This is the Holy Grail for Spanish-learners: Spanish videos with Spanish subtitles (movies, TV shows, whatever), or with an exact transcript in Spanish of what was said (the two are functionally the same given our purpose here).  Why are Spanish subtitles so important? Because, as someone learning Spanish, you can’t understand everything they’re saying and if you can’t understand what they said, and you don’t have it written down in front of you, then you can’t look it up in order to learn it – English subtitles might give you a clue as to what was said, but Spanish subtitles would be best they tell you the precise Spanish being used so you can look up and learn anything you don’t know.  Here I have for you a list of places you can watch Spanish videos with subtitles in Spanish, most of which are free.

I discovered that myself a long time ago, and it’s why I used to recommended movies to people over TV shows or just about anything else, because you could get Spanish-language movies on DVD with Spanish subtitles; they’re not that rare, after going through hundreds of Spanish-language movies on Amazon I found that about one in three had Spanish subtitles (a great example is Pan’s Labyrinth, I love that movie).  It is now, thankfully, easier and cheaper than ever to find foreign-language media with subtitles in the language spoken (lucky for us Spanish has the most available aside from English), plus you can even get social media like YouTube and Instagram videos with verbatim subtitles and/or transcripts.  Netflix, in particular, has gotten so much better about doing this, most movies and shows they offer now have subs in the language spoken, which is wonderful if you’re trying to learn that language.  Even the machine-generated subtitles, like what YouTube offers, are now more than good enough for what we want to do (they used to be absolute crap).

It took me a little over a year to scrape together a list for you guys (lots of help from readers like you sending me suggestions), but I’ve finally got a respectable-sized list for you guys.  Just like my List of Best Free Sites to Watch Spanish TV Online, I will be constantly updating and adding to this list, so bookmark it and check back in on it occasionally.

Subtitles vs. Transcripts

There’s no difference, don’t worry about it, that’s why I haven’t distinguished between the two in the list below and the ones with transcripts instead of subtitles are mixed in with the ones with subtitles.  A transcript is just a word-for-word copy of precisely what was said in the language that it was said in, so if you think about it subtitles are just a transcript that’s been embedded into the video for you and synced up so that you see the line as it’s being said, that’s all.  They’re functionally the same for our purposes here.

The List

Alright, here we go!

Spanish TV Shows and Telenovelas (“telenovela” is Spanish for “soap opera”)

1. Check out Yabla for Spanish videos with Spanish subtitles and so much more.  This is a fantastic website and my top recommendation if you’re looking for Spanish videos to learn Spanish with.  I emphasize the last part because that’s specifically and solely what this site is designed for, and it’s the only one on this list that is solely intended for that purpose.  What they do is take Spanish-language media that was originally produced in Spanish-speaking countries and intended for native speakers (TV shows, movies, news casts, cartoons, documentaries, etc.) and then integrate them into a whole Spanish-learning interface they have that allows you to see word-for-word Spanish subtitles and their English translation at the same time  (you can turn either or both off while watching the video), plus you can click on any word in the subtitles and it will automatically pull up the definition in the dictionary next to the video player as well as add that word to your flashcards for later review.  They also include a vocabulary learning game, quizzes, and a flashcard system that’s very easy to use and all on the same page as the video you’re watching.

Also, I did a whole extensive review of Yabla here that I recommend you check out if this sounds like something that might interest you, plus you can just go on over to their site and try out the free demo videos.  Oh, and they do provide volume discounts for educators and organizations.

Quick note: I made separate sections down below for movies, children’s shows/cartoons, and documentaries but I should note right now that Yabla has all of those in addition to Spanish TV shows, I just didn’t want to be listing them under all 3 sections and make it seem like I was pushing them a little too hard.

2.  Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu.  I’m grouping them all together because…well, they’re pretty much all the same thing (type of service), aren’t they?  Anymore, for me, Netflix, YouTube, and RTVE are where I’m getting all my Spanish-language content (and a bit on Instagram, too).  For lots of great YouTube content see my post about Spanish-speaking YouTubers who are great for intermediate Spanish practice (most offer Spanish subs), my whole category dedicated to learning Spanish on YouTube, as well as this list of YouTube channels that teach Spanish.

I’m not familiar with Hulu at all so I can’t comment (those who are, please do comment, below, in the comments), but I have both Netflix and Amazon Prime and…Netflix wins handily.  It’s no-contest.  Amazon’s offerings in general are not as good as Netflix (I really only watch The Grand Tour there), nowhere near as good in fact, and this is doubly so in their foreign-language selection: go with Netflix.

Now, that said…what Netflix movies and series can I recommend here and now?  Several!

• Narcos (and now, Narcos Mexico) – it’s about the drug war, obviously.  The original series was set in Colombia during the 1980s and 1990s and dealt with Pablo Escobar, the Medellin Cartel, and then the Cali Cartel.  The new one about Mexico I couldn’t tell you about because I haven’t seen it.  Subtitles are available in both Spanish and English.  Spanish is mainly spoken but you get a repreive every now and then when the DEA agents are on-screen and they speak English.  The Spanish is, obviously, almost entirely Colombian, mostly Paisa dialect since it’s largely based in and around Medellin.  Wikipedia (Narcos) | Rotten Tomatoes (Narcos) | IMDB (Narcos) | MetaCritic (Narcos).
  Wikipedia (Narcos Mexico) | Rotten Tomatoes (Narcos Mexico) | IMDB (Narcos Mexico) | MetaCritic (Narcos Mexico).
• La Casa de Papel – This is about a robbery of the Spanish mint.  I’ve only seen the first episode but it does look really good and is very highly recommended elsewhere.  The Spanish is Iberian (Spanish from Spain).  Wikipedia | Rotten Tomatoes | IMDB | MetaCritic doesn’t have an entry for it.
• El Club de Cuervos.  A Mexican comedy-drama web TV series. The story centers on the football club Cuervos FC, based in the fictional city of Nuevo Toledo, Mexico, and the power struggle that follows the death of its long-time owner and patriarch. Wikipedia | IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes.
• El Tiempo Entre Costuras.  The story of a woman who became a spy against the Nazis and their allies in WWII.  Wikipedia | Rotten Tomatoes | IMDB.  It should be noted this series is based on a highly acclaimed book by the same title.
• El Gran Hotel. Mystery Drama in a nice, old hotel.  Per Google: “Set in Spain in the early 20th century, Julio arrives at a luxury hotel to meet his sister, head chambermaid Cristina only to discover she has disappeared. Julio makes it his mission to find her and infiltrates the hotel under the guise of a footman.”  Wikipedia | IMDB.

We really must move on.  I’ve many more but I think what I’ll do is make a separate post out of that list and then link it here later.  Stay tuned (subscribe, please!).

3. RTVE. This is Spain’s state-owned corporate television station, very similar to the BBC in the U.K. or PBS here in the U.S.  They’re the largest and most popular broadcaster in Spain, and they show a wide variety of news, documentaries, fictional dramas, reality shows, etc.  Since they’re state-funded, there’s no profit motive and therefore less motivation on their part to restrict who can watch their products, from where, and through which medium.  Consequently, their website, RTVE.es, offers a lot of material that’s all in Spanish and free to view by anybody, anywhere in the world.

4. TeleMundo has Spanish subtitles on some of their shows and videos that are available to watch for free via their website and on YouTube.  Here’s their YouTube channel: Telemundo en YouTube.  Currently, as best I can tell, just their telenovelas have Spanish subtitles on YouTube.  Additionally it appears that they’re currently only putting the first of five parts of each episode on YouTube, not the whole episode, which sucks I know but it’s better than nothing and the full episodes are still available on their website. Thanks to Jennie for being the first to alert me to their YouTube channel.

If you want to use their website, the way you get to them is to simply choose a video and then, once it starts playing, click on the “CC” button on the bottom right and then select “Español” (Spanish).  An important note: I’ve found that you have to wait for the actual episode to start, the subtitles don’t work for advertisements.  I’m not sure how many of their videos they’ve done this for, it appears that all the recent episodes of all of their telenovelas have them (the older episodes don’t appear to), and some of their other shows as well (but not all, they haven’t done it for any of the sporting events).  The way you get to the videos is to just hover your mouse arrow over “Videos” in the blue toolbar at the top, then select a show or type of show from the drop-down menu that appears.  You can also go to the ‘shows’ section and browse around there.  Credit for the original find of the videos on their website goes to a reader who e-mailed me about it: thanks, Darcy!

5. Univision – Univision has now joined the party!  Yay!  They are now putting all of their telenovelas online, for free, and with both Spanish and English subtitles, though you do need to sign in with a participating cable provider (Cox, AT&T, Dish Network, and many others are on the list) to be able to view the full episodes.   Also it does just appear to be the telenovelas right now that have subtitles, not the rest of their shows (regrettably–I’m waiting for the day that Spanish news videos and other TV shows are available online with Spanish subtitles).

6. Destinos – Yes, Destinos!  How many of you remember this from your high school Spanish classes?  Haha!  This is such a fantastic series and just absolutely perfect for beginning to intermediate Spanish learners (which is precisely who it was designed for, what a coincidence).  What’s really cool is that the wonderful people who made it and own the copyright have decided to make it available online for free for everyone to watch, and they’ve finally gotten around to not only completely redesigning their website (it really used to be crap) but also adding Spanish subtitles.

What is it?  Well, I really recommend you just read the Wikipedia article on it, but in short: Destinos is a Spanish TV show consisting of a series of 52 episodes, each about half an hour long, that was specifically designed by Professor Bill Van Patten who was, at the time, Professor of Spanish and Second Language Acquisition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to help teach Spanish to beginning and intermediate learners.  The Spanish used in the series is very clearly spoken at a rate of speed that I would classify as being at the low end of normal for native speakers (that is, it’s slow, but not abnormally slow), which makes it very easy to understand even for beginning learners (and with the addition of the subtitles, nobody should have a problem quickly and easily determining what was said).  The story and acting are pretty good (regarding special effects and such: it was 1992 and this was a low-budget educational film, cut them some slack, eh? haha), and I really like that the whole story is spread across 4 different Spanish-speaking countries (they did this intentionally so you would be exposed to a variety of dialects and accents, very clever and an excellent educational technique in my opinion): Spain, Argentina, Puerto Rico, and Mexico.

To watch the entire series online just go to the Destinos homepage, select which series of episodes you’re on from the bottom, then select the specific episode once you’re on that series’ page.  To turn on the Spanish subtitles, wait until the video loads (I’ve found this can take a bit, like 10-30 seconds or so) and then just hover over “CC” in the bottom right hand corner of the video window and select “On- English” – yes, you will get Spanish subtitles.  I don’t know why they messed with this since I last checked but they did: selecting “On – English” doesn’t just get you English subtitles, it gets you subtitles in general, that is when Spanish is being spoken you’ll get word-for-word Spanish subtitles and when English is being spoken you’ll get word-for-word English subtitles.

7. BBC’s Mi Vida Loca – This is a fantastic little show put together by the BBC specifically intended for the sole purpose of teaching Spanish to complete beginners.  It’s filled with drama and action, it’s very interesting and entertaining, you learn a lot about Spanish culture, and it is absolutely not boring.  It’s not just Spanish videos with subtitles in Spanish, they’ve also got numerous tools and activities to help you learn Spanish in addition to offering Spanish and English subtitles for the whole thing (you can have both turned on at the same time! note the screenshots I took below), such as an interactive (human) phrasebook that pops in here and there to teach you important vocabulary and grammar rules that you’re about to see used, as well as quizzes and exercises you can do.  This is really a wonderful resource, especially if you’re a beginner, I can’t recommend it enough.

English and Spanish subtitles:

Interactive phrasebook:

8. Extr@ (this is a YouTube channel that has all 13 episodes with subtitles in Spanish) – This is a TV show in Spanish specifically designed for Spanish learners, the actors speak slowly and clearly and use vocabulary that’s not too advanced.  I’d say it’s intended for beginner and intermediate adult learners, probably high school and college level, so it’s perfect for most of you.  A summary of the plot, from Wikipedia:

“Sam, with only a very basic grasp of the featured language, comes to stay with his penpal, Lola. Sam’s efforts to get to grips with the language provide the central dynamic for the series’ language learning content. The series is particularly suitable for adolescents and young adults who can relate to the contextual setting and implied meanings in the screenplay.”

I originally found out about this thanks to a reader, Robin, posting a link in the comments below to another YouTube channel that has all the episodes (albeit without subtitles) and then my friend and fellow language blogger, Jennie of ielanguages.com (who has recently started learning Spanish), decided to be awesome and popped in with the transcripts and another YouTube channel that had the videos with subtitles, which is the one I first linked to above.  Here are the transcripts and more (look to the menu on the left for them as well links to the same for other episodes in that series):

Series 1

Series 2

Series 3

Music Videos

I can’t possibly list every single Spanish music video that includes the lyrics, but I will give you some examples and then show you how you can obtain the lyrics for nearly any other one that you want even if the video doesn’t include them.

Of course I have to throw in some Shakira videos…

Here’s La Tortura with lyrics

And Inevitable

Ciega, Sordomuda

Antes de las Seis

Suerte

Te Aviso, Te Anuncio

Ojos Así

And for the Juanes fans there are a ton, including…

A Dios Le Pido

Y Es por Ti

Fotografía

…and many more, just search YouTube for “Juanes letras” (“letras” is Spanish for “lyrics”, and you want to search in Spanish because of course you want the Spanish lyrics not an English translation which is what will frequently come up if you say “lyrics” instead of “letras”).

Where to find lyrics for nearly any song

There are several popular sites for looking up lyrics that have them for nearly every song that’s ever been even somewhat popular (English, Spanish, French, etc., doesn’t matter).  Check out…

https://www.lyrics.com/

https://www.azlyrics.com/

http://www.songlyrics.com/

https://genius.com/

http://www.metrolyrics.com/

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/

Spanish Children’s Stories and Spanish Cartoons

1. BookBox – Fantastic little site, though they’ve only got 13 videos right now.  What they do is make an animated video based on a children’s story into a video and then read that story out loud during the video.  All videos have complete subtitles and are available in numerous languages.  Just look directly underneath the bottom right side of the video on the front page and you’ll see a menu where you can select whatever language you want.  When you select Spanish the horizontal menu below should change and say “View 13 Stories in Spanish”, then just select whichever story you’d like to listen to.  You can also get directly to these by going to their YouTube channel, and if you’d like the Spanish ones you can just go to their playlist of them here.

Spanish News with Spanish Subtitles (or transcripts)

1. EuroNews – Fantastic site, they provide videos in one of several available languages and then there are transcripts directly below each video.  My link goes to the Spanish version of the site, the main homepage is here where you can select from various languages using the menu at the very top left of the page, the default is English.

2. United Nations Multimedia Page for Spanish – Here you can find videos and radio broadcasts in Spanish, all of which have transcripts with them, plus the videos have subtitles in Spanish, just click the little “CC” button at the bottom of the video.  Their YouTube channel is here, they have about four pages worth of videos.  Not bad, not the most riveting stuff in the world, but it works and you’ll learn about some things going on in the world.

Educational Videos in Spanish (lectures and documentaries)

1. Spanish TED Videos (118 pages of them at the time of this writing) – First contribution by a reader, and only a day after I first posted this–excellent.  Thank you, Dally.  TED, as many of you know, records and publishes free educational lectures and talks online.  The talks are in many different languages, their search function allows you to search by language, and most of their videos have subtitles, however…I did a little investigating before posting this and found that some videos had English subtitles, some videos had good Spanish subtitles (such as this one), some videos had crappy Spanish subtitles, and some videos had no subtitles at all.  So, you’ve been warned, you’re going to have to do some sifting.

Random Spanish Video Collections

Here is where there’s more sheer quantity than anything else.  Three of the sites I’ve found so far do something very similar: they just take random videos from wherever (usually YouTube) and then the users do subtitles for them for free.  Fantastic sites, they’re adding new videos all the time, and, of course, the biggest benefit is that they’re completely free.  The other two sites are run by educational institutes.  You will, with all of them however, have to sift through them and pick out what you want to watch (I, for one, am really not that picky since the primary purpose is for me to learn Spanish, so as long as it’s at least mildly interesting, I’m happy).

1. Amara aka  UniversalSubtitles.org – Wow.  I just found this one the other day, they currently list 4,626 videos in Spanish with Spanish subtitles (note that you can search and sort by language of the speakers and subtitle language using the search bar on the videos homepage, just pull the menu down and select your languages).  Again, these are just videos that people have found on YouTube and decided to do the subtitles for.  Note that you can sign up for an account and help subtitle videos of any language you speak.

2. Edustation.me’s Video Section – You’ll need to sign up for a free account to use this one, I believe.  Once you’ve done that, look at the menu at the top right and select the language that you’re learning where it says “Idioma para aprender”, then go to the homepage and click “Peliculas” on the bottom left hand side of the screen (between “Artículos” and “Fotos”).  They have a ton of videos there with subtitles, but again these are just YouTube videos that Spanish-speaking users have selected and elected to write up some subtitles for, the community does all the work (again, just like with Amara you, too, can sign up and help out by doing some subtitles in whatever languages you speak).

3. Rhinospike Spanish Transcriptions – Again, these are just a bunch of random videos and audio files that the users have decided to do transcripts for.  There appear to be about 70 transcriptions total.

4. Catálogo de voces hispánicas  by the Cervantes Institute – This is really cool in my opinion, this is a collection of videos of native speakers from all over the Spanish-speaking world speaking their dialect of Spanish, so you can hear and compare how people speak in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Guadalajara, Mexico; Bogotá, Colombia; and Barcelona, Spain; etc.  Each video sample includes a transcript, a list of linguistic characteristics of this particular type of Spanish, and some information about the location.

5. Spanish Proficiency Exercises from the University of Texas at Austin – As best I can tell this is part of their Spanish program.  They have a lot of these videos, all of which have transcripts.  From the website: “A complete index of video interviews and podcasts, as well as related grammar, vocabulary, and phrases contained in this site is listed below.  A topical grammar index and podcast help are also available.”  Each video not only has a transcript, but it also has an accompanying explanation of all the grammar and vocabulary used as well as an associated podcast of it.  This is essentially an entire Spanish course based on videos of native speakers speaking…which is actually pretty good, to be honest, and it’s free–you can’t argue with free.

6. YouTube Subtitler – Subtitles in Spanish – This is one sent to me by a language exchange partner in Colombia–thanks, Diana!  It’s the same thing as the first few, a community of people who subtitle YouTube videos for free in their spare time, basically just helping each other out by subtitling videos in their native language so that people who speak other languages will do the same for videos in their native language.  They have 20 videos per page and 500 pages of Spanish videos as of right now, so that means that they currently have right around 10,000 Spanish-language videos with Spanish subtitles.  This is probably one of the largest, if not the largest, of these sorts of sites that I’ve found yet.

Related Resources

An excellent course that would probably interest you if you’re just getting started in Spanish and want to focus on learning how to speak it with perfect pronunciation, that relies on immitating native speakers in the sort of media that’s on this list, is called The Mimic Method, specifically their “39 Elemental Sounds of Spanish”.  Check it out, try it, let me know if you like it.

Lastly, it just so happens that I wrote a book about precisely how to learn Spanish from the kind of popular media above!  It’s called The Telenovela Method and is available on Amazon, Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Scribd, and Goodreads (also, your local bookstore should be able to order a copy if you like).  The e-book version is about $7.99 and the paperback is about $14.99 (varies a bit by retailer).  It’s about how to use popular media of your choice (movies, TV shows, music, books, news, etc.) to learn Spanish on your own.  It’s centered almost entirely around online resources, the overwhelming majority of which are free (those that aren’t are very inexpensive and not necessary).  I called it The Telenovela Method because the popular media I initially used to learn most of my Spanish about nine years ago was telenovelas (that’s what soap operas are called in Spanish) because they were just about the only thing I could find that, occasionally at least, included subtitles in Spanish.  You don’t need to use telenovelas, no, pick what appeals to you.

Conclusion

Ok, that’s all I’ve got for now.  Please, if you know of any others, leave them in the comments and I’ll add them and give you credit, or if you notice that a link no longer works, please say so in the comments and I’ll fix it straight away.  Any comments left are e-mailed to me and I’ll see them very shortly, believe me I read all of them and respond to most of them, 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 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

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

Easy, but important…and often skipped.  That’s how I’d put this.  We all have a certain set of manners ingrained in us since birth by our society that we do automatically, things you do to be considered polite (e.g. saying “please” and “thank you” when appropriate, not cutting in line, etc.), and Spanish and English speaking cultures share many of those, but there are some they have that we don’t (and vice-versa) and those common manners in Spanish-speaking cultures are what we’re going to focus on today so that you don’t inadvertently offend someone at some point.

“Polite”

The closest equivalent in Spanish for our English word, “polite” is either “cortés” or “educado/educada”, depending on what it is you want to say (WordReference considers them synonyms so whatever difference there is between the two is slight).   “Educado”, which literally means “educated” but isn’t really used that way, it more often means that someone has good manners or is, as used to be said, “well groomed” or “well brought up”.   “Cortés” shares, I suspect, a root with “courteous”, and means the same thing but is less commonly used.  When I have heard it used by native speakers it seemed, to me, to mean simply that someone was a bit more formal than usual in their manners, whereas “educado” meant something more like “considerate and polite”.  There are other words, such as “amable” and “pulido” but those more accurately translate to their English equivalents of “amiable” and “polished”, respectively.  The term “educado” could be just as readily and accurately applied to the high-school dropout mechanic down the street as it could to a university professor, so it really doesn’t refer to the person’s education level, it refers to how well they were raised and brought up, which doesn’t just include manners and politeness, but mainly so.

Greetings

Upon meeting someone, depending on the circumstances, there are a number of greetings you can employ.  The first one that Spanish students are typically taught is “Buenos Dias” if it’s morning or  “Buenas Tardes/Noches” if it’s afternoon or evening, and then “hasta luego” upon departing.  Using one of these as the initial greeting or as a response to it (e.g. they say “buenas tardes” and you respond in kind) is is fine if you’re dealing with a shop clerks, waiters, etc. or if the person you’re greeting will likely only ever meet you this one time.

If it’s someone who you will almost certainly see again, such as a new coworker or a friend’s friend, then you’ll be expected to use a more personal acknowledgement of having met them, of which there are several that most Spanish students have been taught: mucho gusto (most common one and an excellent choice, this one’s always safe), tanto gusto, and…encantado/encantada.

A word about this encantado(a): in short, don’t use it outside of Spain, it basically translates to “enchanted” in Latin American Spanish and sounds about as goofy as saying “Enchanted!” upon meeting someone in English would sound.  I’ve noticed that a lot of Spanish texts, especially the sort used in high school and university Spanish classes, teach this word as if it’s a perfectly normal thing to say: it’s not (except in Spain where it is).  “Muchísimo gusto” would be appropriate for someone you’ve been dying to meet, such as the mother of your boyfriend/girlfriend that you’ve been going out with for 6 months and who you’ve heard “such wonderful things” about.

After this you’ll want to say some version of “How are you?” or “How’s it going”, here’s your list of options in order of most formal to least:

1. ¿Cómo está? or ¿Cómo está usted?
2. ¿Comó le va?
3. ¿Qué tal? or ¿Qué tal tu?
4. ¿Cómo estamos?
5. ¿Cómo estás?
6. ¿Qué hay de nuevo?
7. ¿Qué pasó? or ¿Qué pasa? (varies depending on country)
8. ¿Qué me cuentas? or ¿Qué me dices?
9. ¿Qué onda? or ¿Quiúbole? (Mexico and Carribean)
10. And last, my favorite and also from Mexico: ¿Qué pedo?, which literally means “What fart?”.  You don’t believe me, do you?  Good, I wouldn’t either, because it sounds ridiculous…however…it’s true!  Source 1, Source 2, and Source 3.

Please note that every one of those except the first one (“¿Cómo está?” and “Cómo está usted?”) are informal to some degree or another and imply that you have some level of friendship/familiarity with the person.

Nicknames

Obviously, if you’re using someone’s nickname with them, you’re being informal and friendly with them, but another thing to note is whether or not anyone else does the same, just like in English: if no one else calls José “Pepe”, then you shouldn’t either. Use generic nicknames only when you know the person well enough that you’re certain they won’t be offended (e.g. in some places, calling someone “viejo” which translates to “old man”, or “compadre” is like the U.S. English equivalent of “buddy” or “dude” or the British English equivalent of “mate”).

An interesting cultural note is that in Latin America women in the work place will often be referred to with affectionate, pet names by the men, such as “linda” (“cutie”) or “cariño” (“dear”) – this is one of many things that’s frequently looked down on in North America but isn’t in Latin America.  Just be aware of it.

Greeting Everyone

One of the most common manners in Spanish-speaking countries, especially Latin America, is this, though I’d argue that this is a common manner in general (I try to do this wherever I am).  Make sure you greet and say goodbye to everyone, even if they’re in a large group, whenever possible – to not do so can be seen as rude.

Also, on a related sidenote, shopkeepers and retail employees will frequently answer the phone with “A sus ordenes!” (“at your service” or, literally, “at your orders”).  I know this is extremely common in Colombia, though I can’t comment on elsewhere. Edit: In Argentina they’ll frequently answer with “¿Qué desea?” or “¿En qué lo puedo ayudar?” (thanks, cuentanueva 😉 ).

Should you use “Usted”, “Vos”, or “Tú”?

This is something that depends greatly on the region that you’re in or the one which the person you’re speaking to is from.  I strongly recommend you see my recent post, A Brief Guide to Regional Variation of the Forms of Address (Tú, Vos, Usted) in Spanish, for further information including a detailed breakdown by country.  This particular problem can, however, be solved most of the time with one very simple rule: if you would use “Mr.”, “Mrs.”, or “Ms.” with the person, then you use “usted”, if you would use their first name, then use “tú”, that’s it.

If you move into a new apartment or house, you may initially greet your neighbor as “Señor Garcia”, and you would certainly use “usted” for the time being, but if you later began addressing each other by first names and he became “Juan” to you, that is precisely when you would start using “tú” with him.

This applies even when you don’t know the person’s name, such as with a bartender, taxi driver, or cop: would you call your bartender “Mr. Smith” or would you call him “Joe”? “Joe”, right? Then you use “tú” with him.  A police officer you would almost always address as “Officer Smith”, and therefore you would use “usted” with them.

The one thing that will throw this rule awry is a significant age difference, this is the only time that it might not apply and/or you could end up in a situation where you are calling the them “usted” and they are calling you “tú”, or vice-versa.  If their is a significant age difference, the younger person will almost always continue to use “usted” with the older person even after the older person has started calling them “tú”, such as would be the case with someone and their friend’s grandmother, or between you and a young child (you would use “tú” with them while they would continue using “usted” with you).  You’ll notice, however, that this still obeys the “Mr./Mrs./Ms.” rule that we established earlier.

People will not hesitate to tell you to use “tú” with them (“Tuteame!”), but they will almost never tell you to use “usted” with them because it would seem rude, so if you’re really uncertain then yes, “usted” is definitely the safe bet.  The best way, though, to really determine what to do is to listen to those around you and how they are addressing the person in question, and then simply follow their lead.

Again, if you’d like more information and certainly if you’re going to be using your Spanish in a Spanish-speaking country in the future then do consult with my guide to forms of address in Spanish.  Also, if you’re going to a Spanish-speaking country, the best way to prepare is by working with native speakers and the best way to do that is with a one-on-one tutor, I recommend a service called iTalki (you’re looking at about $8-15/hour for informal conversation practice/instruction, more for a formal course or test prep.), however that’s too expensive for many people and in that case there’s an excellent service called GoSpanish that provides unlimited online classes with a native speaker (live, on a video call similar to Skype) for as little as $39 per month.  Their class size is typically just 3-5 students per teacher and, having taken classes with them myself, I can tell you they’re excellent.  See my review of GoSpanish here for more information.  Also, if you’re interested, I’ve reviewed iTalki as well.

Titles and Old People

Titles are a bit more important in Latin cultures than they are in the English-speaking world, and, oddly, a bit more loosely used: in some regions, anyone in a position of importance or, sometimes, with at least a university degree, will be referred to as “doctor”, e.g. a secretary will very frequently tend to refer to her boss as “Doctor ____” even though they’re very rarely actually a doctor, they get this title simply by being in a position of importance or authority.  Lawyers are frequently given the title of “doctor”, as well.  Engineers get the title “Ingeniero”, teachers are called “Profesor” or sometimes “Maestro” which is a title also usually extended to any craftsperson or skilled tradesmen and sometimes even plumbers, carpenters, electricians, etc. (note from the author: I just got back from Chile where I spent almost five months from about June of this year, 2018, to early November, and I can confirm this for Chile: any sort of repairman or craftsman there was called “el maestro”).

The most common title you’ll run into, however, is “licenciado” which literally means “graduate” and is extended to basically anyone who wears a tie and is a lot like the “doctor” title except even more generously applied.

The default title, as you probably already know, is “señor”/”señora”, which you use if you don’t know the person particularly well, aren’t sure what to use, and none of the other choices immediately fit.  It’s roughly equivalent to “Sir” or “Ma’am” in English and is precisely what you use day-to-day when it’s someone that you’re not particularly well acquainted with, or if you’re just not sure it’s the safe bet that should always be acceptable.  One I noticed that was in particularly common use in Colombia (where I was from late February 2018 til May when I left for Chile) was the title “caballero”, which means something like “gentleman” but can also, unlike the label “gentleman”, be used to directly address someone and in that instance means something more like “sir”, e.g. “¿Desea sentarse en la terraza, caballero?” (“Would you like to sit on the terrace, sir?”).

Are you speaking to an old person (“old” generally means 60+)?  If yes, use “Don/Doña” almost without exception until told otherwise (some places it’s common, some it isn’t).  Obviously this is used in conjugation with the “usted” conjugation of any verbs.  This applies to everybody, regardless of their status or status relative to you: the 80 year-old doorman at your hotel should be addressed as “Don Alberto”, the 60 year old waiter gets “Don’ed”, the old woman begging for change even gets the “Doña” treatment.  Edit: this is not so common in Argentina, it’s something that’s considered a bit old-fashioned and not really done any more, though it is still highly prevalent in Mexico and, I’m pretty sure, Colombia, at a minimum.

This may also be applied to someone of especially high status, such as the CEO of your company, though even then the person will typically be older.

Social Lubricant

There are lots of little words and expressions in English that function as what’s known as “social lubricant”, little niceties such as “excuse me”, “pardon”, “with your permission”, “may I”, “if you don’t mind”, etc., and Spanish is no different except that these sorts of expressions are used even more frequently than in English.

One particular thing you’ll notice they do much more frequently than you may be used to is ask permission, and they have 8 different ways of saying it (in order of most formal to least):

1. Con permiso (“With permission”)
2. ¿Me permite? (“Will you permit me?”)
3. Perdón (“Pardon”)
4. ¿Se puede? (“May I?”)
5. Comper’ (shortened version of “con permiso”)
6. Hágase un poco para allá, por favor (“Move over a little, please”)
7. Abreme espacio / Abreme cancha (“Give me some space”)
8. Hazte pa’llá (explained below)

The first 5 are acceptable for most situations regardless, the last 3 are much more slangy and should be used with care. Note that “¿Se puede?” (“Can one?” literally, meaning something like “May I?”) or “¿Se puede ver?” (“Can one see?”) is the common way of asking to see something in a store or asking permission to pick up or touch a product such as a painting, china, food, or something else delicate.  “Hazte pa’llá” would mean “scoot over a bit” if you’re speaking to a friend in a friendly way, or it could mean “Get out of the way!” if not.

In Mexico, if you’re carrying a heavy object for example, like if you’re helping someone move a large piece of furniture, and you need people to get out of the way, the way you would say “Coming through!” would be “¡Golpe avisa!” (source for the Mexico claim, not sure where else it’s used except I can say the above-mentioned Argentinean informs me that he’s never heard “golpe avisa”, so that means probably not in the Southern Cone).  Because these sorts of phrases vary greatly from country to country, stick with “Disculpe”, “Perdón”, “Permiso”, and “Cuidado” if you need someone to move, those will work everywhere.

Give my regards…

Always remember to say “gracias” when someone does this–English-speakers will frequently just say “Sure, will do” or something similar when someone says something like “Give my regards to your wife.”  In Spanish you always, always say “thank you” when someone does this, as you’re expressing gratitude for their “detalle“, or thoughtfulness (literally “detalle” translates to “gesture” in this case).

Phone Manners

Spanish-speakers tend to be a bit more formal and polite on the phone, phrases that you’ll frequently hear used (overused?) on the phone are things like:

• “Si es tan amable” = “If you please”
• “Si no es mucha molestia” = “If it’s not too much trouble”
• To ask for someone, you might say “¿Me puede comunicar con _____?” or, more casually, “Está por ahí _____?
• To say our equivalent of “Speaking” in response to someone asking for you when you answer the phone, you simply say “Él/Ella habla”.

Mi Casa Es Su Casa

Not only is this one of the manners in Spanish that’s so common that it’s made its way into regular usage in the English language, but it’s also representative of a very common sentiment, a certain special type of hospitality, in Spanish-speaking countries.

A frequent point of confusion for foreigners is the reference by someone to their own home as “your home”, or “tu casa”–someone may give you directions to their house or apartment, for example, and then at the end of it say “…y entonces llegas a tu casa!” (“and then you arrive at your house!”) where “tu casa” is in reference to their house.  It’s just a nice gesture of hospitality frequently used there, that’s all.

Another common expression is “Estás en tu casa” or “Está usted en su casa” in response to any request a guest makes in someone’s home, such as asking permission to use the phone or pull up a chair.  They’re telling you that you are, effectively, in your own home so of course you can.  Edit: Additionally, there’s: “Siéntase como en su casa”, “Como en su casa”, and “Como si estuvieras en tu casa”, etc.

Also, one more thing that’s just an expression of hospitality and not to be taken literally is the expression “es tuya” (“it’s yours”) in response to you complimenting something in their home (a painting, china, rug, etc.), this definitely does not mean they literally want to give it to you.

Making Requests

All that time spent learning the imperative and now you’re about to find out that you’ll never use it (well, rarely): sorry.  When asking for something in Spanish (whether you’re “ordering” at a restaurant or bar or asking a friend for something, you’re still really asking, not giving an outright order), you would almost never use the imperative, it sounds far too rude.  You may have been taught that the way to ask for a coffee is “Traigame un café, por favor” but even with “por favor” that’s still far too pushy and will come off as impolite, the way that ordering something in a restaurant, bar, or store is done 98% of the time is by using “¿Me trae ______, por favor?”, e.g. “¿Me trae un café, por favor?”.  Edit: You’ll also frequently hear “No” tacked onto the beginning of these phrases, it still means the same thing and is sort of like us saying “Couldn’t you please ____?” e.g. “Couldn’t you please bring me some coffee?”, so it would be “¿No me trae un café, por favor?”, etc.

The same sort of thing goes when asking for just about anything else from just about anyone else, the only thing that varies is the level of formality depending on who you’re talking to: just use the same formula as above with one of several of the most commonly used verbs:

• Traer (“to bring”): This should be your automatic default that you use with the great majority of people the great majority of the time.  This one is always a safe bet, regardless of who you’re talking to.  Use this with friends, waiters, and random people on the street.
• Permitir (“to permit”): This is one of the most formal, and the expression you’ll be using, “me permite”, most closely translates to “May I?”; this is what you would use with someone who would rate an extra bit of respect and formality, such as your father-in-law or your boss, someone you would certainly be using “usted” with.
• Dar (“to give”): A bit informal, safe for use with friends and people you’re familiar with and normally address with “tú”, usually just means “Can you hand me that?”, e.g. “¿Me da ese bolígrafo, por favor?” = “Can you hand me that pen, please?”.
• Prestar (“to loan”): Informal and implies that the item in question will be returned in short order, “¿Me presta _____, por favor?” means “Can I borrow ____, please?”.
• Regalar (“to give as a gift”): Be careful, as this implies that the item in question will be permanently gifted to the person requesting it, as in “Can I have ____? [permanently]”.
• Pasar (“to pass”): Very common in colloquial use and is a more informal version of how “prestar” is used, it means precisely what it seems: “Can you pass me ____, please?”.
• Another common, formal way of asking for something is to say “¿Puedo tomar ____, por favor?”, which literally and actually means “Can I have ____, please?”.

Saying Goodbye

You’ve got lots of different choices here and, frankly, this isn’t as big a deal as a lot of other stuff.  “Adiós” and “Hasta luego” are appropriate for almost all situations, though you should remember that “adiós” is typically used for situations where you’re not going to see the person for a while (if you’re going to see them the next day when you come back into work, then you wouldn’t use this).  “Nos vemos” is a very common informal farewell that basically means “See you later”, as is “Ciao”/”Chau” (spelling varies, pronunciation stays the same: “Chow”) and “Hasta mañana”.

A somewhat more formal way of saying goodbye is “Que le vaya bien” which roughly means “I hope it goes well for you” but note that this is only used when the person you’re saying it to is the one leaving, not you.  A much for formal one is “Vaya con Dios” which means “Go with God”, but this one is rarely heard unless it’s coming from a priest or it’s an especially formal situation or ceremony.

A couple of informal, colloquial ways of saying farewell that you’ll commonly hear used amongst friends are “Cuídate” which means “Take care” and “Pórtate bien” which means “Behave yourself”.  If they’re about to go to bed, you could say “Que descanses” which means “Rest well” or “Rest up”.

Miscellaneous Manners in Spanish

• When you pass by someone you’re even vaguely acquainted with who is eating, you always wish them “Buen provecho” or just “Provecho” which means “bon appetit” (which is French, ironically).
• Generally speaking, don’t throw things, it’s almost always considered very uncivilized behavior, e.g. don’t crumple up a piece of paper and throw it, or anything else, in in the trash can, and especially don’t throw someone at someone (e.g. tossing a pencil to someone who asked for one).
• Don’t turn your back on someone, especially if they’re speaking to you or part of your group, this is still kind of rude in English-speaking cultures, but it’s much more so amongst Spanish-speaking ones.
• Don’t point at people with your finger.  Something I noticed recently during my time in South America (2018) is that it’s way more common for someone to point with their mouth/lips than I’ve ever seen elsewhere, they sort of pucker their lips and nod their head in the direction of the person or thing they want to refer you to.
• Spanish-speakers tend to stand closer when talking, try not to back away or act weird about it.

If you’re reading this there’s a good chance you either plan on traveling to a Spanish-speaking country in the near future or you know you’re going to have to interact with native speakers in the near future, and in that case I really recommend working with actual native speakers to improve your Spanish.  The best way to do that is with a one-on-one tutor, and for that I recommend a service called iTalki (you’re looking at about $8-15/hour for informal conversation practice/instruction, more for a formal course or test prep.).  However, given that you’ll want at least 2-3 classes per week and that comes out to $16-$45 per week – or between $64 and $180 per month – that’s too expensive for many people and in that case I really recommend you check out a service called GoSpanish that provides unlimited online classes with a native speaker (live, on a video call similar to Skype) for as little as $39 per month (yes, that’s $39/month for unlimited 1-hour classes, you can take a dozen a day every day if you like).  Their class size is typically just 3-5 students per teacher and, having taken classes with them myself, I can tell you they’re excellent.  See my review of GoSpanish here for more information.  Also, if you’re interested, I’ve reviewed iTalki as well.

Additional Resources and Further Reading

I have a few similar posts you’ll likely be interested in if you liked this one:

• How to Not Sound Like a Gringo – The 17 Most Common Spanish Errors and How to Avoid Them
• Spanish Sentence Starters and Filler Words (Muletillas): The Grease of the Language Gears
• Respond in Spanish Like a Native: Common Spanish Phrases, Expressions & Comebacks

Spanish Playground, an excellent site for those teaching Spanish to children (whether as a parent or professionally), has a good article on this aimed at kids called 5 Good Manners for Spanish Learners.

In Conclusion

Beyond all this, honestly, you need to just google “manners in X” where “X” is the country you plan on visiting or where the people you plan on speaking to are from.  This just varies far too much by country, region within that country, and social class to be nailed down in a single article.

These are all very broad generalizations that were chosen to cover things that tended to be prevalent throughout the Spanish-speaking world in general, and Latin America in particular: there is so much stuff that’s country-specific or even specific to a certain region of a country (such as the Paisa region of Colombia versus the coast/carribean region versus Bogotá) that I couldn’t possibly cover it in a single post.  I’m sure there is stuff in here that doesn’t apply in X country or X city, and of course plenty of stuff that does but isn’t here, this couldn’t be helped.  You are more than welcome to mention stuff like that in the comments, I sincerely welcome additional information that may be useful to other people who will read this: yes, seriously, please post it.

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

Cheers,
Andrew

I couldn’t find a picture that related to what I was writing about (I always try to do that), in this case the Spanish subjunctive, so here’s a picture of my idea for an anti-gravity device based on a cat with some buttered toast on its head – what do you think?

The subjunctive in Spanish is one of two other moods besides the ‘normal’ Spanish mood (and it is a mood, not a tense) that you’re used to, which is called the indicative mood (in short, it’s used to state things the speaker believes to be facts as opposed to opinions or hypotheticals), and the other one is the imperative mood which is solely used to give commands. The Spanish subjunctive is used with impersonal expressions and expressions of emotion, opinion, doubt, disagreement, denial or volition – essentially, it’s used for anything uncertain or emotional. The indicative is used for expressing things that are objective, truthful, unemotional, and not in doubt.  I should also note that the subjunctive, though essential to becoming fluent in Spanish (or even moving beyond the beginner’s level), is note often used and shouldn’t be bothered with until you’re on the tail end of learning beginner’s Spanish (that is you’re just finishing up with A2 on the CEFR scale).  If you’re not sure, or would like to learn more about which verb tenses/moods you should focus on depending on your level, please see my article entitled, What Spanish Verb Tenses You Should Learn First, and Why They’re So Important.

If you wanted to say that the cat is on top the refrigerator, you would just use the regular indicative: “El gato está encima de la nevera”, however, if you wanted to say that the cat would prefer that you not put him on top of the refrigerator, you would use the subjunctive and say: “El gato desea que no lo pongas encima de la nevera”, where “pongas” is the present subjunctive form of “poner“.  You’ll notice that the first verb is in the normal indicative mood, whereas it’s the second verb that’s in the subjunctive and that’s how it always is, which brings me to…

Requirements

There are three requirements that usually must be met for the Spanish subjunctive to be needed.  These are not always necessary, they’re more like “characteristics that are present 95% of the time”, but as this is an introductory article for people who have never delved into the subjunctive before, that’s good enough for our purposes.  They are:

1.  Two different subjects

2.  A relative pronoun (“que”, “como”, “cual”, “donde”, or “quien”)

3.  Two different verbs – the first will always be in the indicative and the second will always be in the subjunctive.  The first verb will signal that the second verb needs to be in the subjunctive by the very nature of that first verb and the context it’s used in (it expresses emotion, doubt, etc.).

There must also be two Clauses, though this is an automatic consequence of requiring 2 subjects so it doesn’t get its own rule.

W.E.I.R.D.O.

This is a brilliant little system for figuring out when you need to use the subjunctive in Spanish (I don’t know who originally invented it, but it wasn’t me).  Like I said above in the third requirement: the first verb, which is almost always in the indicative, will tell you if the second verb needs to be in the subjunctive or not.  As you already know, you’re looking for verbs that express emotion, uncertainty, desire, etc.  Well, there’s a nifty little acronym you can use to help you remember all of these with ease.  All you have to do is remember to look for W.E.I.R.D.O. verbs:

Wishes
Emotions
Impersonal Expressions
Recommendations
Doubt/Denial
Ojalá

Wishes: This includes all wishes, wants, demands, desires, orders, expectations, and preferences.  Examples include things like “Espero que él me llame” which means “I hope that he calls me”, or “Todos quieren que vengas” which means “Everyone wants you to come.”

(note: all subjunctive verbs in these example sentences are bolded)

Verbs in this category that commonly indicate the need for the subjunctive to follow include mandar (to order), insistir (to insist), necesitar (to need), preferir (to prefer), querer (to want), desear (to wish or desire), pedir (to request), etc.

Emotions: Any time someone is expressing the fact that they’re annoyed, angry, happy, sad, scared, surprised, etc. you will almost always see the subjunctive used due to this being considered an expression of emotion.  Examples include the above example I gave with the angry cat, or something like: “A Benny le molesta que la gente coma animales aunque ellos son muy sabrosos.” which means “It annoys Benny that people eat animals even though they are very tasty.”

Verbs that commonly fall into this category are alegrarse (to be glad), gustar (to like), encantar (to love in the sense of really liking something), lamentar (to regret), enojar (to be angry), sorprender (to surprise), temer (to fear), quejarse (to complain), and molestar (to annoy).

Impersonal expressions: These express someone’s opinion or judgment on something and are subjective in nature.  Examples include things like “Es extraño que el gato esté volando” which means “It’s strange that the cat is flying”, or “Es bueno que hayas decidido darme todo tu dinero” which means “It’s good that you’ve decided to give me all your money.”

Common expressions in this category are things like “es agradable” (it’s nice), “es necesario” (it’s necessary), “es raro” (it’s rare), “no es cierto” (it’s not certain), “es increíble” (it’s incredible), “es malo” (it’s bad), etc.

Recommendations: Whenever someone is recommended, suggested, or told to do something, this falls into the recommendation category.  Things like: “Mi doctor recomienda que no beba tanto vodka” which means “My doctor recommends that I not drink so much vodka”, or “Ellos sugieren que no juegues en el tráfico” which means “They suggest that you not play in traffic.”

Verbs commonly seen in this category include aconsejar (to advise), sugerir (to suggest), recomendar (to recommend), rogar (to beg), ordenar (to order), and proponer (to suggest or propose).

Doubt/Denial: Whenever someone wants to express doubt or denial, they use the subjunctive.  Examples include things like: “Dudo que tengas un burro morado” which means “I doubt that you have a purple donkey” or perhaps “No creo que él diga la verdad sobre su coleccíon de arbolitos” which means “I don’t believe he’s telling the truth about his shrubbery collection.”

Verbs commonly used to express doubt include dudar (to doubt), creer (to believe), pensar (to think), negar (to deny), “no estar seguro” (to not be sure), suponer (to assume or suppose), etc.

Ojalá: “Ojalá” is an interesting word you’ll hear very frequently in Spanish, particularly Latin American Spanish.  It is one of several Spanish words that has Arabic origins.  It comes from the Old Spanish oxalá, which comes from the Arabic لو شاء الله (law sha’a Allah) and means something like “if God wills it”.  So ojalá means “If only…” or “I hope to God…” or, basically, “I really hope…”, so you can see why it requires the subjunctive because it’s expressing a desire in a special sort of way. Examples include things like: “Ojalá que lleguen pronto las mujeres desnudas”, meaning “I hope to God the naked women arrive soon”, or “Ojalá que no me dispare en el culo” which means “I really hope he doesn’t shoot me in the ass”.

Bonus: Hypotheticals

To describe hypothetical situations Spanish speakers frequently employ the subjunctive, often in conjunction with the expression, “como si”, e.g. “como si fuera”, “como si estuviera”, etc.  This makes perfect sense as the subjunctive is used to describe, generally, something that doesn’t exist or isn’t the case but maybe could be.  Here are some examples from real-life contexts:

Deberían tratarla como si fuera sagrada.

“They should treat it as if it were sacred.”

Me gritaba como si fuera niño.

“She’s was yelling at me as if I were a child.”

Siento como si estuviera dormida aquí.

“I feel as if I were asleep here.”

Estás mirándome como si estuviera loco.

“You’re looking at me as if I were crazy.”

Searching Reverso Context for “como si” yields tons of examples of this in practice, definitely have a look for more examples of this phenomenon in the wild.

Further Reading and Additional Resources

Reading an explanation of grammar concepts like the Spanish subjunctive won’t make it so that you can use such grammar concepts, it’s just the first step on that journey: you have to apply what you’ve learned, you have to practice.  The best way to do this, of course, is by communicating with actual native speakers, using the grammar you’ve just learned, and having them help and correct you.  An excellent way to go about this is with an online course called GoSpanish that I recommend: it’s much cheaper than a one-on-one tutor but you’re still working with a native speaker, class size is 3-5 students each, and you get unlimited (yes, a dozen a day if you like) classes starting at just $39 per month.  Check out my review here of GoSpanish.

Definitely check out this post’s parent category, Basic Spanish Grammar Rules: Lessons & Explanations, for more similar articles such as:

• Why learning verb conjugations is important and which ones you should learn first, or
• A brief guide to regional variation of the forms of address in Spanish (usted, tú, vos, etc.) or even…
• A list of YouTube channels that teach Spanish (much of it consisting of grammar lessons)

SpanishDict also did an excellent video on the Spanish subjunctive where they go through the W.E.I.R.D.O system if you’d like to have a look at that, it’s 2 parts and about 12 minutes long in total:

Part 1

Part 2

I hope that was interesting, let me know what you think in the comments (and would like me to write about in the future).

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

Cheers,
Andrew

Today I’m going to give you a list of my favorite websites that you can use to help you learn Spanish via watching television in Spanish (news, shows, telenovelas, whatever), almost all of which are entirely free.  I’ve divided it up alphabetically by country.  This list is mainly intended for people learning Spanish, which I think is wonderful since it’s how I learned Spanish and what I recommend others do as well.  Here we go…oh, and if any of these links are dead or you know of a site that I left off please leave a comment and let me know, I’ll fix it, I promise – which reminds me, I just want you to know that I actually checked each one of the sites below to make sure that they were working and actually had streaming video available, unlike every other list of Spanish language TV/radio station sites I’ve managed to find online (all of them had links to broken sites, all of them).  Additionally, if you have a particular Spanish TV show you’d like to recommend, definitely tell us!

The best website for Spanish-learners who want to use Spanish TV shows, movies, and cartoons to learn Spanish from:

If this is you, check out Yabla for Spanish videos with Spanish subtitles and so much more.  This is a fantastic website and my top recommendation if you’re looking for Spanish videos to learn Spanish with.  I emphasize the last part because that’s specifically and solely what this site is designed for, and it’s the only one on this list that is solely intended for that purpose.  What they do is take Spanish-language media that was originally produced in Spanish-speaking countries and intended for native speakers (TV shows, movies, news casts, cartoons, documentaries, etc.) and then integrate them into a whole Spanish-learning interface they have that allows you to see word-for-word Spanish subtitles and their English translation at the same time  (you can turn either or both off while watching the video), plus you can click on any word in the subtitles and it will automatically pull up the definition in the dictionary next to the video player as well as add that word to your flashcards for later review.  They also include a vocabulary learning game, quizzes, and a flashcard system that’s very easy to use and all on the same page as the video you’re watching.

Also, I did a whole extensive review of Yabla here that I recommend you check out if this sounds like something that might interest you, plus you can just go on over to their site and try out the free demo videos.  Oh, and they do provide volume discounts for educators and organizations.

Spanish TV Channels Sorted by Alphabetically by Country

Ok, let’s get started.  I’ve sorted the list of Spanish TV channels below by country and included short bits of pertinent information where appropriate.

Argentina:

ATC Canal 7 – TV Publica

Canal 4 San Juan

Canal 5 Tucuman (a little disorganized but there are tons of videos on there you can watch)

Canal 6 TV (good one, lots of videos of recent news events)

El Trece

Canal 26 (scroll down to “videos destacados”)

CMTV (Music videos, TONS of stuff on here)

Zona 31

TN 24 Horas

Aruba

Teleruba (click on “Teleruba Live!” in the menu bar at the top)

Bolivia

Costas (look under “videos noticias” in the middle of the page there)

Chile

Canal 54 LivTV (click “Ver Señal Online” and it should load up a streaming video player)

Iquique Canal 10

Television Nacional de Chile

UCV Television

TV Senado

Colombia

Canal CNC

Caracol TV

Señal Colombia

Costa Rica

Canal 13

Extra Canal 42

Teletica 50

Cuba

Telesur

TV Marti (based out of Miami but it’s entirely targeted at a Cuban audience hence its inclusion under the “Cuba” section instead of the “United States” section)

Cubasi

Dominican Republic

Bonao TV Canal 12 (requires VLC player to view, which I highly recommend you get anyway, it’s the best video player out there)

Yuna Vision Canal 10 (same story, requires VLC)

El Caribe (scroll down and look on the right where it says “Transmisión en vivo”)

CDN (really nice, simple setup, video player works great)

Colorvision

TRA 45

Vega TV

El Salvador

Agape TV Canal 8

Canal 21 Megavision

Guatemala

Canal Antigua

Honduras

Canal 6

Mexico

Televisión Educativa de Mexico

Canal 44

Canal 5 XEJTV

Canal de Congreso

Groupo FM Television

Canal 53 UANL

Sistema de Radio y Televisión Mexiquense

RTV de Vercruz (click on “Televisión en Línea”)

Grupo Fórmula (scroll down to “Noticias en Video”)

SinTesis TV (click on “TV en vivo acqui”)

Once TV

Multimedios TV (scroll down to “Videos más recientes”)

TV Acapulco

TeVe de Mente

Nicaragua

Canal 2 TV

Canal 15

Peru

Bethel Television (look to the right where it says “Señal en vivo” and choose either low or high quality)

JN19 (I hope you like Jesus…)

Pacifico Television 41 UHF

RBC TV

Puerto Rico

CDM Internacional

Senado TV

SBN

Wapa TV (not available in the U.S.)

TelemundoPR (scroll down to where it says “videos”)

Spain

RTVE (tons of videos, the news includes a transcript that usually shows up about 24 hours after it’s published on the site).  I use this site more than any other to watch television in Spanish, personally: please see my post about RTVE here for more information and show recommendations.

CRTVG – Galicia TV

Cervantes TV

Cetelemon TV

KISS TV

LDTV

M95 TV

Popular TV (to get the live feed click “Emisión en Directo” in the menu bar at the top)

Solidaria TV

Sintonía Televisión Rioja

Telemagik

Telemadrid (nice clean setup, fast load, recommended)

Ferrol Canal 31

Congress TV (live feed of Congress, Parliament, and archives – menu is on the left)

Informativos Telecinco (videos are all down the right-hand column of the page)

RTPA (live feed is on the right)

United Kingdom

BBC’s Spanish Language TV Section – Just awesome, includes Spanish programs from the BBC with downloadable transcripts (!!) as well as Spanish language news and TV shows, absolutely worth checking out.

United States

Univision

Telemundo

Almavision

DominicanYork (hover over “Videos” in the top toolbar and select a section)

V-me

Estrella TV

Azteca America (scroll down to the “Video” section)

LATV (tons of videos on here)

MTV Tr3s (Music videos – MTV owns them)

Mexicanal

HITN TV (educational programming)

Drama Fever (this was submitted by a commenter, if you’ve got one not on the list please let me know–thanks, Carlos!)

Uruguay

Teledoce

Venezuela

ANTV Live Feed

ANTV Video Archive

Globovision (click “Señal en vivo” in the menubar at the top)

Promar TV

VTV (click either “Señal en vivo” or “Videos” in the menubar at the top – by the way, this is the official government TV station)

RCTV

TeleSUR TV

Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime (tons of Spanish TV shows now)

I mention these on my other list, which is of sites where you can watch Spanish videos but which also have Spanish subtitles (great if you’re learning Spanish), and I’m putting this here as well because some of the shows/movies from these providers have subtitles in Spanish, some of them do not, it just varies.  So…

Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu.  I’m grouping them all together because…well, they’re pretty much all the same thing (type of service), aren’t they?  Anymore, for me, Netflix, YouTube, and RTVE are where I’m getting all my Spanish-language content (and a bit on Instagram, too).

I’m not familiar with Hulu at all so I can’t comment (those who are, please do comment, below, in the comments), but I have both Netflix and Amazon Prime and…Netflix wins handily.  It’s no-contest.  Amazon’s offerings in general are not as good as Netflix (I really only watch The Grand Tour there), nowhere near as good in fact, and this is doubly so in their foreign-language selection: go with Netflix.

Now, that said…what Netflix movies and series can I recommend here and now?  Several!

• Narcos (and now, Narcos Mexico) – it’s about the drug war, obviously.  The original series was set in Colombia during the 1980s and 1990s and dealt with Pablo Escobar, the Medellin Cartel, and then the Cali Cartel.  The new one about Mexico I couldn’t tell you about because I haven’t seen it.  Subtitles are available in both Spanish and English.  Spanish is mainly spoken but you get a repreive every now and then when the DEA agents are on-screen and they speak English.  The Spanish is, obviously, almost entirely Colombian, mostly Paisa dialect since it’s largely based in and around Medellin.  Wikipedia (Narcos) | Rotten Tomatoes (Narcos) | IMDB (Narcos) | MetaCritic (Narcos).
  Wikipedia (Narcos Mexico) | Rotten Tomatoes (Narcos Mexico) | IMDB (Narcos Mexico) | MetaCritic (Narcos Mexico).
• La Casa de Papel – This is about a robbery of the Spanish mint.  I’ve only seen the first episode but it does look really good and is very highly recommended elsewhere.  The Spanish is Iberian (Spanish from Spain).  Wikipedia | Rotten Tomatoes | IMDB | MetaCritic doesn’t have an entry for it.
• El Club de Cuervos.  A Mexican comedy-drama web TV series. The story centers on the football club Cuervos FC, based in the fictional city of Nuevo Toledo, Mexico, and the power struggle that follows the death of its long-time owner and patriarch. Wikipedia | IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes.
• El Tiempo Entre Costuras.  The story of a woman who became a spy against the Nazis and their allies in WWII.  Wikipedia | Rotten Tomatoes | IMDB.  It should be noted this series is based on a highly acclaimed book by the same title.
• El Gran Hotel. Mystery Drama in a nice, old hotel.  Per Google: “Set in Spain in the early 20th century, Julio arrives at a luxury hotel to meet his sister, head chambermaid Cristina only to discover she has disappeared. Julio makes it his mission to find her and infiltrates the hotel under the guise of a footman.”  Wikipedia | IMDB.

We really must move on.  I’ve many more but I think what I’ll do is make a separate post out of that list and then link it here later.  Stay tuned (subscribe, please!).

YouTube!

First of all, I have a whole category dedicated to this called Learn Spanish on YouTube: Recommended Channels, How to Do It, Lessons Based on YouTube Videos.  Additionally, and within that category, I maintain two separate lists of YouTube channels I recommend for learning Spanish, one of channels that are explicitly intended to teach Spanish and another of channels in Spanish but which are intended for native speakers (and therefore really only for intermediate and advance students).  Here they are:

1. Spanish-speaking YouTubers who are excellent for intermediate Spanish practice (not lessons, intended for native speakers, great for improving listening comprehension).
2. YouTube Channels that Teach Spanish.

Each of these lists includes a sample video from each channel that I believe illustrates what they’re about as well as a short description of the channel, this way you can decide whether or not you’re interested without having to click a link to each channel (as you would if I just had a list of links here, which is what this used to be).

Music Videos

I can’t possibly list every single Spanish-language music video that includes the lyrics, but I will give you some examples and then show you how you can obtain the lyrics for nearly any other one that you want even if the video doesn’t include them.

Of course I have to throw in some Shakira videos…

Here’s La Tortura with lyrics

And Inevitable

Ciega, Sordomuda

Antes de las Seis

Suerte

Te Aviso, Te Anuncio

Ojos Así

And for the Juanes fans there are a ton, including…

A Dios Le Pido

Y Es por Ti

Fotografía

…and many more, just search YouTube for “Juanes letras” (“letras” is Spanish for “lyrics”, and you want to search in Spanish because of course you want the Spanish lyrics not an English translation which is what will frequently come up if you say “lyrics” instead of “letras”).

Also, there’s at least one YouTube channel devoted to publishing Spanish-language videos with their lyrics contained therein expressly for people learning Spanish, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more (tell us in the comments if you know of others).

Where to find lyrics for nearly any song

There are several popular lyrics look-up sites that have lyrics for nearly every song that’s ever been even somewhat popular (English, Spanish, French, etc., doesn’t matter).  Check out…

https://www.lyrics.com/

https://www.azlyrics.com/

http://www.songlyrics.com/

https://genius.com/

http://www.metrolyrics.com/

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/

Radio

This list was already really long with just sites that had streaming TV (a lot of them also have streaming radio, by the way), I didn’t want to make it any longer or prolong publishing it any more by trying to put together an inevitably equally long list of Spanish-language radio stations’ sites, so I’ve cheated a bit and just put links to other people’s lists of such sites where you can listen to Spanish-language radio below.  Again, I can’t vouch for how many of the links on the below listed sites actually work, but most of them should be good-to-go at the very least.

Multilingualbooks.com’s list of Spanish-language radio stations with live feeds online

E-Spanyol’s list of 600 Spanish-language radio station sites categorized by country (see why I didn’t want to try to do a list here?)

About.com’s got a short list…

Live-TV-Radio.com’s got a good-sized list organized by country

Other Languages

Unlike the above list, I can’t vouch for whether or not all the TV stations’ sites listed on the sites below work or not.  If you’re looking for TV stations you can watch online in languages besides Spanish, check out:

Beeline TV

Multilingualbooks.com’s Foreign Internet Television page

wwiTV.com – Biggest compilation I’ve seen yet, truly impressive.

If you’re here because you’re learning Spanish…

…and you haven’t already checked out my list of sites where you can watch Spanish videos with Spanish subtitles or transcripts, I highly recommend you do so because having the Spanish that’s spoken on-screen written down for you (either in the form of subtitles or an attached transcript) will help you enormously when it comes to learning that Spanish.  Why?  Because how else are you going to be able to look up what you don’t know?  When you hear a word or a phrase you don’t understand, unless you’re a fairly advanced student you’re not going to be able to write it out and if you can’t do that then you can’t look it up.  Having an English translation is just having a clue as to what was actually said, it doesn’t explicitly tell you and therefore is nowhere near as good.

I keep these lists separate for that exact reason: because having Spanish subtitles is so important.  Obviously, if you don’t have them that’s still far better than nothing (or maybe you’re advanced enough that you don’t need them), but I just wanted you all to be aware of this.  This is the list of video sources that generally don’t offer Spanish subtitles (Yabla is an exception).

Related Resources

An excellent course that would probably interest you if you’re just getting started in Spanish and want to focus on learning how to speak it with perfect pronunciation, that relies on immitating native speakers in the sort of media that’s on this list, is called The Mimic Method, specifically their “39 Elemental Sounds of Spanish”.  Check it out, try it, let me know if you like it.

Lastly, it just so happens that I wrote a book about precisely how to learn Spanish, on your own, from the kind of popular media above!  It’s called The Telenovela Method and is available on Amazon, Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Scribd, and Goodreads (also, your local bookstore should be able to order a copy if you like).  The e-book version is about $7.99 and the paperback is about $14.99 (varies a bit by retailer).  It’s about how to use popular media of your choice (movies, TV shows, music, books, news, etc.) to learn Spanish on your own.  It’s centered almost entirely around online resources, the overwhelming majority of which are free (those that aren’t are very inexpensive and not necessary).  I called it The Telenovela Method because the popular media I initially used to learn most of my Spanish about nine years ago was telenovelas (that’s what soap operas are called in Spanish) because they were just about the only thing I could find that, occasionally at least, included subtitles in Spanish.  You don’t need to use telenovelas, no, pick what appeals to you.

Conclusion

Like I said in the introduction, if you’ve got any additional sites that I missed or any of the above links stop working, please let me know in the comments as this page will be continuously updated to keep it current, 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

This is going to start out a bit technical and academic, but I promise that if you’ll wade through it you will be rewarded with some very useful practical information that you can use to significantly enhance your learning of the Spanish language, or any other second language, by not just doing it better but doing it more efficiently and therefore requiring far less time to become fluent.  Understanding how many words you need to know to be fluent in Spanish will help you design a study system based on precisely what it is that you want to do with the language: speak with native speakers, read fiction, read and/or write in a technical or academic field, etc., or some combination thereof.  This is a very important distinction to make because, as you’ll see in the study below, although there isn’t much difference between how many words you need to know to speak Spanish and how many you need to write Spanish, which words are most commonly used and therefore should be focused on does vary significantly between the two applications.  First, let’s start with some definitions so that we can understand what’s going on here:

Lexeme: A lexeme is a reduction of a word to it’s most basic meaning.  For example: the word “water” could be a noun referring to H2O, or it could be a verb referring to the act of giving water to a plant, so in this case that counts as two separate and distinct lexemes, even though it’s the same word, “water”.  The reason it is done this way is that if you have to learn both definitions then it is, for our purposes, the same as learning two different words that each have only one definition – it requires the same amount of time and effort and memory space in your head, so when we say “how many words do you need to know?” we’re counting lexemes, or in lay terms, “definitions”.  In other words, we’re saying that each definition is to be counted as a separate “word” (when it’s done this way, it’s called a lexeme), regardless of whether those definitions refer to the same precise combination of letters (what would commonly be called a word) or not: the noun “water” and the verb “water” are two separate words (or lexemes, more accurately), right? Right.  I should also note that different forms (such as with verbs) of the same word, as long as the same basic definition is maintained, count as one lexeme, so “is” and “are” are not two separate lexemes, but one.

Corpus: Latin for “body”. The body of knowledge that you based your information on, in this case books, newspapers, transcripts of spoken language, etc. Basically it means your data set.  With regards to determining word frequency, the corpus is what it is that you looked at to determine which words occur and with what frequency.  If your corpus for making a frequency list for English is 13th century bibles, then your data isn’t going to be too relevant to contemporary language.

Register: What setting the language is used in.  We’re going to have three distinct registers that we’ll use: oral (spoken language), written fiction, and written non-fiction.

Range: How widely used the word is.  In other words, if your corpus consists of four books, and a particular word shows up as 5% of all words in one book and never occurs in any of the others, that one book is going to incorrectly weight that word as being a lot more important than it likely really is – you would say that particular word “has a very narrow range”.  An example would be if you’ve got a diet book as part of your corpus, we’ll presume it’s small, you might find that the words “protein”, “cardiovascular”, and “glycemic” end up on your frequency list when they probably shouldn’t because these words aren’t often used in daily conversation or most written communication – this is because you’ve got something that’s part of your corpus that has a very narrow and specific subject matter that wouldn’t normally be discussed very frequently, and therefore some of the words used therein have a very narrow range.  Usually it wouldn’t be something this extreme, since such obvious outliers would be removed from the corpus by a competent researcher, but what you will see are words that are used very frequently in written communication but hardly at all in spoken communication and vice-versa: that is important and something to take note of.

First, some data

The primary study that I’m going off of here is that done by Mark Davies at Brigham Young University, which I will embed below so that you can read it, download it, whatever you want to do:

Spanish Word Frequency Study by Andrew Tracey on Scribd

This is a truly unique and valuable study: you would think that there would be lots of data out there with regards to word frequency lists in Spanish, and lots of good Spanish frequency diciontaries, but there aren’t.  There’s no lack of curious language students and researchers asking, “Just how many words do you need to know to be fluent in Spanish/French/German?” etc. (I should note this also depends heavily on how you define “fluent” but that’s another discussion entirely).  The primary reason is that it’s so difficult, time-consuming, and expensive to do a study like this properly.  The next most recent comparable study was one done in 1964 (he makes mention of it in the beginning).

They extracted the 6000 most frequent lexemes and broke it down by written fiction, written non-fiction, and oral (spoken); they then further organized the data by lexeme type (noun, adjective, adverb, etc.) so you’ll see which particular type of word is the most used thereby allowing you to focus your studies appropriately.

By the way, the frequency dictionary they mention, which this study was written about, that contains the entire list of the 6000 highest-frequency lexemes, is available if you’re interested.  For some reason the hardcover is ridiculously expensive at $156, but they’ve got a paperback edition here on Amazon for $34.95 as of this writing.

Right, let’s get down to brass tacks.  According to the above study, for Spanish:

1. Learning the first 1000 most frequently used words in the entire language will allow you to understand 76.0% of all non-fiction writing, 79.6% of all fiction writing, and an astounding 87.8% of all oral speech.
2. Learning the top 2000 most frequently used words will get you to 84% for non-fiction, 86.1% for fiction, and 92.7% for oral speech.
3. And learning the top 3000 most frequently used words will get you to 88.2% for non-fiction, 89.6% for fiction, and 94.0% for oral speech.

How many words do you need to know to speak Spanish?

Essentially, just learning the top 1000 words will, if you’re primarily interested in speaking to people as most language learners are, get you to the point where you can understand roughly 90% of the spoken language – this is more than enough to be able to muddle through nearly any conversation.  Sure, you’ll have to stop the speaker frequently to get them to define words for you and/or you may have to pull out your dictionary quite frequently, but my point is that it’s enough of a base for you to actually start speaking to people (which is the most important part of learning any language: actually talking to native speakers) – you’ll be able to say nearly anything you need to in some way or another, and you should be able to understand the general gist of what someone else is saying to you, even if you do have to stop and ask them for help a few times.

“The maddening thing about these numbers and statistics is that they are impossible to pin down precisely and thus they vary from source to source. The rounded numbers that I use to explain this to my students I usually write in a bull’s eye target on the whiteboard, but I don’t have the computer skills to draw circles in this post, so I will just have to give a list:

 

250 words constitute the essential core of a language, those without which you cannot construct any sentence.

 

750 words constitute those that are used every single day by every person who speaks the language.

 

2500 words constitute those that should enable you to express everything you could possibly want to say, albeit often by awkward circumlocutions.

 

5000 words constitute the active vocabulary of native speakers without higher education.

 

10,000 words constitute the active vocabulary of native speakers with higher education.

 

20,000 words constitute what you need to recognize passively in order to read, understand, and enjoy a work of literature such as a novel by a notable author.”

Now, in the above study by Davies, here’s where things start to get really interesting:

“Assume that a language learner is aiming for 90% coverage in each of the four parts of speech that represent open classes — nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. This 90% figure will be obtained by knowing about 2600 nouns, 230 verbs, 980 adjectives, and 50 adverbs, or a total of about 3800 total forms.” [refer to page 110 of the study for a detailed table that breaks down these four word types in much greater detail]

So you can see that nouns completely dominate the average spoken vocabulary (the above data is from the spoken, not written, corpus), constituting 2600 out of 3800 lexemes, which is 68.4%, more than two-thirds, of all lexemes used.  You should keep in mind, however, that each verb is counted as a single lexeme no matter how it is conjugated: so saying that you only need to know 230 verbs is a bit disingenuous when you not only have to know each of those verbs but you also have to ‘know’ a bunch of different conjugations for each one as well (e.g. you don’t just have to learn ‘ser’, you have to learn ‘soy’, ‘eres’, ‘es’, ‘somos’, ‘son’, ‘fui’, ‘fuiste’, ‘fue’, ‘sea’, ‘seamos’, ‘sean’, etc.).

How many words do you need to know to write Spanish?

Also, they found that (here’s where we get into register and range) certain words had a very high frequency of use in one of the three registers (oral, written fiction, written non-fiction) but barely appeared at all in the other two, or it was present in two (typically both written registers) but not at all in one of the others.  So you’ll see that there are words which are far more valuable to learn than certain other words depending on which register you’re most interested in becoming proficient in.  Have a look at the two tables below, the first one shows the ten words with the greatest difference in range between oral and non-fiction that have an extremely high oral range (they are very commonly spoken words), whereas the second table shows the same except these are the ten words with the greatest frequency difference that have an extremely high range in written non-fiction (they’re extremely common in non-fiction writing but not at all in oral speech)…I’m not sure I explained that well, if not leave a comment and I’ll try again:

Table 1

Table 2

Why? For what purpose are you learning this language?

How you intend to use the language in question (Spanish or whatever the case may be for you) is very important in determining which words you should focus on, primarily this comes into play with regards to whether you’re more concerned about the spoken language or the written language.  Most language-learners are far more concerned about being able to actually speak to native speakers of the language than they are with anything else, though there are exceptions (people who wish to be able to read certain specific technical journals, such as an engineer who only wants to be able to read the original German or Japanese instruction manuals and schematics for the devices used in his field and does not need to be able to actually speak the language) as well as certain special needs (someone who is most interested in spoken language, but they also need special emphasis in a certain area, such as the businessman who not only wants to speak basic everyday Japanese but also needs to learn certain business terms that are specific only to his job and wouldn’t be common anywhere else).

So…what are you going to use it for? Do you have any special needs or areas of interest that you would like to learn the terminology for in the language you’re learning?  I’m a pretty big computer nerd, so in addition to everyday spoken Spanish, I might also like to know how to say things like “hard drive”, “TCP/IP”, “Python [the programming language]”, “blog”, “forum”, “social news”, “search engine”, “link”, etc.  See what I mean?  Don’t neglect areas like that, everyone has some–whether you’re into cars or rugby or chess or collecting dead insects, you’re likely going to want to know the words and phrases that are common only in those specific subjects.

Practical Application, or: What’s the point of all this?

Look, if you’ll use a quality SRS (Spaced Repetition Software) like Anki and spend 30-45 minutes a day studying vocabulary, you can very easily learn 20, 30, even 50 new words per day up to the point where you’ve got a couple thousand words in your target language within a month or so, it would be very easy.  If you’ll do that, and maybe practice speaking a bit by watching subtitled movies and repeating after the native speakers (pause, repeat what someone just said, rewind and repeat as necessary until you’ve got it, wash rinse repeat, etc.) for a couple of weeks, you’ll be at the point where you’ll be able to start conversing with native speakers, albeit poorly (my favorite saying: “You learn to speak a language by doing so, poorly at first”).  You’ll be awkward and slow but you will be able to muddle through, and you will pick up speed very rapidly if you’ll make it a habit to speak with a native for an hour or so a day, every day (remember: consistency!).  I promise you’ll be conversationally fluent within a couple of months of the time that you started conversing with natives.  Voila, you’re there.  What are the best ways to do this?

The best way is with a one-on-one tutor, and for that I recommend a service called iTalki (you’re looking at about $8-15/hour for informal conversation practice/instruction, more for a formal course or test prep.).  However, given that you’ll want at least 2-3 classes per week and that comes out to $16-$45 per week – or between $64 and $180 per month – that’s too expensive for many people and in that case I really recommend you check out a service called GoSpanish that provides unlimited online classes with a native speaker (live, on a video call similar to Skype) for as little as $39 per month (yes, that’s $39/month for unlimited 1-hour classes, you can take a dozen a day every day if you like).  Their class size is typically just 3-5 students per teacher and, having taken classes with them myself, I can tell you they’re excellent.  See my review of GoSpanish here for more information.  Also, if you’re interested, I’ve reviewed iTalki as well.

Here’s a quote from someone commenting on that HTLAL thread I mentioned above:

“I can add from my experience that knowledge of about 1500 words allows you to get a fairly general picture of everything you read. This is the number of Hungarian words I learned since march. I write them all down on flashcards and count how much each day – that’s why I can pinpoint the number.

 

At the same time it is obvious that my 1500 word vocab isn’t tweaked to efficiency in basic communication. I simply write down and translate everything I read and lately also the words I manage to pick up from radio. That’s why I know the hungarian word for “voter turnout” but I don’t know yet how to book a flight or hotel room :/”

And this leads into my last, and most important point: all of this is just a means to and end, and that end is speaking.  You must speak.  The whole point of figuring out all this word frequency crap is just so you can get away from it as fast as possible and into the realm of actually talking to native speakers, because that is where you really learn the language.  Memorizing all the vocabulary and grammar rules in the world, as my friend Benny loves to say, will not ever get you anywhere near fluent.  I’ll leave you with a quote from a native Czech speaker and fellow language nerd (it’s the last post in that HTLAL thread):

“Yesterday I met a woman who has been taking Czech lessons twice a week for two years. I asked her some very simple questions “Do you like coffee?”, “Are you Czech?” and she was completely tongue tied. The best she could manage was “Urm, arm, yes” to the first question, and “no” to the second.

 

At first I imagined she didn’t know much Czech at all. I decided to probe into her vocabulary, and found it was quite extensive. She knew words like “octopus” and “hovercraft” in Czech. Yes somehow couldn’t say “To be honest, I prefer tea”.

 

I gave her a two hour lesson in how to construct useful conversational phrases. Starting off with simple things like “I have to say that ..” and “Don’t be upset, but” and building up and chaining these things together into more complex sentences such as “That isn’t something I have given much thought to, but … now that I reflect on it, … my personal opinion is …”

 

She told me it was a very uplifting lesson, since she now felt “fluent” in Czech rather than being frozen with a trapped vocabulary of thousands of words. In fact, she got back to me later that after the lesson, she went into the city and had sophisticated and stressless conversations in a couple shops and with a waitress in an ice-cream parlour.

 

Of course, I was delighted to hear this, and it certainly gave my ego a boost. But, what was most joyful for me to hear is that it would now give her future learning a “usefulness filter”. She said that now she wouldn’t just remember lists of words, but rather filter them through how useful they would be in real conversations, and that real conversations, with real people, will help her get a reality check on this as she goes along.”

You can learn all the vocabulary in the world, but if you don’t learn how to use it, you’re never going to be fluent, and the only way to do that is to speak with native speakers.  Again, I really recommend having a look at GoSpanish, they’re super cheap for what they’re offering.  Check out my review of them here for more info and/or go to their site for a free trial if you like.

Additional Resources and Further Reading

Please be sure to persuse the whole “Basic Spanish Grammar Rules: Lessons & Explanation” category on my site, I have several other articles there that may interst you, especially What Spanish Verb Tenses You Should Learn First, and Why They’re So Important, a brief guide to regional variation of forms of address (tú, usted, vos, etc.) and my beginner’s guide to the Spanish subjunctive.

Professor Arguelles’ website on language-learning

Part 4 of Iversen’s Guide to Learning Languages: How many words do you need to learn?

Here’s the RAE’s reference corpus of current Spanish taken from a combination (says this site) of spoken and written sources (kind of a problem since it only gives you a very general idea of how common these words are and you can’t sort by spoken/written and, as we noted above, there can be some big discrepancies there between the two).   The Real Academia Española (the “Royal Spanish Academy”) is by far the single most respected authority on the Spanish language; see the Wikipedia article on them for more information.

Somebody else did the pull-them-from-subtitles trick on their own and then made their data publicly available.  Here’s the Spanish list published so you can read it online without having to download it first.

Here’s an excellent paper by Paul Nation and Robert Waring at the Notre Dame Seishin University in Japan called: Vocabulary Size, Text Coverage And Word Lists

Here are a series of lists on Wiktionary taken from subtitles of movies by somebody back in 2007.  As they note, many of these are from translations of English-language movies and so won’t really give you the most accurate picture of what’s naturally used in Spanish.

Here’s a very widely circulated list of the 1000 most common words in English.

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