. Example:

“¿Quiere hielo en su trago, señor?” = “Do you want ice in your drink, sir?”

“Seguro, no me importa.” = “Sure, I don’t care.”

¡Qué Esperanzas!

This literally means “what hope!” and is another way of saying “no”, “no way!”, or “not a chance!” in an emphatic way. Example:

“Papa, ¿va a comprarme un carro para mi cumpleaños?” = “Dad, are you going to buy me a car?”

“¡Qué esperanzas!” = “Not a chance!”

Ni Modo

This is one more way of saying “oh well” or “oh well, what can you do?”, but keep in mind that it’s not a particularly sympathetic expression, so if the bad thing that happened, happened to someone else, you may not want to use this.  Example:

“¡Tu vaca gorda morada comió mi pobre gato!” = “Your fat purple cow ate my poor cat!”

“Ni modo…” = “Oh well…”

“No me gustas tú.” = “I don’t like you.”

No Es Para Tanto

“Tanto” means “much” or “so much” or “that much”, so the literal meaning we get here is something like “it’s not for that much” and the way it’s really used to express the feeling of “it’s not a big deal” or “ok, that’s a bit much”.  Example:

“Mi vecino me está molestando mucho ahora.” = “My neighbor is really irritating me lately.”

“Puedo atropellarle con mi vaca morada.” = “I can run over him with my purple cow.”

“No es para tanto.” = “Maybe that’s a bit much.”

If you’d like to learn more everyday, spoken Spanish…

What I recommend is using popular media by and for native Spanish speakers, that is movies, TV shows, music, comics, etc. of whatever type appeals to you (that is, if you like dramas, pick drama movies and shows in Spanish to watch, if you like pop music, pick some Spanish pop music).  How do you learn Spanish from them?  Well, I’ve got a couple of recommendations for you:

1. Yabla.  They take popular media, like what I’m talking about, such as TV shows and YouTube videos, and put them into a special player for you that shows you subtitles in both Spanish and English (either/both can be turned on/off) where clicking any word you don’t know results in the video pausing and the definition coming up for you in the dictionary on the side of the player as well as automatically adding the word to your flashcards for later review.  They also let you quiz yourself on the video by playing it with certain words blanked out of the subtitles and you have to fill in or select the correct choice (you can choose between fill-in-theblank or multiple choice).  It’s a fantastic system for language students, for a lot more details (including screenshots) see my review of Yabla here.
2. My book!  I wrote a whole book about how to learn Spanish from whatever popular media interests you.  I personally started out with telenovelas and therefore called  my method (and the book) The Telenovela Method (you don’t have to use telenovelas).  It’s in its second edition and currently has nineteen reviews on Amazon with eighteen five-star reviews and one four-star review.

Related Posts

Spanish Transition Words (Muletillas) and Sentence Starters: The Grease of the Language Gears

How to Not Sound Like a Gringo – The 16 Most Common Spanish Errors and How to Avoid Them

Spanish Conversation Connectors: “it seems to me”, “all joking aside”, “I presume”, etc. – 4 Pages Worth!

Additional Resources and Further Reading

Common Phrases (with recordings by native speakers of each)

80+ Common Spanish Phrases to Help you Rock Any Social Situation [downloadable as a PDF at the bottom, very useful – Andrew]

71 Common Spanish Phrases to Survive Your First Conversation with a Native Speaker

That’s it!  If you’ve got any more expressions  you think ought to be on here, tell me in the comments and I’ll be glad to add them to the list and give you credit, also…  If you thought the above was at all useful and you want to learn (or are learning) Spanish, please give me a chance and read what I have to say about my book below!  Thank you so much for checking out my blog and I hope you’ve enjoyed my writing.

I learned to speak conversational Spanish in six months using TV shows, movies, and even comics: I then wrote a book on how you can, too

I have a whole method and a book I wrote about it called The Telenovela Method where I teach you how to learn Spanish from popular media like TV shows, movies, music, books, etc. that you can all find online for free.  It was the #1 new release in the Spanish Language Instruction section on Amazon for nearly a month after it came out and currently has 17 reviews there with a 4.9/5 stars average.  It’s available for $7.99-$9.99 for the e-book version depending on who you buy it from (Kindle version on Amazon is now $7.99) and $16.99 for the paperback (occasionally a bit cheaper, again, depending on who you buy it from).

It’s currently available in both e-book and paperback from:

• Amazon
• iBooks (the iTunes store)
• Kobo
• Barnes & Noble
• Google Play Store
• Goodreads
• Scribd
• Ciando

Cheers,
Andrew

An extremely common problem amongst people learning a new language is smoothness, that ability to keep talking without herky-jerky stops-and-starts in their sentences (lots of awkward silences and “ummms” while they try to think of the right word), which is how fluency is generally defined.  A specific area of this that’s almost never addressed anywhere that I’ve noticed a lot of people have trouble with, that I had trouble with, is how exactly to start a sentence or statement.  What you’re looking for are Spanish transition words, or “muletillas” as they’re known in Spanish.

We’ve got all these little filler words and phrases in English that we use over and over again that work great for this stuff, and we don’t realize that we do, they really are the grease that allows the gears to work – without it things grind, hang up, jerk back and forth, and sometimes just break down.  This stuff is immensely useful and valuable to know if you actually want to be able to talk to people, but almost no one teaches it because it just doesn’t occur to them to do so (plus, it’s not “proper” formal Spanish, so textbooks shy away from it).  Let’s go over a list of the most common and useful Spanish transition words, or “muletillas”, and sentence starters:

Bueno

Bueno can be very accurately translated to the English word “well” in the context of “Well…”, not “well” as in “feeling well” in this case.  It’s used in almost exactly the same way in many of the same circumstances, and is probably the most common sentence-starter in Spanish – you will very, very frequently hear sentences start with “Bueno, …”.  Examples to give you an idea:

“Bueno, no es lo que queria decir.” = “Well, that’s not what I meant to say.”

“Bueno, tengo que ir.” = “Well, I have to go.”

It is commonly used to make the transition from one thing to another, such as indicating that you’re going to leave now or that it’s time to get down to business: the transition from introductions and niceties to actual business at a meeting may be indicated with a simple, single “Bueno…” just as we would do the same with a single “Well…”

Mira

Also means “Look” or “Look here”, but it’s used much more narrowly than “fíjate que” in that “mira” is almost always used to set the record straight.  You would likely here it used in the context of some sort of argument or confrontation, as in “Look here, if you don’t clean that up I’m going to run over you with my cheese car!”, which would be “¡Mira, si no limpias eso voy a atropellarte con mi carro de queso!”, or “Look, I didn’t say you couldn’t touch my cheese car, just don’t eat it, ok?” which would be “Mira, no te estaba diciendo que no podías tocar mi carro de queso, solo que no lo comieras, ¿ok?”

Haz De Cuenta Que

This phrase means something like “Imagine that…”, “Pretend that…”, or “Make believe that…” and is used whenever you would want to say one of those phrases in English – don’t use “pretender” or “imaginar“, neither are appropriate really: “pretender” means something more like “to aspire to” and “imaginar” is used like “imagine” in the sense of “I thought” or “I suppose” e.g. “I imagine you’re quite busy” or “I thought you’d have already heard about it.”

If you wanted to say anything along the lines of “Make believe that you are a car made of cheese”, or “Pretend that you’re the mayor of Cheeseville, what would you do?”, you would use this phrase as such:

“Haz de cuenta que eres un carro de queso.”

“Haz de cuenta que eres el alcalde de Quesovilla, ¿qué harías?”

Edit: A couple native speakers have told me that they’ve also heard this phrase used to mean something like “remember that” or “keep in mind that”, etc.  So that’s also a possible alternative meaning depending on the dialect.

Pues

This is the Spanish filler word.  It’s like “bueno”, but more informal.  It frequently finds itself in places where an English speaker would say “Well”, “ummm”, “let’s see”, “errr…”, “Hang on, let me see here…”, etc.  Examples:

“¿Quieres ver una película?” (“Do you want to see a movie?”) may be answered with something like: “Pueeesss…..no sé, ehh….sí.” (“Weeelllll….I dunno, ehh….sure.”)

In many places, Mexico in particular, “pues” will be shortened to “pos” or even just a hiss that kind of sounds like “pss”.  In Spain, it’s “pue” instead.  Which one you should use should be determined, as always, by how the people around you are speaking.

La Verdad Es Que

“The truth is that…” or “The truth of the matter is that…”, but a more contextual translation that would give you a really good English equivalent would be “actually”, because they use it the same way we do that word and about as frequently (in other words: very).  Many beginning learners will say “Actualmente…” when they want to say “Actually…” but that’s incorrect, as you’ll learn further down when I cover the phrase “actualmente”, you’ll see that it translates more to “currently” than “actually” and is used to express what’s currently going on right now.

Example:

“¿Estás bien?” (“Are you ok?”)

“Pues…la verdad es que no me siento bien.” (“Well…actually, I don’t feel well.”)

Entonces

It literally and contextually means “then” and is used in a very similar way that we use that word.  Normally it’s used to indicate that one event followed another, just as we use it (“Then I went to the store” = “Entonces fui a la tienda”), and it’s also used in a sort of “So what, then?” kind of way, sometimes used the same way we use “so”, as in:

“So, what happened next?” = “Entonces, ¿qué pasó después?”

“So…you’re not coming then?” = “Entonces…¿no vienes?” or “Pues…¿no vienes, entonces?”

O Sea

“In other words…”, “That is to say…”, or “I mean…”

There’s an interesting structure to this phrase, because you’ve got the Spanish subjunctive involved (click me if you need help with that) due to the fact that’s sort of a hypothetical (as in, it means something like “if one were to say it this way” or “one could say it this way”).  “O” means “or” and “sea” is the 3rd person present subjunctive form of “ser“, which means “to be”.  This is an extremely common verbal crutch that you’ll hear used quite frequently in the way we would use “like” or “you know”.  Examples:

“El jefe no me ha hablado todavía, o sea de verdad no sé.” = “The boss hasn’t talked to me yet, so in other words I don’t really know.”

“[blah blah blah long explanation about something], o sea la verdad es que solo me gusta mucho la ropa interior feminina.” = “[blah blah blah long explanation about something], in other words I just really like women’s underwear.”

Es Decir

More literally means “that is to say” and can be used pretty much anywhere you would use “o sea”, except it’s considered a bit more correct and less slangy than “o sea” is.

Luego

“Luego” also technically translates to “then” and is frequently interchangeable with “entonces”, though “luego” is more often used to indicated something happening next in sequence, e.g. “…then I went to the store, then the airport, then home.” would be something like “…luego fui a la tienda, luego al aeropuerte, y luego a la casa.”

Sometimes it’s used when we would use “later”, as in the most common example of “Hasta luego” which means “See you later”.  Other similar expressions include “Luego voy” (“I’ll go later”), “Luego te digo” (“I’ll tell you later”), “Luego lo hago” (“I’ll do it later”), etc.

Actualmente

Not “actually”, first of all.  This is a false friend, it doesn’t mean what it looks like it does. “Actualmente” actually (see what I did there?) means “currently”, “at the moment”, “these days”, or, as the dictionary defines it, “nowadays”.  The best basic translation is probably “currently”.  Examples:

“Qué pasa?” “Pues, actualmente no sé, creo que esperamos a que Juan llegue.” = “What’s happening?” “Well, currently I don’t know, I think we’re waiting for Juan to arrive.”

“Actualmente hace muy buen tiempo, pero podría llover más tarde.” = “Currently the weather is very nice, but it could rain later.”

A Propósito / Por Cierto

They both pretty much just mean “By the way”.  Just as with “by the way”, they usually indicate a change in subject or a transition into some new sort of business.  Just use them the same way you would “by the way”, e.g. “A propósito, ¿sabes dónde está María?” = “By the way, do you know where Maria is?” or “Por cierto, ¿no ibas a ir a la tienda?” = “By the way, weren’t you going to go to the store?”

Por Lo Menos

It means “At least”.  “Por” means “for”, “lo” means “that” or “it”, and “menos” means “less” or “least” in this case, so you put them together and you get “that which is least”, or…”at least”.  Examples:

“¡Por lo menos pregúntale el nombre antes de que le quites la ropa, hombre!” = “At least get her name before you try to take her clothes off, man!”

Por Fin

“Finally” or “At last”.

Frequently said with exasperation that the thing in question is finally happening. Examples:

“¡Por fin! ¡Estás aqui!” = “Finally! You’re here!”

“Por fin, tenemos la tarea de todos.” = “At last, we’ve got everyone’s homework.”

Es Que

This is the Spanish equivalent of “It’s that…” or “It’s such that…” or “The thing is that…”, all of which are roughly the same thing.  This is one of the most common and most useful, all-purpose phrases in Spanish, and can be used for nearly anything–I guarantee you that if you ask a Spanish-speaking person “Why?” or “Why is ____ ?”, there’s a superb chance that their answer will begin with “Es que…”, meaning “Well, it’s that…” or even “Pues, es que…” (hey, don’t forget: you can mix-‘n-match all this stuff!)

“Es que” is always used to answer something, in response to something, it requires some sort of preceding question or statement to actually respond to.

Che

This is pretty much exclusive to Argentina and just means something like “Hey!”, or “Hey buddy”, e.g.

“¡Che! Me gustan tus zapatos.” = “Hey, I like your shoes.”

“¡Che! ¿Qué tal, hombre?” = “Hey! What’s up, man?”

Lo Que Pasa Es Que

“What’s happening is that…” or “What’s going on is…”, that’s it.  It can be used anytime “Es que…” can, which means pretty much any time.  This is a very common Spanish transition phrase that you’ve likely already heard unless you’re just now starting to learn Spanish.

Quizás / Tal Vez

They both just mean “maybe” or “perhaps”, that’s it, very simple.  You’ll sometimes see it spelled “quizá” minus the “s” on the end. Examples:

“Quizás no debí haberme comido todas esas ardillas, creo que tengo una bola de pelos.” = “Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten all those squirrels, I think I have a hairball.”

“Tal vez El Presidente nos preste algunas de sus prostitutas si nos aburrimos.” = “Perhaps the President will let us borrow some of his prostitutes if we get bored.”

Resulta Que

Literally, “It results that…” or “It results in…”, more accurately it means something like “It turns out that…”.  If you wanted to say “Well, it turns out that the dog doesn’t like broccoli!” you would say that “¡Pues, resulta que al perro no le gusta el brócoli!”

You would also use this particular expression to mean “it works out that” in a mathematical context, such as saying “The price of the car works out to 20,000 pesos.” would be done as “Resulta que el precio del carro son veinte mil pesos.”

Así Que

Just another way of saying “So” when used at the beginning of a sentence, such as “So, you think I’m fat?” would be “¿Así que crees que estoy gordo?”, or “So, you’re coming then?” would be “¿Así que vienes?”.  The reason it’s used in this very specific manner is due to what it really means, “así” means “this way” or “like this” or “in this manner”, and “que”, of course, means “that”, so “así que” literally means something like “It’s going to be like this, then is it?” in reference to whatever follows that “Así que” – got it?

Aunque

“Although”, “Even though”, etc.  Examples:

“Aunque me dicen que estoy loco, aún voy a rezar al monstruo volador de espaguetti.” = “Even though they tell me I’m crazy, I’m still going to pray to the flying spaghetti monster.”

“Aunque hui del “Superbowl” como de la peste, aún tuve que oír personas quejándose sobre Christina Aguilera. Yo no estaba feliz.” = “Although I avoided the Superbowl like the plague, I still had to hear people complain about Christina Aguilera.  I wasn’t happy.”

Además

“Moreover”, “Besides…”, “Also”, etc.

This is occasionally also used where we would use “too”, e.g.

“Él es guapo y además inteligente.” = “He’s handsome and smart, too.”

“El queso es demasiado suave, demasiado débil, y además huele muy mal.” = “Cheese is too soft, too weak, and besides, it smells terrible.”

Ni Modo Que

“No way that…”, or “No way in hell that…”.  “Modo” literally means “way” so this one is pretty intuitive.  It’s never just used on its own like “No way!” is in English, something always follows it and that something will always involve the subjunctive. Examples:

“¡Ni modo que vaya a hablar con ella!” = “Like hell I’m going to talk to her!”

“Ni modo que yo pueda ir contigo, lo siento” = “No way can I go with you, sorry.”

Sin Embargo

“Sin embargo” means “However”, “Nonetheless”, “Nevertheless”, “Notwithstanding”, etc.  It is one of the Spanish transition words that you will hear the most often.

This is frequently used while someone is shaking their finger at you.  They’ll acknowledge your point, quite aware that they’re about to invalidate it, and then say “sin embargo” right before they do so. As such:

“Entiendo que el queso no es tan furte como el acero, pero sin embargo voy a hacer un carro con él.” = “I understand that cheese isn’t as strong as steel, but nevertheless I’m going to make a car out of it.”

“Admito que pagué por más o menos una docena de prostitutas con fondos del estado, ¡pero sin embargo aún creo que soy adecuado para ser El Presidente!” = “I acknowledge that I did pay for a dozen or so prostitutes with state funds, but nonetheless I still think I’m fit to be President!” (for those who don’t get it, that’s Silvio Berlusconi there on the left)

Menos Mal Que

“Good thing that…”, or “It’s just as well that…”.  Fantastic little sentence-starter that you can get a ton of mileage out of.  It literally means “Less bad that”, and is just they’re way of saying “It’s good that this thing happened.”  Examples:

“Menos mal que no estacioné mi carro de cheese al sol, ¡se derretiría!” = “Good thing I didn’t park my cheese car in the sun, it would have melted!!”

“Menos mal que no olvidaste los ratones, ¡las serpientes tienen mucha hambre!” = “Good thing you didn’t forget the mice, the snakes are really hungry!”

Fíjate Que

“Look”, “Look here, …”, or “Look at that…”, etc.  “Fijar” means “to fix” in the sense of to focus or fixate on something, not as in “to repair” (that’s “arreglar“), so “Fíjate”, as you can imagine, means something like “fix yourself” (as in, “focus yourself”, i.e. “pay attention”) and “que” means “that”, so “fíjate que” means something like “fixate yourself on that”, or “focus yourself on that” and best translates to what we might say as “Look, …” or “Look at that”.  It’s just used to call someone’s attention to something.

An example would be if you wanted to say “Look, there’s a giant car made out of cheese!”, it would be “¡Fíjate, hay carro enorme hecho de queso!”

“Fíjate” without the “que” means “Watch out!”, “Look out!”, or “Pay attention, …”

Also, note that “Fijarse que + subjunctive” = “Make sure that…”, as in “Make sure that the oven is off.” (“Fíjate que  esté apegado el horno.”).  This is usually used the way that we would say “Check that…” instead of what most English-speakers will be inclined to use, “checar“–most Spanish speakers use “Fijarse que + subjunctive”, not “checar”.

Lo Bueno / Lo Malo

“The good thing…” / “The bad thing…”

“Lo” = “It” and when placed before another word it means “that which is ____”, e.g. “lo bueno” means “That which is good”, “lo malo” means “That which is bad”, and of course the more accurate contextual translation in English would be “The good/bad thing…”.  This works with a ton of other words, such as:

“lo peor” = “the worst thing…”

“lo único” = “the only thing…”

“lo extraño” = “the strange thing…”

“lo gracioso” = “the funny thing…”

Such as in “¡Lo mas extraño es que El Ministerio de Transporte no me daba permiso que manejar mi carro de queso en las carreteras públicas!” = “The strange thing is that the Department of Transportation wouldn’t let me drive my cheese car on the public roads!”

A Ver

“Let’s see…” or “Let’s see here…”

Fantastically useful little Spanish sentence-starter here.  It’s frequently used to call attention to something, such as:

“¿Tienes un dólar?” “A ver…” = “Do you have a dollar?” “Let’s see…”

“A ver si mi paquete ya ha llegado…” = “Let’s see if my package has arrived yet…”

“A ver si mi carro de queso flota…” = “Let’s see if my cheese car floats…”

It will be frequently used with “si” or “qué” to mean “Let’s check and see…” or “Let’s check…”, as in:

“A ver qué hay en televisión…” = “Let’s see what’s on TV…”

Con Razón

“No wonder…” or “Little wonder that…”

“Razón” means “reason”, so with “con razón” you get “with reason”, e.g. “Con razón tu carro de queso se derretió, ¡lo dejaste al sol!” = “No wonder your cheese car melted, you left it in the sun!” or, using the literal translation (see if this makes sense to you now , it should), “With reason your cheese car melted, you left it in the sun!”

Por Eso

“Because” or “That’s why”.

It’s frequently used to explain or to help make things understood when it might not be clear what’s going on, e.g.

“Señor Andrew, ¡manejas un carro de queso!”, “Sí, por eso mis pantaloncillos están amarillos.” = “Señor Andrew, you drive a cheese car!”, “Yes, that’s why my pants are yellow.”

“Fíjate, hay un video musical de Shakira en la televisión.”, “Sí, por eso no puedo levantarme” = “Look, there’s a Shakira music video on TV.”, “Yes, that’s why I can’t stand up.” 😀

En Fin

“Well, anyway…” or “So, anyhow…”

It literally means something like “In conclusion…” but isn’t always necessarily used to conclude something (though it frequently is, that is it’s often used to lead into the conclusion), sometimes it’s used to change subjects or bring the conversation back to what was originally being discussed. Examples:

“En fin, la verdad es que sobreviví sólo comiéndome mi carro de queso cuando quedé varado en el desierto.” = “So anyway, I actually did survive only by eating my cheese car when I was stranded in the desert.”

Total

This is one of the less-used Spanish transition words but it’s still common in some dialects.  It means something like, “So it turns out that…”

“Total” literally (and normally) means, simply, “total” as in “complete”, but when it’s put at the beginning of a sentence as a starter it basically means something like “So anyway, it turns out that…” and is frequently paired with “que” in the process of doing so e.g.:

“Pues, total que no me levanté a tiempo esta mañana.” = “Well, turns out that I didn’t wake up on time this morning.”

Vale

Not very common at all in this particular context in Latin America, but I’ve noticed that it’s used all the time in Spain (I spent three months there, in Zaragoza, in 2015), it’s their equivalent of our “ok” or “you know”, it’s a constantly used filler word there.  You can use it like you would “ok”, you can use it like you would “well” (“vale” and “pues” are frequently interchangeable), you can use it like you sometimes would “ummm”!  See below:

“¿Vale?” “Sí, vale.” = “Ok?” “Yeah, ok.”

“Pueesss, vale, vamos a ver lo que tenemos aquí…” = “Wellll, ok, let’s see what we’ve got here…”

“Creo que mi carro de queso no funciona muy bien, vale?” = “I think my cheese car didn’t work very well, you know?”

“Vale…ehhh…donde puse mi busto del culo de Shakira, es doscientos kilos de bronce, sé que está en algún lugar por aquí…” = “Ok…ehhh….where’d I put my bust of Shakira’s ass, it’s two hundred kilos of bronze, I know it’s around here somewhere…”

Ya

What a fantastic little word.  It’s a bit difficult because if you use the literal translation of “ya”, which is “already”, every time you hear it, it won’t make sense, but you have to understand this word because you will hear it used constantly, it’s an extremely common Spanish filler word.

It can mean “already”, of course, it can also mean “now”, or if made negative it can mean “anymore” as in “not anymore”, e.g. “Ya no viene” = “He’s not coming anymore.”  It’s often used simply as emphasis, usually to emphasize that something is being done, it’s being done now, or that something will be gotten to in just a second if the listener would just be patient and quit friggin’ bugging you about it.  Examples:

“Ya voy.” = “I’m already going” / “I’ll go in a minute” / “I’m going!!!!” [in response to someone repeatedly insisting that you go] – which translation is correct depends on the context.

“Ya están las hamburguesas.” = “The hamburgers are ready/here now.”

“¡Ya estoy allí!” = “I’m already there!”

“La verdad es que ya quiero salir.” = “Actually, I already want to leave.” / “Actually, I want to leave now.”

To confuse you even further, when “ya” is combined with “que” it means something completely different: “Since…”, “Seeing that…”, “Seeing as how…”, etc.  It’s used to mean something like “Well, since ___ has/is already occurred/occurring…”.  Here, look at these and see if you get it:

“Ya que comiste mi carro de queso, ¡¿cómo vamos a ir a la casa?!” = “Since you’ve eaten my cheese car, how are we going to get home?!”

“Ya que compraste todo lo que necesitábamos, supongo que podemos ir a casa ahora.” = “Seeing as how you already bought everything we needed, I suppose we can go home now.”

Additional Reading and Further Resources: Places to learn even more conversational Spanish, slang, and expressions!

First and foremost I strongly recommend you check out a podcast called Español en 3000, it’s run by an Australian guy living in Medellin, Colombia, and they do such an excellent job with their interviews and how they use them to teach Spanish.  Unlike most other podcasts focused on teaching Spanish, these are entirely unscripted and natural, with native speakers, so you learn the kind of Spanish people speak in conversation every day.  People talk normally, naturally, in their native language.  They interview Spanish-speakers living in and around Medellin, and though they talk to more Colombians than anyone they’ve made a point to represent all dialects of the Spanish-speaking world (they have interviews with people from Mexico, Argentina, Spain, Venezuela, Chile, and many more).  They include a verbatim transcript of each interview as well as a lesson at the end focusing on the Spanish used.  The mobile version of the site is excellent, everything worked perfectly when I tested it, so you can listen to it on the go.  Check out my review of them here (yes, there’s a free trial).

I have a whole category of posts on this website dedicated to teaching this sort of colloquial, “everyday” Spanish called Learn Spanish for Real: Spanish Slang, Colloquialisms, & Cursewords.  Learn the 4 different ways to say somebody is naked in Spanish, or how to say something is a “rip-off” in Spanish, or even how to say something is a pain in the neck/ass in Spanish (I cover both so you have the polite and the not-so-polite way of saying it).

Edit (12/9/2011): Thanks to a commenter below, I can highly recommend this very extensive article (be warned: it’s entirely in Spanish) on muletillas, definitely worth checking out.  Thanks, Mijail999.

Additionally, I have a few other similar posts you might be interested in:

• How to Not Sound Like a Gringo – The 17 Most Common Spanish Errors and How to Avoid Them
• Manners in Spanish – The Basics of Being Polite in Spanish-Speaking Cultures
• Spanish Conversation Connectors: “it seems to me”, “all joking aside”, “I presume”, etc. – 4 Pages Worth!

 There’s a list of muletillas (what this stuff is called in Spanish) over on Spanish Wikipedia organized by country, though it’s all in Spanish.

Sources

First and foremost the wonderful Spanish speakers I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and talking to over the years, whether that was in person or via Skype.  Secondly, my own personal experience based on reading and listening to actual contemporary Spanish-language media (which I can’t recommend enough).  Also, the guys over at HTLAL (if you’re not a member you should be), Joseph Keenan’s fantastic Breaking Out of Beginner’s Spanish, and the Foro de Español forums.

I await your corrections and questions in the comments (and I do appreciate them, by the way).

Edit (7/15/2013): Many thanks to Jared Romey at Speaking Latino and his wife, Diana, for pointing out several grammatical errors in this article and then being kind enough to put together a whole word document outlining them and how to fix them for me!  Fantastic!  Additionally, Nélida Kreer at Traducciones-Montevideo was the one who originally caught the errors and mentioned it to Jared.

I learned to speak conversational Spanish in six months using TV shows, movies, and even comics: I then wrote a book on how you can, too

I have a whole method and a book I wrote about it called The Telenovela Method where I teach you how to learn Spanish from popular media like TV shows, movies, music, books, etc. that you can all find online for free.  It was the #1 new release in the Spanish Language Instruction section on Amazon for nearly a month after it came out and currently has 17 reviews there with a 4.9/5 stars average.  It's available for $7.99-$9.99 for the e-book version depending on who you buy it from (Kindle version on Amazon is now $7.99) and $16.99 for the paperback (occasionally a bit cheaper, again, depending on who you buy it from).

It's currently available in both e-book and paperback from:

• Amazon
• iBooks (the iTunes store)
• Kobo
• Barnes & Noble
• Google Play Store
• Goodreads
• Scribd
• Ciando

Cheers,
Andrew

Today I’m going to go over the most common mistakes in Spanish that native English speakers tend to make when learning Spanish and how to fix them on your own.  Just to head it off before it gets started, because otherwise I know it will, the term “gringo” is not inherently derogatory, it’s just a catch-all term for, basically, “Western Foreigners” (you don’t even have to be white, despite common misconception, as a black person from the United States, England, Canada, etc. would still be called a “gringo”).  It’s not derogatory unless it’s used in a derogatory manner, e.g. “I hate gringos” and “I hate Mexicans”: neither the term “gringo” nor the term “Mexican” is derogatory on their own, but they are in that context.

The first step is to make sure that you’re properly pronouncing your Spanish, which ought to be very easy since Spanish, unlike English, does not, with very few exceptions, change the sound of a letter regardless of which word it’s used in.  An example of this happening in English is the word “Alabama” where the letter “a” changes the sound it makes three times – Spanish doesn’t do this, everything is always pronounced the same, so there really isn’t much excuse for not pronouncing things properly.  Mispronouncing the letter “a” is, by the way, one of the most common errors in Spanish that marks someone as an English-speaker.  If you’re having trouble with pronunciation, please see my article Spanish Pronunciation: Quickly Learn to Pronounce Any Spanish Word No Matter How Difficult.  But let’s get started!

Here are the most common Spanish mistakes that English-speakers make and how to fix them:

1.  Mispronunciation of the vowels.  Practice the 5 vowels repeatedly until you’ve got them down pat.  When you do it slowly pronounce them and move your mouth as if someone 100 feet away was trying to read your lips, really enunciate and form them properly and slowly with your mouth -first we learn how to do it correctly, slowly, then we slowly speed up until we’re at full speed that way we’re not only fast but also correct (native speakers have both, so must you!).  A simple sentence used to teach these to young children in Spanish-speaking countries that uses all 5 vowels plus the double “rr” is “El burro sabe más que tú” (“The donkey knows more than you”).  Check out the following short video for some help:

2. That damned “r”!  Probably the single most common Spanish mistake that English-speakers make, but in this case at least they’re aware they’re doing it (usually they just have trouble rolling their “r”, it’s not that they don’t know they’re supposed to do it).  Not only do you have to roll the “r”, but you have to do it either once or twice depending on where it is in the word and whether or not there is just one or two in a row.  The single “r” anywhere other than the first letter of a word gets a single short tap or “flap”(technically known as an “alveolar flap”) of the tongue, a double “rr” OR a single “r” when it’s the first letter of a sentence gets “trilled” (technically known as an “alveolar trill”) meaning that the tongue does multiple (usually 2) quick flaps in a row.

This is one that really tends to distinguish gringos from everyone else very quickly: most of them can’t speak Spanish, period, and of the few who can, few of them can properly roll their “r”s.  So this is something that you really want to be able to do, however much practice it takes.  A simple sentence taught to young children to help them practice is

Erre con Erre Cigarro
Erre con Erre Barril
Rápido ruedan las ruedas
Sobre los rieles del ferrocarril

Which means:

“R with R” cigar
“R with R” barrel
Quickly run the cars,
Over the rails of the railroad.

Check out this video for some basic instructions on how to roll your “r” properly in Spanish:

3. Improper use of the subjunctive, or just not using it at all.  This is one of the most common errors in Spanish and also one of the most difficult to completely correct because the subjunctive is so hard to learn for most students.  I wrote up a whole post for you on it here that should help: The Spanish Subjunctive Explained: How the Subjunctive Works Plus a Mnemonic Trick to Help you Remember When to Use It (The W.E.I.R.D.O. System).

4. False friends.  Just because it sounds like an English word that you know doesn’t mean that it’s the same thing in Spanish.  “Actualemente” doesn’t mean “actually”, that’s “de hecho”, and “sanidad” refers to the health system, not sanity, and…my favorite false friend of all: “embarazada” – that means “pregnant”, not “embarrassed”.

The five most common ones, in my experience, are:

1. Actualmente.  It looks like it means “actually” when it really means “right now” or “in this moment in time”.  We English-speakers love to say “actually”, and people learning a foreign language have a strong tendency to bring their speech patterns with them into the new language.  One of the ways we do that is searching for equivalents to our favorite words and expressions, and then insisting on using them.  As I mentioned previously, the way to say this is “de hech”, or you could use “realmente” or “en realidad” (“in reality”).
2. Decepionado/decepcionante/decepionar.  These look like they have to do with deception – they do not, they have to do with dissapointment.  Decepcionado(a) means “disappointed”, decepcionar is the verb that means “to dissapoint”, and decepcionante is the adjective that means “disappointing”.
3. Educado(a).  This can mean “educated” but it much more commonly means “polite” or “well brought-up”, “well mannered”.
4. Emocionante/emocionado.  This means “exciting” (emocionante) or “excited” (emocionado), not “emotional”.
5. Embarazada.  I know we’ve covered it but it bears repeating: please remember, this does not mean “embarassed”, it means pregnant.  The way you say “embarrassed” is “avergonzado”, and the most common way of saying “I’m embarrassed” is actually, “Me da vergüenza” (literally, “it gives me embarrassment”).

Here are three good lists of many more Spanish-English false friends:

1. 50 Spanish-English False Friends from Mental Floss
2. SpanishDict’s list of False Cognates (same thing as false friends)
3. Wiktionary’s Appendix of false friends between Spanish and English

5. Pronunciation of the soft “c” and “z”.  Normally they are pronounced the same, they don’t really use our pronunciation of the “z” for anything, their “z” is pronounced like an “s” would be in English, as is their soft “c”.  A “c” in “co-“, “cu-“, or “ca-” like “carro” or “cumplir” is the hard “c” and is pronounced as we would a “k”.  Here’s some additional help with the Spanish consonants:

I’d like to note something about what he said in that video concerning “b” and “v”: this varies, and in my experience most Latin Americans will pronounce the “b” and “v” differently just the way we would in English but the Spaniards are the ones who will pronounce both of them like a soft “b”, so when they say “vida” it sounds the same as “bida”.  In other words, this too varies by region.

6. Failure to greet and respond to greetings.  Anglophones will tend to avoid using their Spanish unless absolutely necessary and this leads to a typical “gringo mistake” that is often mistaken as rudeness when in fact it’s nervousness because the person, in this case the “gringo”, doesn’t speak the language well and is therefore hesitant to use it.

What happens is that they’ll go into a store or some other place and they won’t greet the employee(s), they’ll be in there for half an hour or some such amount of time browsing, and then leave without so much as an “adios”.  This is considered very rude in most Spanish-speaking countries and will immediately peg someone as a gringo.  Also, correcting this should be the result of doing something you ought to be doing anyway: speaking to anyone and everyone you possibly can.

The proper etiquette is to greet someone when you enter their establishment with “Buenos dias” until noon, and then from noon until dark you would use “Buenas tardes”, and then from dark until bedtime you would say “Buenas noches”.  Whenever you leave a place, if it’s a place of business of some type, you say “gracias” or “muchas gracias muy amable”, anywhere else you should say “adiós” or “hasta luego”.

For lots more information about this, please see my post, Manners in Spanish: The Basics of Being Polite in Spanish-Speaking Cultures.

7. Overuse of the personal pronoun “yo”.  Because we always say “I” in English without exception, English speakers have this very difficult-to-break tendency to do the same thing in Spanish and it’s a huge mistake.  You likely already know that you only need to mention the subject in a sentence if it’s not already obvious, such as if you’re already talking about the car, you can just say “no funciona bien” (“It doesn’t work well”), notice the lack of a pronoun there, the pronoun “it”, specifically.  It’s not necessary.

Now, with the way verbs are conjugated in Spanish for the pronoun “yo”, there is absolutely NO ONE else that could be the subject besides the speaker, unlike with the “usted/ustedes” conjugation where it’s sometimes necessary to indicate the subject as it’s not always obvious, therefore the ONLY time that the pronoun “yo” is ever used is to emphasize the speaker–the equivalent in English would be to heavily stress the word “I” in the sentence, like “I really didn’t like it [implying that despite someone else’s opinion that it was good, you don’t think so]”.

So don’t ever use the word “yo” unless you really need to specifically emphasize yourself in the sentence, remember that it’s the rough equivalent of heavily emphasizing the “I” in the same sentence in English.  Quit saying “yo” unless you really want to emphasize the “I” part of that sentence.

For lots more information about this (I cover proper use of “yo” in much more detail), please see my brief guide to regional variation of the forms of address (tú, vos, usted) in Spanish.

8. Spanglish.  Getting tongue-tied and mixing in English “crutch words” such as “like” and “you know”, it sounds horrible and confuses the hell out of the poor Spanish-speaker you’re talking to (presuming they don’t understand English), e.g. “Quiero que…um…like…que usted deme su…you know…su…nombre!”.  Basically, don’t speak Spanglish.  If you’re going to do this, then use the Spanish filler words (called “muletillas”) and do it properly!  I have a whole list of these with definitions, cultural background, and examples for each: Spanish Transition Words (Muletillas) and Sentence Starters: The Grease of the Language Gears.

9. The “h” is always silent, quit pronouncing it, it’s never pronounced.

10. Pronouncing the “d” in Spanish too hard.  The “d”s in Spanish are a bit softer.  For example, the word “David” in English has a very hard “D”, whereas the word “nada” in Spanish sounds like “not-ah”, that is you pronounce it the way you would the word “not” in English and then add an “ah” to the end.  There is no hard “d” in Spanish, they’re all soft–not quite a hard “t” sound, but sort of a cross between, in English, a “t” and a “d”–the best way I can describe it is as a “soft d”.  This is just one of those minor little things you need to pay attention to when listening to Spanish, and especially when repeating what you hear in practice, that you might have otherwise missed.

11. Don’t ever sacrifice proper pronunciation for speed, we tend to do this in English and they tend not to do it in Spanish: regardless of how quickly a native Spanish speaker is speaking, you’ll notice they will tend to pronounce every last consonant, whereas we will tend to slur them together when speaking English (“Kinda”, “I dunno”, “Whaaaazuuup?!!”, etc.).  Don’t carry your habit of doing this in English over into Spanish, if you have to slow down to the point where you sound like you’re whacked out on horse tranquilizers just to be able to properly pronounce everything, then so be it: pronunciation trumps all else.  Some dialects drop certain letters here and there (e.g. Chileans and Cubans tend not to pronounce the “s”, especially when it’s on the end of words) but that’s the exception and even then the pronounce everything else.

12. Mixing up the preterit and imperfect verb tenses and not knowing when to use which. This is an extremely common error for non-native Spanish speakers (English speakers or otherwise) to do until they get to a fairly high-intermediate or advanced level.  For more detailed information on what to do, have a look at this:

Also, keep in mind that there are some contexts where you could use either (generally one will be more correct than the other).  In addition to this, this is one of those things that you’ll hear native speakers mix up every now and then, so it’s not a real big deal.

13. Mixing up “por” and “para” and not knowing when to use which.  To learn when to apply which one and how, have a look at the following video and check out my post on para que vs por que:

14. Improper use of ser and estar.  Oh boy.  I’ll write up a long detailed post on this, or maybe even a series, but for now just know that confusing these two is a super common error and the more you can do to correct it, the better. For now I’ll just put the best video I could find explaining it below for you:

Oh, also, there’s a book that’s been written about this one particular aspect of Spanish grammar.  I’ve read it and think it does an excellent job of explaining the difference between ser and estar, teaching you how to use them correctly, and giving you exercises to practice the correct usage.  It’s called Spanish Verbs: Ser and Estar and is available here on Amazon for very little ($2.82 right now for the paperback).

15. Yelling.  Comprehension does not increase with volume, yelling won’t make them understand better, don’t.  This is less and less common these days as the stereotype of the loud American who thinks shouting slowly at people somehow helps dies out, thanks in my opinion to Americans’ awareness of said stereotype and increased exposure to other cultures via the internet and a lot more traveling than we used to do.

16. Mispronunciation of the “ll” and “y”.  In Spain the “ll” is pronounced as we would a “y” in English, in most Latin American countries it’s pronounced with a “j” as in “jay”; in a few it’s pronounced like “sh”, “ch”, or “zh” (Argentina/Uruguay only, almost everywhere else it’s that “j” sound). This is easy to do, you just have to remember to do it.  I have a post specifically about how they pronounce the “ll” and “y” in Colombia vs elsewhere (like Argentina) that includes a video of a Colombian and an Argentinean discussing Colombian Spanish vs Argentinean Spanish so you can hear the differences).

Bonus: Messing up the various forms of address (“Do I use usted, tú, or vos?”).  This can be really tricky because it varies based on not only who you’re speaking to but the country/region they’re from, their gender, and age.  Please see my post here to help you with this, it covers every country and all forms of address: A Brief Guide to Regional Variation of the Forms of Address (Tú, Vos, Usted) in Spanish.

Before we end and get to the resources, I’d like to add that regardless of how poor your Spanish is now: don’t give up.  It took me years to learn my first language (Spanish) because I was simultaneously learning two very difficult subjects: Spanish, and how to learn a foreign language.  Worse, one of them (learning Spanish) required the other, that is knowing how to learn a foreign language.  The next two, German and French, went much faster and were much easier for me.  If you have any interest in other cultures and, especially, traveling, this is really worth doing.  As Charlemagne said, “To have a second language is to have a second soul.”

Recommended Resources and Further Reading

An excellent way to learn to speak just like a native speaker is to study and learn from popular media in the language you’re learning.  This is how I learned how to speak conversationally fluent Spanish within six months of starting, and I wrote a book (now in its 2nd edition) about how to do it called, The Telenovela Method.  I’ll teach you how to find and select popular media that you will find interesting (this is crucial – you won’t be able to maintain focus if you don’t find the material interesting or entertaining), which resources to use to assist you (almost all are free) and how to use them, and how to apply what you’ve learned by using it to communicate with native speakers (also crucial).

I did a bit of research and two sites I found (there are tons out there with “common Spanish errors”, most are just repeating the same old crap) that I’d be willing to link to and recommend because he’s addressing something a bit different than what I covered here are this page on common expressions in Spanish that people tend to screw up -I didn’t really cover specific expressions and phrases here so much, so I think that would definitely be a valuable added resource for you – as well as this one (22 common mistakes English-speakers make) over on the Duolingo forums.

If you’re particularly interested in learning Latin American Spanish, check out this superb Latin American Spanish podcast specifically designed to teach English-speakers, called Español en 3000.

One thing that distinguishes native from non-native speakers, that makes the difference between jerky, awkward conversation and fluent conversation, is the use of common connector words.  Have a look at my post, Spanish Transition Words (Muletillas) and Sentence Starters: The Grease of the Language Gears.  These are Spanish equivalents to English expressions such as, “Look,…”, “Well…”, “The truth is…”, “In other words…”, “By the way…”, etc.

On a very similar note I have a four-page list of common Spanish conversation connectors that someone else put together into a PDF that you can read or download here.

If you’d really like to work on your everyday speech, I really can’t recommend popular media enough: that’s how people actually talk, just copy them!  I know it’s not quite that simple (how you copy them is very important, and it’s really more like “studying” them than anything), but that’s the basic idea.  Other than my book, I recommend you check out some categories (containing several posts) I have on here that are relevant:

Learn Spanish for Real – in this series of post I teach one common expression per post (or more than that when they all basically mean the same thing), such as four ways to say someone is naked in Spanish, how to say “that rings a bell” in Spanish, or how to say something is very far away in Spanish.

If you’re interested in Colombian Spanish in particular, check my series, Learn Colombian Spanish. where I explain common Colombian expressions such as “que pena” and “a la orden“.

If you need help with pronunciation, be sure to check out my post on Spanish pronunciation where I’ll teach you how to quickly learn to pronounce anything via imitation and include a video of me demonstrating it.

As you know and I’ve mentioned elsewhere, conversing with native speakers is crucial and has to be done sooner or later.  A great way to do this is via online classes where the native speaker is the teacher.  I personally can recommend a service called GoSpanish (this is my review of them), having tried it myself.  You can get unlimited classes with them (online, via a video call using a Skype-like system) for as little as $39 per month – that’s insane.  You could take multiple one-hour long classes every day and just pay $39 a month for it if you wanted.  They also guarantee you won’t have more than about five students per class, and in my experience it was less than that (sometimes it was just me and the teacher). 

That’s it!  Well…that’s all I could come up with for now, I’m sure people will add some more that I forgot in the comments, which, by the way, is more than welcome.  Any extra value you add to a post of mine, whether it’s in the form of correcting an error or some sort of valid criticism or adding in something I missed, is always welcome, also…  If you thought the above was at all useful and you want to learn (or are learning) Spanish, please give me a chance and read what I have to say about my book below!  Thank you so much for checking out my blog and I hope you’ve enjoyed my writing.

Cheers,

Andrew

I learned to speak conversational Spanish in six months using TV shows, movies, and even comics: I then wrote a book on how you can, too

I have a whole method and a book I wrote about it called The Telenovela Method where I teach you how to learn Spanish from popular media like TV shows, movies, music, books, etc. that you can all find online for free.  It was the #1 new release in the Spanish Language Instruction section on Amazon for nearly a month after it came out and currently has 17 reviews there with a 4.9/5 stars average.  It’s available for $7.99-$9.99 for the e-book version depending on who you buy it from (Kindle version on Amazon is now $7.99) and $16.99 for the paperback (occasionally a bit cheaper, again, depending on who you buy it from).

It’s currently available in both e-book and paperback from:

• Amazon
• iBooks (the iTunes store)
• Kobo
• Barnes & Noble
• Google Play Store
• Goodreads
• Scribd
• Ciando