This is the 3rd in a series of posts I’m doing where I help you learn Spanish from music videos and show you how I do it myself (that way you don’t have to wait for me to dissect a Spanish music video, you can go out and start doing it yourself with whatever songs you want and using it to teach yourself Spanish–mind you, the whole point of this blog is to show you how you can teach yourself Spanish).  I’ve done two other posts prior to this: the second one on Shakira’s “Suerte” and the first one on Shakira’s “La Tortura”.  I may move onto another artist for future posts, and if you’ve got any suggestions as far as artists or songs go please put them in the comments, I’d love to hear them.

About this song

“Ojos Así” means “Eyes like those” and the song itself is actually over a decade old (originally released on the album Donde Están Los Ladrones? on July 24th, 1999) though it still remains one of Shakira’s most popular Spanish-language songs and the 5th most successful song of her career.  One of the really interesting aspects of this song is that it contains some Arabic lyrics in the form of chants, which are based on the Phrygian dominant scale, which is a musical scale extremely common in Arabic and especially Egyptian music, which is why it was chosen for Ojos Así, so that it would lend an Arabic feel to the song (notice the neon Eye of Ra in the background of the video).

The Video

The usual instructions follow for this:

The way I want you to do this is to play it once all the way through, then let’s look at it one verse at a time, and translate it.  Now, go back and play the verse we just analyzed several times and see if you can hear and understand everything being said, then go on to the next one.  Here it is:

First verse:

Ayer conocí un cielo sin sol
y un hombre sin suelo
Un santo en prisión
y una canción triste sin dueño
Ya he ya he ya la he
Y conocí tus ojos negros
ya he ya he ya la he
Y ahora sí que no
puedo vivir sin ellos yo

Translation:

Yesterday I met a sky without sun
and a man without shame
A saint in prison
and a sad song without an owner
Ya he ya he ya la he [chorus/chanting]
And I met your black eyes
Ya he ya he ya la he [chorus/chanting]
And now I really can’t
live without them

Ok, first I’d like to talk about the verb “Conocer” which is used in the first sentence in the preterit form “conocí” (in this case meaning “I met”) and literally means “to know” in Spanish, but actually can be used in several different ways and a better translation of it might be “to be familiar with” because it’s almost exclusively used to refer to familiarity with people and places, it’s never used to state that you know a fact (that’s what “saber” is for).  If you check the definition for “conocer” there you’ll see that the second definition is “to meet”, and the reason for this is that a more accurate translation of “conocer” is “to become familiar with [a person]” and the way that we say that in English is “to meet”, as in “I met him”.  The reason one of the definitions of “conocer” is “to know” is that, in the specific context in English of expressing your familiarity with a person or place, you say that you “know” them/it.  The problem with this is that people will read that definition and think that “conocer” works for other contexts where we would use “know” and it doesn’t.  I would ask you to note the fact that, really, the very best translation of “conocer” is “to become familiar with”, if you’ll keep that in mind you’ll never have trouble with it.

Not too much interesting after that, but at the end we get to something that looks a bit odd: “Y ahora sí que no puedo vivir sin ellos yo”.  What’s that “sí” doing there? “And now yes I can’t live without you”? No, but…sort of.  “Sí”, in addition to meaning “yes”, is frequently used for emphasis and if you’ll check the definition of it you’ll see that the 2nd one under “uso enfático” (“emphatic use”) covers this.  When it’s used in this context it most closely translates as “really” or “certainly” and is used to add weight to the statement that comes immediately after it, e.g. “¡Sí, sí quiero ir!” = “Yes, I really want to go!” and you’ll quite frequently see it used immediately after it has just been used to mean “yes” as in the above example.

Next verse:

Le pido al cielo sólo un deseo
Que en tus ojos yo pueda vivir
He recorrido ya el mundo entero
y una cosa te vengo a decir
Viajé de Bahrein hasta Beirut
Fuí desde el norte hasta el polo sur
y no encontré ojos así
Como los que tienes tú

Translation:

I ask the sky for only one wish
That in your eyes I could live
I have already wandered around the entire world
and I have come to tell you just one thing
I travelled from Bahrein to Beirut
I went from the north to the south pole
and I didn’t find eyes like those
Like those that you have

Ok, so we first get “pido” which is the present “yo” form of “pedir” which means “to ask or order”, “cielo” as I hope you’ve figured out means “sky”, “deseo” comes from the verb “desear” (“to desire”) and means, in this context, a wish or desire (I went with “wish”).  I’d like to note that a LOT of nouns in Spanish are derived from their verbs, e.g. an “order” (noun) in Spanish is “un pedido” and the verb meaning “to order” is “pedir”, a scream (noun) in Spanish is “un grito” and the verb for “to scream” is “gritar”, and there are a LOT of those, so many in fact, that if you know the verb but not the noun or vice-versa you can often safely make a guess based on the one you do know, and even if it’s not exactly right people will know what you mean and can tell you what the correct word is.

Next we get “Que en tus ojos yo pueda vivir” and the first use of the subjunctive (need help? see my article here: The Spanish Subjunctive Explained) which makes sense because she’s making a wish (the first “W” in W.E.I.R.D.O., right?).  After that we see the verb “recorrer” used in the form of its participle “recorrido”: “recorrer” really means “to travel through” and in this context is best translated as “wandered around” since she’s talking about the whole world and saying that you’ve traveled “through the world” would get the message across, but not very well.

“Vengo” is the present “yo” form of “venir” and I’m mentioning it I suppose because it has an irregular conjugation. “Viajé” is the preterit “yo” form of “viajar” which means “to travel”.  Now, “hasta” is a bit interesting because of what it usually means and how it’s actually used here when she says “Viajé de Bahrein hasta Beirut”: it literally means “until” but is often used the way we would use “to” in the context of “from ___ to ___” as it is here where she’s saying “from Bahrein to Beirut”. “Desde” means “from” or “since” and is often seen used in conjunction with “hasta” as it is here: “Fuí desde el norte hasta el polo sur”.

Next, “encontré” is the preterit of “encontrar” which means “to find”, and then we get to “Como los que tienes tú”: “los” is the plural version of “lo” which is a direct object pronoun used in a way in Spanish that’s kind of hard to explain, but it’s sort of like how we use “that” in a very specific context: “that which is”, so in this case “los que _____” means “those which  ______”, so “Como los que tienes tú” literally means “those which you have”.

Right, next verse:

Rabbul samae, fecal rajae
Fe aynaha aral hayati
Ati elaica men hazal caouni
Arjouca rabbi, labbi nadae

That’s the Arabic, and the above is the best transcription of it I could find, if you speak Arabic and want to help with that or the following translation, you’re more than welcome to in the comments.  Here’s the translation I found for it:

Lord of the sky, I’m calling you
In his eyes I see my life
I come to you from this world
Oh God, please answer my call

Next:

Viajé de Bahrein hasta Beirut
Fuí desde el norte hasta el polo sur
y no encontré ojos así
como los que tienes tú

Which is just a repeat of what we’ve already heard. Next.

Ayer vi pasar una mujer
debajo de su camello
Un río de sal y un barco
abandonado en el desierto
ya he ya he ya la he
Y vi pasar tus ojos negros
ya he ya he ya la he
Y ahora sí que no
puedo vivir sin ellos yo

Which means:

Yesterday I saw a woman passing
underneath her camel
A river of salt and a boat
abandoned in the desert
And I saw your black eyes pass by
And now I cannot
live without them

You’ll notice that she says “vi pasar una mujer” where “vi” is the preterit of “ver” (“to see”), which is fine, but then you see the infinitive, “pasar” (“to pass” in this case), being used oddly where we would say “passing”: the infinitive in Spanish can be used in this way, and often is as opposed to the strictly correct gerund–the gerund is the “-ing” version of a word, and is represented in Spanish by adding “ando” to “-ar” verbs and “iendo” for “-ir” and “-er” verbs, so the proper gerund of “pasar” in this case would be “pasando”, but it’s not used because the more common way of saying that would be to just use the infinitive as she did.  The gerund is, by far, most commonly used in conjunction with “estar” (scroll down to the 14th definition, lol it’s there) to express the fact that something is being done right now at that very moment, e.g. “Sí, estoy escuchando” = “Yes, I’m listening”, or “Estoy barriendo el suelo” = “I’m sweeping the floor” whereas “Barro el suelo” more likely means “I’ll sweep the floor [in a minute]“.

“Debajo” means “below” or “underneath” in this case.  Then everything is normal until we get down to “Y ahora sí que no” where we again see “sí” used emphatically (instead of to mean “yes” as it normally would) which we covered earlier.

The next verses are just repeats of what we’ve covered before:

Le pido al cielo sólo un deseo
Que en tus ojos yo pueda vivir
He recorrido ya el mundo entero
y una cosa te vengo a decir
Viajé de Bahrein hasta Beirut
Fuí desde el norte hasta el polo sur
y no encontré ojos así
Como los que tienes tú

Rabbul samae, fecal rajae
Fe aynaha aral hayati
Ati elaica men hazal caouni
Arjouca rabbi, labbi nadae

Viajé de Bahrein hasta Beirut
Fuí desde el norte hasta el polo sur
y no encontré ojos así
como los que tienes tú

Rabbul samae, fecal rajae
Fe aynaha aral hayati
Ati elaica men hazal caouni
Arjouca rabbi, labbi nadae

Viajé de Bahrein hasta Beirut
Fuí desde el norte hasta el polo sur
y no encontré ojos así
como los que tienes tú

Le pido al cielo sólo un deseo
Que en tus ojos yo pueda vivir
He recorrido ya el mundo entero
y una cosa te vengo a decir
Viajé de Bahrein hasta Beirut
Fuí desde el norte hasta el polo sur
y no encontré ojos así
Como los que tienes tú

Yes.  Lots of repeat, I know (I’m actually happy because that makes my job of translating and analyzing this stuff that much easier ), but…we’re done!  I have to admit, I really love that song, and I also think Shakira looks waaaaaay better as a brunette, especially with the dreadlocks and everything, definitely hot (she looks good as a blonde as well, but I still prefer her with her natural color).

Oh, by the way, regarding the Arabic in this song, you do know that Shakira is part Lebanese, right? Her father is of Lebanese descent, she does speak some Arabic, and she’s always had Middle Eastern influence on her music and performances.  In fact, from the section of her Wikipedia article that talks about her influences:

She has also been influenced by her Arab heritage, which was a major inspiration for her breakthrough world hit “Ojos Así“. She told Portuguese TV “Many of my movements belong to Arab culture.”

Very cool, huh?

Ok, well that’s the last Shakira post that I’ve got in the queue, and I’d really like to hear some suggestions from my readers about which artist or video I ought to do next (you guys do seem to like these types of posts, yes?), I might try to find some clips from movies or TV shows, it doesn’t have to be a music video.  Let me know in the comments!

The secrets of how to use free online resources to teach yourself Spanish, from home, in just a few months - Also: Here are the internet's Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources

I run a newsletter entirely about how to learn Spanish online for free where I send out every cool new tip and technique that I learn to my subscribers and not only do they get it before anyone else but frequently they get things that no one else ever does. Additionally, I've spent a great deal of time putting together a 3-part series of articles for you on the internet's best free resources for the Spanish-learner that you'll get when you sign up for my newsletter--in addition to all of what you get below, I'll be sure to send you any updates about cool new sites, resources, and learning tips and techniques that I come up with:

Part 1: An article called “Spanish Learning Systems: Should you bother?” about whether or not you should even bother with a pre-packaged Spanish-learning system (e.g. Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur) and, if you do decide you want to, where you can go online to find programs that are literally 1/10th the price of older, more common systems like Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur but actually work even better. Also, at the same time, you’ll get a separate e-mail with a very long list of my favorite Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources (tools, references, sites with free lessons, articles, blogs, forums, etc.) that's far to long to include here, especially with all the other stuff I've got below that's just on this site alone, and I'd like to offer it to you (completely free, you don't have to do anything other than sign up) right now.

Part 2: I explain what language exchanges are (essentially they allow you free access to an unlimited number of native speakers to practice your Spanish with), why they're absolutely essential if you're teaching yourself (I'm serious when I say this: it's impossible to get fluent without them if you're learning a foreign language on your own), how to use them, and which ones are the best.

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Related Posts:

• Learning Spanish from Music Videos: Shakira’s ‘Te Aviso, Te Anuncio’ aka ‘Objection (Tango)’
• Learning Spanish From Music Videos: Shakira’s ‘Suerte’
• Learning Spanish from Music Videos: Juanes’ ‘Yerbatero’ Dissected

And now we get to the second installment of our “learning Spanish from music videos” thing I’m doing based roughly on The Telenovela Method where we use popular entertainment media like music, TV shows, and movies to learn Spanish.  The first installment was based on Shakira’s ‘La Tortura’, which you should check out there if you haven’t already.

This time it’s Shakira’s ‘Suerte’ (next time I might pick a different artist, though I’ve already started listening to ‘Ojos Asi’, so you may have to put up with Shakira one more time before we move onto someone else) and it shouldn’t be as long as the ‘La Tortura’ post, but no promises.  “Suerte“, by the way, means “luck/lucky”.  The theme of the song, again, is some guy she likes, except this time instead of giving him the boot (“a otro perro con ese hueso!”, haha) for banging some other chick, she’s professing her love, acknowledging her shortcomings (small breasts that cannot be confused with mountains ), and begging him to stay with her if he feels the same way.  Let’s dive right in.

The video

The way I want you to do this is to play it once all the way through, then let’s look at it one stanza at a time, and translate it.  Now, go back and play the stanza we just analyzed several times and see if you can hear and understand everything being said, then go on to the next one.

(Please note: if you’re in a country where this video is blocked for you try here, here, or here)

And here’s the first stanza and then the translation:

Suerte que en el Sur hayas nacido
Y que burlemos las distancias

Which translates to:

It’s lucky that you were born in the south [meaning South America]
and that we can overcome the distance

Ok, the first thing you’ll notice is the use of the subjunctive–which I’ll be making a separate, and very comprehensive, post on quite shortly it’s now up: The Spanish Subjunctive Explained–with the verb “hayas”, which means “you have” and is in the subjunctive because she’s saying that it’s lucky that this happened, which is a personal expression of opinion and therefore requires the subjunctive.  “Nacido” is the past participle of the verb “nacer“, which means to be born.

The next word we come to is a bit tricky, and I honestly have to admit I’m not sure I’ve nailed the translation (if not, I’m sure I’ll hear about it in the comments ): burlar.  Its primary definition is “to evade”, however it could also mean “to make fun of or mock”, and in this case it could be either one, however I personally think that “evade” or “get around”, i.e. “overcome”, makes more sense–maybe they’re making fun of the distance between them, but it makes more sense to me that she’s saying that they’re lucky they got around it.  Also, “burlemos” is the present subjunctive form of “burlar” (the subjunctive gets a lot of play in this song).

Next stanza:

Suerte que es haberte conocido
Y por ti amar tierras extrañas

Which means:

It’s lucky that I have known you
and because of you I love foreign lands

“Conocido” is the past participle of “conocer” which means “to know [a person]” (“saber” is used when referring to facts). “Por” in this case means “for” as in “because of”, “amar” means “to love”, though I should point out that when Spanish-speakers want to say that they love somebody (lover, wife, parent, child, etc.), they say “te quiero”, not “te amo”; “amar” has a bit more of a deep, poetic connotation to it and can come off as kind of cheesy or weird if not used properly and, also, it’s only used to express romantic love.

Next:

Yo puedo escalar los Andes solo
Por ir a contar tus lunares

Which translates to:

I can climb the Andes alone
to go and count your moles

“Escalar” means to climb, “los Andes” obviously refers to the Andes mountains (remember, Shakira is Colombian and the Andes cut right through Colombia), a “lunar” in this case is a mole or beauty mark.

Next:

Contigo celebro y sufro todo
mis alegrías
Y mis males
Lo ro lo le lo le
Lo ro lo le lo le

Sabes que
Estoy a tus pies

Which means:

With you I celebrate and suffer everything
The good times and the bad

le ro lo le etc. etc.

You know that I’m at your feet.

“Contigo” is a contraction of “con” and “tú” (you would never say “con tú”, you’d always say “contigo”), “celebrar” means to celebrate, “suffrir” means to suffer, so far so good.

Now we come to “alegrías” and “males”, which is where it gets tricky because there isn’t really a good direct English translation of either of these words, “joy” is pretty close for “alegría” but it more literally means “happy things” or “happy times” depending on the context, and the same thing with “males” which is the plural of “mal” which is normally an adjective that simply means “bad”, though it can also be a noun, as it is in this case, that means “bad things” or “bad times”.

Lastly, you see the previously mentioned “saber” being used here to state a fact: that she’s at his feet (“sabes que estoy a tus pies”).

Next:

Contigo, mi vida
Quiero vivir la vida
Lo que me queda de vida
Quiero vivir contigo

Which means:

With you, my dear [lit. "life"]
I want to live life
What I have left of life
I want to live with you

You see “contigo” again, “vida” literally means “life” and in this first use (“contigo, mi vida”) it’s used to refer to her lover, she’s say that he’s “her life”, then it’s immediately used in its literal sense, I’m sure on purpose, sort of like someone saying “I love you, my love” where “love” is first used as a verb and then as a pronoun.

She then says “Lo que me queda de vida”: we’ve discussed what it means when you see “lo” used like this in the previous ‘La Tortura’ post, but we’ll quickly revisit it: “lo” is a direct object pronoun used in a way in Spanish that’s kind of hard to explain, but it’s sort of like how we use “that” in a very specific context: “that which is”, so in this case “lo que _____” means “that which ______”, so “lo que me queda de vida” literaly means “that which I have left of life”, got it?

Oh, and in case you didn’t figure it out, “quedar” means “to be left or remain”, so in this case with it being reflexive towards “me”, it means “what’s left to me / what remains for me”.

Next verse:

Suerte que es tener labios sinceros
Para besarte con mas ganas
Suerte que mis pechos sean pequeños
Y no los confundas con montañas

And that translates to:

It’s lucky that I have sincere lips
So I can kiss you passionately
Lucky that my breasts are small
And that you don’t confuse them with mountains

“Labio” means “lip”, “sincero”, as you’ve likely guessed, means “sincere” or “honest”.  “Besar” means “to kiss”, and tacking the “te” on the end means “to kiss you”.

Now, the “con mas ganas” part is the one that’s going to require a bit of explanation: much to my consternation, I can’t find a Spanish dictionary anywhere that recognizes “ganas” as a noun, but it is a noun and it’s used as a noun here in this particular instance.  Normally it would be the present “tu” form of “ganar“, which means “to win”, but not in this case.  I personally, from experience and context, would translate it as “enthusiasm”, “appetite”, or “passion”, and now I just tried plugging it into a couple translation engines and they recognize it as a noun and all three of them (Google, Yahoo, and Babel) define it as “desire” which is one I didn’t think of and would probably work just as well as my translation of “passion” in that I could’ve translated that sentence as: “So I can kiss you with more desire”.

After that we get to…boobies!  Indeed.  No clue why she says this, but she does: “pechos” means “breasts” (in the sense of a woman’s breasts), but do remember that “pecho”, singular, just means “chest” in the normal sense (I know you want to know so I’ll tell you: “tetas” is how you say “tits” or “boobs”).  “Los” is the plural of the previously explained direct object pronoun “lo” and refers to her breasts, “confundir” means “to confuse”, and “montaña” means “mountain”.  Next!

The following stanza is:

Suerte que herede las piernas firmes
Para correr si me hace falta,
Y estos dos ojos que me dicen
Que han de llorar cuando te vayas

Which means:

It’s lucky that I inherited strong legs
so that I can run if I need to
and these two eyes tell me
that they have to cry when you leave

Now we run into a verb you likely haven’t heard before, “heredar“, which means “to inherit” and isn’t especially notable except for the fact that you don’t hear it often – it can mean to inherit either money or a certain physical or personality trait from your parents.  “Pierna” is “leg”, “firma” means “strong” or “firm” depending on the context (in this case I think “strong” makes more sense, though they do look quite firm as well ).

Then we come to “Para correr si me hace falta”: “correr” means “to run”, but where it gets complicated is at “me hace falta”…now, this particular phrase, “hacer falta”, can have multiple meanings: usually, it’s used to indicate that something’s needed, necessary, lacking, or missing (see the 2nd definition of “falta” under “also: hacer falta”), e.g. “me hace falta suerte” which means “I need some luck” or “Me hace falta sucra” which means “I’m lacking sugar” or “I need some sugar”. The reason for this is that the secondary definiton of “falta”, after the primary definition of “mistake”, is “lack or absence”, and since “hacer” means “to make or do” when you say “hacer falta” you’re “making lack” or “making need/necessity”. Now, when you put “me” before a verb it becomes reflexive back on you so that whatever that verb is doing, it’s doing to you, and so consequently when you say “me hace falta” you’re literally saying “it makes a lack for me” or “it creates an absence for/to me”, you see? It sorta makes sense, haha.

Next, she goes on to talk about his eyes (how typical) and says “Y es que tus dos ojos me dicen que han de llorar cuando te vayas”: “ojo” means “eye”, that’s simple, but what’s this “han de llorar”?  Well, “llorar” means “to cry”, that’s easy enough, but the use of “haber” here is rather odd: in this case it means “to have to”, as in “to have to cry”–normally that’s expressed with “tener que”, but if you’ll scroll down to the 3rd definition for haber (here) you’ll see:

haber de hacer algo -> to have to do something

So it can be used to express obligation, to say “to have to”, but it’s unusual and I’ll tell you that 98% of the time I’ve heard someone say that someone has to do something in Spanish, they’ve used “tener que”, not “haber de”, but it can (and is, obviously) done, so it should be noted.

Lastly, we get to “te vayas” which is the present tú subjunctive of “irse” which is a very common Spanish way of saying “to go” in reference to a person leaving to go somewhere and makes sense if you think about it: it’s reflexive, so again the verb is doing whatever it is it does to the person that the reflexive pronoun represents, in this case that verb is “ir” and so “se va”, for example, literally means “you make yourself go” or “me voy” means “I make myself go” (FYI “me voy” is a very common way of saying “I’m leaving”).

Now…you’ll notice that in this particular case it’s in the subjunctive (“te vayas” instead of “te vas”)–why?  Well, she says “cuando te vayas” meaning “when you leave”, but his leaving isn’t certain, it’s very much an if/when-you-leave sort of thing, it’s unknown, it’s not a concrete thing, he isn’t scheduled to depart at precisely 9 AM the next morning so therefore we have uncertainty and therefore we have…the subjunctive! Yaaaaay!

Next:

Le ro lo le lo le
Le ro lo le lo le

Sabes que
Estoy a tus pies

This is just a repeat chorus, we’ve covered this.  Next.

Le ro lo le lo le
La felicidad tiene tu nombre
y tu piel

The word for “happiness” in Spanish is “la felicidad”, and the word for “skin” is “piel”, so what she’s saying here when she literally says “happiness has your name and your skin” is that happiness is, to her, the sound of his name and the feel of his skin against hers…daaaawwwwww, so cute (it’s late, I’m getting weird).

The next, and final verse (though it’s repeated a couple times) is:

Ya sabes, mi vida
Estoy hasta el cuello por ti
Si sientes algo así
Quiero que te quedes junto a mi

Which means:

You already know, my love [lit. "my life"]
I’m up to my neck because of you
If you feel the same way
I want you to stay together with me

As you should already know, “ya” means “still” or “already”, and as we mentioned previously “mi vida” can be used to mean “my love” because in this case she’s saying “my life” in that he is her life, so that’s why we translated it that way.

Now, “estoy hasta el cuello”: “hasta” means “until”, “up to”, or “as far as” and “cuello” means “neck”, so she’s saying she’s up to her neck because of him (up to her neck with what, I don’t know–I’m honestly not quite sure what she’s trying to say here).  Then she says “si siente algo así” (“sentir” means “to feel”) which literally means “if you feel something like this”, because “algo” means “something” and “así” means “this way or like this”.

Next she says “Quiero que te quedes junto a mi” which is something like “I want that you keep yourself together with me” because, as we’ve discussed, “quedar” means “to remain or keep” and “junto” means “together”.  Now, when “quedar” is made to be reflexive, as in this case, it means “to stay” (if you’ll look at the definition for “quedar” and scroll waaay down to the heading “Pronomial Verb”, you’ll see it) in the personal sense because the verb (“to keep”) is being done to the person it’s reflexive upon, so when you say “te quedes” you’re saying “you keep yourself” meaning “you stay” and…did you notice something else? “te quedes” is in the subjunctive Why?  Because when she says “Quiero que te quedes” she’s making a wish (first letter in W.E.I.R.D.O., right?), she’s expressing a desire, and that always requires the subjunctive.

That’s it folks, we’re done.  Again, I congratulate you if you’ve made it this far because if you have you’ve learned a lot of Spanish in the process.  I’ve got a bunch of posts in the queue and I’ll begin work on doing another one of these posts for Shakira’s Ojos Así (there’s the video if you want to get started ahead of time–doesn’t she look better as a brunette, her natural color? I think so…like the dreadlocks on her, too) so look for that in a week or two (do I even need to tell you? Subscribe if you haven’t, then you’ll know!).  Thanks again for taking the time to read this.

The secrets of how to use free online resources to teach yourself Spanish, from home, in just a few months - Also: Here are the internet's Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources

I run a newsletter entirely about how to learn Spanish online for free where I send out every cool new tip and technique that I learn to my subscribers and not only do they get it before anyone else but frequently they get things that no one else ever does. Additionally, I've spent a great deal of time putting together a 3-part series of articles for you on the internet's best free resources for the Spanish-learner that you'll get when you sign up for my newsletter--in addition to all of what you get below, I'll be sure to send you any updates about cool new sites, resources, and learning tips and techniques that I come up with:

Part 1: An article called “Spanish Learning Systems: Should you bother?” about whether or not you should even bother with a pre-packaged Spanish-learning system (e.g. Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur) and, if you do decide you want to, where you can go online to find programs that are literally 1/10th the price of older, more common systems like Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur but actually work even better. Also, at the same time, you’ll get a separate e-mail with a very long list of my favorite Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources (tools, references, sites with free lessons, articles, blogs, forums, etc.) that's far to long to include here, especially with all the other stuff I've got below that's just on this site alone, and I'd like to offer it to you (completely free, you don't have to do anything other than sign up) right now.

Part 2: I explain what language exchanges are (essentially they allow you free access to an unlimited number of native speakers to practice your Spanish with), why they're absolutely essential if you're teaching yourself (I'm serious when I say this: it's impossible to get fluent without them if you're learning a foreign language on your own), how to use them, and which ones are the best.

Part 3: I cover chat rooms which are specifically devoted to connecting you with native Spanish speakers who want to learn English so you can chat with them in Spanish (and they'll help and correct you) and then you do the same for them with their English (these are completely free to use, but rather hard to find, but I'll tell you where the best ones are!). Sign up below!



Also, if you like what you see here PLEASE SUBSCRIBE to my Twitter feed and/or RSS feed so you can be updated any time there’s a new post.

Cheers,

Andrew

Related Posts:

• Learning Spanish from Music Videos: Juanes’ ‘Yerbatero’ Dissected
• Learning Spanish from Music Videos: Shakira’s ‘Te Aviso, Te Anuncio’ aka ‘Objection (Tango)’
• Learning Spanish from Music Videos: Shakira’s “Ojos Así”