Ok, I’m going to start a list of YouTube Spanish lessons I recommend, that is to say YouTube channels that teach Spanish and, in my opinion, do a good job of it.  This list will be continually updated and maintained (as it will need to be in order to remain current and useful) in the same vein as my list of websites where you can watch Spanish videos that have Spanish subtitles (or transcripts).  That list was first published back in 2012 but has been updated many times since then to include new sites and remove old, defunct ones.  This will work the same way.

These will be channels specifically designed and intended to teach Spanish or at least to help people learn Spanish.  This includes not just

channels directly teaching Spanish (e.g. grammar lessons) but also those where the Spanish is intentionally spoken in such a way as to make it easier for non-native speakers to understand (slower than normal, avoids complex, less common words and syntax).

These channels will not be ordered in any particular way.  I’ll provide a short description and reason for why I like them along with a single video from their channel that I think does a good job of representing them.  Let’s get started.

Señor Jordan

This is a long-time favorite of mine, and what’s nice is that he’s been around forever and still consistently puts out videos.  The amount of content he offers is enormous.  He’s a Spanish teacher (no idea what level, I’m guessing middle/high school) who just makes videos over his summer break.  He’s been doing this so long (since 2007) that at this point he’s covered the overwhelming majority of commonly used Spanish.  Nearly any topic you’d like to learn about, he’s got a video on it.

He picks a single topic for each video and does an excellent job of explaining it.  His explanations are clear, slow, and include lots of examples and visuals to help you remember the material.  Check out his video below about the present perfect in Spanish to see what I mean:

Since YouTube’s not great at organizing large volumes of videos like what he has, I strongly recommend you go to this page on his website where he’s done it for you.  The videos are primarily organized by level – for the student – such as “basics”, “advanced”, and “more advanced”.  Oh, and I should point out that his Spanish is almost entirely Latin American (principally Mexican), where that makes a difference (rarely, except in pronunciation).  If you’re a beginner it doesn’t much matter which dialect you start with because the basics of a language are almost completely the same throughout the various dialects (if there were major differences then they wouldn’t be two dialects of one language but two different languages altogether).

Spanish Sessions

She’s a teacher at a Spanish school (that is, a school for foreigners that teaches Spanish) in Madrid.  She’s a native speaker (unlike Señor Jordan), and obviously the Spanish she teaches is the Iberian dialect, specifically that from Madrid.  What I like about her is that she not only speaks slowly and clearly, and provides Spanish subtitles for all her videos, but especially that she makes most of her videos out of lessons with actual students.  That is, you learn a concept along with the student she’s teaching who is also learning it, that way the tempo of the instruction is matched to that of such a student, plus they tend to ask the same questions and have the same problems that you likely will have.

Check out her video about tan/tanto to see what I mean:

SpanishDict

Yes, the dictionary.  They have their own YouTube channel where they’ve put a lot of fairly high-quality content, mostly about various grammar concepts and common phrases.  I will warn you that most of their videos are fairly old and as such the audio and video quality is not so great, but the explanations are pretty good.  The below video illustrates this (yeah, that’s 240p):

Butterfly Spanish

These are much more recent/modern, and very well-made.  God does she love her whiteboard, though (not criticizing).  She’s a native speaker, Latin American, though I’m not sure from which country.  She’s covered a ton of topics already, explains things slowly and comprehensively, and does so mostly in English (though I notice that subtitles are provided for when she speaks Spanish!  excellent!).  Check out this video on describing how you feel in Spanish:

SpanishWithPaul

He’s a native English speaker living in (I believe) Spain at the moment.  He makes fairly long videos (30-45mins) explaining various Spanish concepts, principally using very simple, Powerpoint-like graphics.  He does a good job of explaining things though and people seem to think he’s a very good teacher.  See his explanation of the preterite tense in Spanish below for an example:

SpanishPod101

Yes, the professional podcasting company.  For what it’s worth, by the way, I think their podcast lessons are excellent and it’s absolutely worth the money to get a membership.

They tend to focus more on how to say various common phrases, expressions, how to talk about certain subjects and events (New Years, your birthday, vegetables, vehicles, “kitchen vocabulary”, etc.), than grammar – if you’re looking for YouTube Spanish lessons for beginners this is an excellent choice.  This is what some people prefer so it’s a nice change from most of the rest that do largely focus on grammar.  Check out their video below on fruit to see what I mean:

Professor Jason

I’ve just spent nearly an hour watching this guy’s videos and I’m pretty impressed overall, but I will add the significant forewarning that his style definitely will not suit some people: it’s very grammar-oriented and he presumes that you already know all the relevant grammatical terminology that he uses (e.g. “dependent clause”, “relative pronoun”, “modal verb”, “imperfect tense”, etc.).

Other than that, I must say that he does an excellent and thorough job of explaining the concepts that he does.  His videos tend to be long (20-40 minutes) but given what they’re about that’s a good thing, even a necessary one I would say.  The concepts he discusses are complex and cover a lot of ground, they need time and plenty of examples to be explained properly.  When you finish one of his videos you’ll feel like you not only have a good understanding of the topic discussed but also like it’s had a chance to sink in fairly well, not like it wasn’t just crammed down your throat as quickly as possible.

Check out his video below about the differences between aquí, acá, allí, and allá for an excellent example of what I’m talking about: it’s thirty minutes long but is probably the best video you can find online about this topic.

 Español en Episodios

This is one of those series like Destinos or Extr@ that’s formulated to help people learn Spanish, so they speak slowly and clearly and at a level slightly below what adults normally would.  They do seem to offer a transcription they’ll email you, but they want a small donation for it.  Have a look at the first episode:

Spanishland School

This is a channel run by a Colombian lady who operates a Spanish school specifically for intermediate and advanced students.  The videos are very well done with explanations in English, e.g. the following about Colombian slang:

Dreaming Spanish

This is a really interesting channel, his method reminds me of that of Ramses who used to do a blog called “Spanish Only”: he really emphasizes listening first, that is to say a sort of “silent period”, as it’s been called, where you just listen to the language and don’t try to speak it.  Whether you agree with this or not (I don’t), you should really give his channel a shot because he speaks very clearly and only somewhat slowly (not so much that it’s silly or annoying).  The topics of his videos range from language-learning advice and techniques to history to scenarios such as how to deal with a taxi in Spanish.

The sample video is below but if you’re interested in learning more about this method, here’s a blog post on it by a redditor who commented on the submission of this channel in the /r/LanguageLearning subreddit (highly recommended if you’re on reddit).

An excllent Spanish course based on video and audio lessons, focuses on teaching you to speak conversational Spanish…

I really recommend you check out my review of Rocket Spanish, it might be a good choice for you considering the article you just finished reading: it’s quite affordable given what you get, it’s online so you just log into their site from your web browser and start the lessons, the lessons are based on videos and audio recordings of native speakers who teach natural, everyday, conversational Spanish, not some boring, technical textbook.  I also talk about who it isn’t for, what some of its problems are, etc., so if you’re considering it and want a critical review please have a look.

Additional Resources and Further Reading

I have a whole category devoted to learning Spanish from YouTube you should check out, it’s full of posts you’ll find useful: Learn Spanish on YouTube: Recommended Channels, How to Do It, Lessons Based on YouTube Videos.

I particularly recommend you have a look at the following related posts:

• Spanish-Speaking YouTubers Who Are Excellent for Intermediate Spanish Practice (not lessons, intended for native speakers, great for improving listening comprehension)
• List of Sites Where You Can Watch Spanish Videos with Spanish Subtitles or Transcripts Online
• List of Best Sites to Watch Spanish-Language TV/Videos Online (most are free to use)

Also see:

11 Awesome Channels to Learn Spanish on YouTube, by FluentU (good blog, excellent language-learning service, check it out).

The 17 Best YouTube Channels to Learn Spanish.  Solid list, a few that are present here and few that aren’t.

Ok, hope that was helpful to you all.  Please, if you know of a YouTube channel that wasn’t on this list and you think it should be, tell me in the comments!  I’m happy to check it out and add it to my list of YouTube Spanish lessons if I think it ought to be here.  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

1. En pelotas

This literally means “in balls” (hence the photo) per the modern definition of “pelota”, but that’s not what it refers to at all (it’s not using the modern definition of “pelota”).  Contrary to what many people think, “pelota” here doesn’t mean “ball” at all.

Its origin actually stretches back to at least the 14th century, possibly earlier.  It started with the phrase “en pellote”, which meant “naked”; the word “pellote” is an antiquated word that means “skin”.

The problem is, that I alluded to above, is that in modern times it has come to be associated with “balls”, that is a man’s testicles.  This results in people incorrectly assuming it only applies to men, or only originally applied to men and has since been expanded to refer to women as well.  This is completely incorrect, “pelota” refers to an outdated Spanish word for “skin”, and the phrase isn’t the least bit sexist.

Source (and if you’d like to read more, be warned that it’s in Spanish and contains a photo of naked people, though): https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/En_pelota

Some contextual, real-life examples from Reverso Contexto:

Tengo que poner la piel de gallina a una dama en pelotas.

(I have to give a naked lady goosebumps.)

Que no te pillen en pelotas.

(Don’t let them catch you with your pants down.  Lit. “Don’t let them catch you naked”)

Te he visto mil veces en pelotas.

(I’ve seen you naked a thousand times.)

2. En Cueros

This is almost certainly a spin-off of the first one.  “Cuero” means “leather” or “hide” and is being used as a slang term here for a person’s skin.

Some contextual, real-life examples from Reverso Contexto:

Dónde todo el mundo me ataco mientras soy en cueros.

(Where everyone attacks me while I’m naked.)

Cálmate. Nadie quiere verte en cueros.

(Chill.  Nobody wants to see you naked.)

¿Por qué estás leyendo un libro de cocina en cueros?

(Why are you reading a cookbook naked?)

3. En Bolas

This is another spin on the original “en pelotas”, but unlike “en cueros”, it’s a bad one.  “En cueros” uses the original representation of “in the skin”, this one just literally means “in balls” and obviously refers to “en pelotas” but using the modern definition of “pelota” which is not the one used by the expression “en pelota”.  So it’s really kind of nonsensical, only retaining meaning in referring to a misinterpretation of the original idiom.  The language nerd in me hates this phrase for this reason.

This is like if it became popular to say “my throat of the woods” to refer to the area that you’re in.  It’s only understandable because of the original idiom it refers to (“my neck of the woods”) and they’ve used a completely different (and wrong) definition of “neck” here, so now it just really doesn’t make sense anymore.

Some contextual examples from Reverso Contexto:

Así que al quitarme los pantalones me quedé en bolas.

(So that when I took my trousers off I was naked.)

Que cuando está en bolas parece un oso.

(When he’s naked he looks like a bear.)

No estoy acostumbrado a las tías en bolas.

(I’m not used to naked girls.)

4. Como Dios me/te/le trajo al mundo

This one’s very similar to “birthday suit” or “naked as when I was born” in English.  It literally means “like when God brought me into the world”.

No clue as to the origin though honestly I doubt there really is one, it’s just one of those phrases where it was immediately obvious what it meant and, not surprisingly, became a very common way of saying that someone was naked in many different languages.

Some contextual examples from Reverso Contexto (I’m not advertising for them, I’m just linking to the specific page I used so you can see more examples if you like):

Y algunas de ti como Dios te trajo al mundo, con 6 meses.

(And some [photos] of you naked, when you were six months old.)

Estás como Dios te trajo al mundo.

(You’re naked as the day you were born.)

No hay nada como quedarte como Dios te trajo al mundo y tomar un buen baño caliente.

(There’s nothing like stripping naked and having a nice, hot bath.)

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

This is a simple technique I developed on my own as part of the Telenovela Method years ago and I’ve just never gotten around to writing about it because it never occurred to me how much trouble most people have learning Spanish pronunciation (note: this actually works on any foreign language).  This is a simple, obvious (once you understand it) technique that’s very easy to learn and, in my experience, will let you pronounce anything (I’ve used it successfully with Spanish, German, and Russian so far).  Let’s get started and learn how to pronounce Spanish words.  I did a quick video demo for you that I’ve included at the bottom.

What to Do

In summary: Break the word or phrase down into the smallest possible pieces, master each one individually, then slowly start connecting them into progressively larger chunks, finally speeding everything up.

In detail:

1. Start at the beginning of the word and master just the first syllable.  Let’s use the word “aeropuerto” as an example.  Click the link to hear native speakers pronounce it on Forvo.  This is a word I had trouble with years ago when I was first learning Spanish and it was actually several months before I could pronounce it properly.  First, just learn to say the initial “ae” sound correctly, it just sounds like the English word “eye”.
2. Next: “ro”.  Don’t stick the two together yet, go slow…piece by piece.  “Ro, ro, ro…ae, ae, ae…ro, ro, ro…ae…ro…ae…ro, ae-ro, ae-ro, aero, aero, aero”.
3. Now let’s do “pue”, it’s like “p-weh”.  Just say “Pue” several times until you’re pronouncing that one particular syllable just like the native speaker.
4. Let’s go back and review.  Say “ae-ro” again a few times, slowly speeding up to “aero” until you’re saying it just like the native speaker and just as quickly.
5. Let’s do “erto” now.  It’s just “air-tow” with a rolled “r”.  Say: “er, er, er, er-to, er-to, erto, erto, erto”.
6. Let’s make bigger chunks by putting them together.  How about “puerto”?  Say: “Pue…pue…pue…erto…erto…erto…pue-rto…pue-erto…puerto…puerto…puerto”, starting slowly and then speeding up.
7. Let’s slowly put them all together to form the whole word we want to say: “Ae…ro…ae…ro…ae-ro…ae-ro…aero…aero…pue…erto…pue…erto…pue-erto…puerto…puerto…aero…puerto…aero…puerto…aero-puerto…aero-puerto…aero-puerto…aeropuerto…aeropuerto…aeropuerto…aeropuerto…aeropuerto, aeropuerto, aeropuerto, aeropuerto, aeropuerto”.

That’s how you do it.  The above looks tedious and it probably took you several minutes to go through all of that, doing it yourself, but that’s because you were learning how to do it and simultaneously trying to do my example of it at the same time.  When you’re doing this yourself it’ll usually take something more like 15-30 seconds for a word and a couple of minutes for a whole phrase or short sentence.  Here’s a video demonstration of me doing it (takes about 4 minutes but keep in mind I’m going very slowly and explaining what I’m doing along the way):

It’s really very simple: just break it down into the smallest possible pieces, master each one individually, then slowly start putting them together and speeding up.  That’s it.

How to learn conversational Spanish with perfect pronunciation

If you’re particularly interested in learning spoken, everyday Spanish, with a focus on pronunciation, I strongly recommend you check out “the mimic method”, it’s detailed here on the guy’s site.  I’ve tried the Spanish version myself and thought it was excellent (I’m thinking about doing the Russian one now).  The inventor, Idahosa Ness, has learned five languages this way and is frequently mistaken for a native speaker.  If you’re into music you’ll really like it because he tells  you how to incorporate that and he himself initially learned languages by singing them.

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

First of all, it’s “which Spanish verb tenses…”, not “what Spanish verb tenses…”, but Google tells me the first one is what people are searching for, so that’s what the title is.  Now that that’s out of the way…

I’m going to cover 3 things in this article today:

1. Why the Spanish verb conjugations are so important, why you should start learning them immediately, and why you should devote a good deal of time to doing so.
2. Which ones are the most important, which ones you should focus on in the beginning, and in what order (I rank them in order of importance primarily based on how frequently they’re used in popular speech and writing by native speakers).
3. Recommendations of tools, websites, and resources you can use to help you learn Spanish verb conjugations (this is at the bottom and arguably the most valuable part of this article if you’re ready to dive right in, don’t miss it!).

Part 1: Why Spanish verb tenses (and moods! yes, there’s a difference) are so important and why it’s beneficial to you to devote a lot of time to learning them

This is something I’ve been thinking about and saying to certain people for a while and now I’m going to come out and say it publicly:

Being able to properly conjugate verbs is the key to learning the Spanish language.  It’s also 80% of the hard work.  Master it and you’re most of the way there already, the rest are things that are relatively minor by themselves and easily learned.

They’re that important.  I’m learning German right now and the equivalent concept in that language are the cases – learn those and you’ve got 80% of the hard work out of the way (plus they are absolutely key to the language itself).  Master the conjugation of verbs in Spanish and all you’ve got left is a little bit of additional, relatively simple, grammar and syntax, a bunch of vocabulary, and that’s it.  The vocabulary can be tedious to learn, it can take a while, yes, but it’s not difficult to understand at all (unlike the verb conjugation system), it’s just the definition of a word that you have to remember, that’s it.

Now, note that I did not say that the verbs or verb conjugation were 80% of the Spanish language or even most of it, I said they were 80% of the hard part.  By sheer volume verbs don’t make up the majority of the language or the grammar, no, but I do think they’re most of what’s difficult for people learning the language.

The concept of verb conjugation in Spanish is the hardest part of learning the language in my opinion, it’s learning how to conjugate the various verbs, what each tense/mood means, how and when to use which tense/mood, and then learning all the irregular verbs in addition to that.  It’s a big deal; it’s a big, complex, nonsensical, discombobulated…thing, that is also, much to the beginning learner’s chagrin, extremely important, absolutely integral, to the language.  Yes, you have to learn it, yes it’s going to be hard and it’s going to suck.  Want to tackle it, get it handled, get it out of the way, and start being able to adroitly use the Spanish language correctly with fluency?  Then let’s do that, let’s get going.

How should I learn the Spanish verb tenses?

One at a time, slowly, from the most essential and commonly used ones to the least so, in order.

That’s how I recommend you do it.  As many of you know, if you’re familiar with my work, I place great value on using popular media in the language you’re trying to learn in order to learn that language – TV shows, movies, cartoons, books, news articles, etc. (I even wrote a book about it!).  The sooner you can learn just enough Spanish (and it won’t take much) to at least get started in understanding those sources and talking to people in Spanish via language exchanges, the better.  Once you can start doing those things the rate at which you will be learning Spanish will increase significantly.

I recommend that you already know at least a little bit of the language first before you start in on the Spanish TV shows and music and what-not (you don’t absolutely have to but it makes it a hell of a lot easier), just enough so that you have a clue as to what you’re looking at or listening to – “Ok, that’s a verb, that’s a noun, that word means ‘the’, that word means ‘an'”, etc. – and although you might not know what any particular verb means, more importantly you do know what tense most of them are conjugated in, what that tense means, and why it’s conjugated that way.

If you’ve got this very basic level of competency down (takes a couple weeks max), you can then use that as a jumping off point to dive into the ocean of Spanish-language media out there (TV shows, comics, etc.) and then start rapidly learning enormous amounts of Spanish from those and applying what you’ve learned by using it to talk to native speakers.  Get it?

Part 2: Ok, so which Spanish verb conjugations do I need to learn and in what order?

What do I mean by “which”?  I mean there are a lot of verb tenses and moods, as they’re called, in Spanish that are rarely used and as such if you’re a beginning or intermediate learner you’re really far better off not spending any time on them (initially – I’m not saying don’t learn them at all) and instead focusing on the ones that are commonly used today by native speakers in speech and print.  This is just like my advice to first learn the most commonly used words in Spanish when you’re working on your vocabulary.  So here we go, in order…

Level 1, for complete beginners:

Learn the Present Tense of regular verbs and the most important irregular verbs (ser, ver, etc.)

That’s it.  One tense, and one tense only, please.  Why?

Two reasons:

1. You’ll have your hands full enough with this: you’ve got 3 completely different conjugation tables to learn of 6 conjugations each (-ar verbs, -er verbs, and -ir verbs) which comes out to a total of 18 different words/endings to memorize, plus the 6-word present tense conjugation tables for each of the irregular verbs you decide to learn (I’ll give you a list at the end of this article, it’ll be short).  So that’s already something like 40-80 words and endings to memorize depending on how many irregulars you throw in.
2. The present tense is by far the most important, the most common, the most versatile, and consequently the most useful.  It’s what you need to learn first.  You can do so much with just this one tense – yes, sometimes there are better and more common ways to express something using another verb tense but the point is that using the present tense to do it will work, will be grammatically correct, and most importantly people will understand you and that’s what matters: communicating with native speakers in Spanish, right?

Level 2, for beginners who already know the present tense fairly well, know a few dozen of the most common verbs, and know essential definite/indefinite articles (“el/la” means “the”, “un/una” means “a/an”, etc.):

Learn the Preterite and Imperfect Tenses of regular and the most common irregular verbs

What I mean by this type of beginner is someone who’s still a beginner but not completely so: you can understand very basic Spanish sentences, e.g. “Yo quiero agua” (I want some water) or “¿Cómo te llamas?” (What’s your name?) and you’re already pretty familiar with the present tense and can generally use it and understand verbs conjugated in it without too much trouble.  This would probably be somebody with a couple weeks’ to a month’s worth of instruction/study.

Now is where you learn the first half of how to speak about things in the past in Spanish: you’ll learn the two past tenses – preterite and imperfect – what they mean, and how to choose the right one.  Level 3 is where you’ll learn the second half of this.

Level 3, for intermediate-beginners who understand most Spanish verb tenses covered in levels 1 & 2 above:

Learn how to use the compound tenses in Spanish as well as how to form the past participles of regular verbs and the most important irregular ones

This is the second half of how you speak about things in the past in Spanish, and yes it is very common (all three ways are, so yes you need to learn all three).

The compound tenses are generally merely this: have or had + past participle (sometimes it’s “have been” or “had been” + past participle).  For example, “I have already washed the dishes”, “You had already left when he called”, or “I have been waiting three hours).  That’s it, simple.

The way they do this in Spanish is very similar to English, it’s just the Spanish verb “haber” (which means “to have”) + the past participle of a verb.  Now, “haber” can be conjugated differently in order to impart different meaning, and it is (sorry) irregular, so you’ll have to learn its conjugation.  I left it off my list of the most important irregular verbs below because I didn’t want to make you bother with it until you got to this point since it’s rarely ever used for anything other than this (forming compound tenses) and a few common expressions (“hay que”) you can treat individually, plus it’s basically getting its own section here.

Learning how to form the past participle is relatively very easy, by the way, not a big deal at all.  It’s the easy part of this.

Level 4, for advanced beginners who have covered all material in previous levels:

Learn the conditional and future tenses along with the imperative mood

This is relatively minor, sort of just a bit of mopping up we can do before we get to biggest nasty of them all (the subjunctive).  The conditional and future are how you express that you would or will do something, e.g. “I would be glad to fly to your home and teach you Spanish if you would pay me a million dollars”, or “I will be in Spain this fall”.  The conditional indicates that you will do something in the future if a certain condition (hence the term) is met, and the future indicates that you will do something regardless (without conditions).

The imperative mood is what many of you know as the “command form”, that is how you give a command or order, how you tell somebody to do something, e.g. “Bring me the book that’s on the table, please.”  This, like the conditional and future tenses, is relatively simple and easy to learn, it’s just a matter of getting around to and doing it, and it simply isn’t warranted in my opinion until you have all the previous stuff out of the way because these aren’t used as much as the preceding tenses.

Level 5, for advanced beginners who know all the previous material and really need just this to tip them over the edge into “Intermediate” territory:

Learn the Subjunctive Mood

Oh yes.  It’s this.  “Intermediate level” in Spanish (in terms of a student’s ability), in my opinion, is where you’ve got the issue of verb conjugation down and pretty well settled and now you’re working on other minor grammatical and syntactical issues, less common vocabulary, and speeding up your listening comprehension and speaking abilities (meaning that you’re practicing listening and speaking such that you can understand and properly speak faster and faster Spanish until you get to native-level competency in these areas).  If you don’t have the subjunctive down, you’re not intermediate, not yet.

Plan to spend a bit of time on this one.  It’s not so much that there’s so much information/material you need to learn, it’s that you need to give yourself time to process and understand a mostly foreign grammatical concept, a way of speaking that you’ve rarely ever used before.  Really, you’re just not used to this…concept, this way of communicating (it’s very alien feeling to most students), and in my experience it takes English speakers a while to really “get” this.

I have a good basic introduction article to it, called The Spanish Subjunctive Explained + W.E.I.R.D.O System (awesome little mnemonic device for dealing with the subjunctive in Spanish), if you’re interested in getting started right away.

List of the Most Important Irregular Spanish Verbs

Here’s my list of what I think are the 11 must-learn irregular verbs that beginners absolutely have to know and have to know how to conjugate (which tenses/moods you need to learn depend on what level you’re at as per above).  I mostly took these from here, that’s an up-to-date list based on solid, modern data.  Each one links to its definition on SpanishDict (which links to its conjugation table, just click “Conjugation” at the top to the right of “Dictionary”):

• Ser
• Estar
• Poder
• Tener
• Hacer
• Decir
• Ir
• Ver
• Dar
• Saber
• Querer

Part 3: Useful Resources to Learn Spanish Verb Tenses

1. The best course I know of that will help you learn how to conjugate Spanish verbs is Rocket Spanish, please consider checking out my Rocket Spanish review here – it’s not all positive and I cover not only who I think the course is good for but also who I think it’s not good for (this may be you, have a look before you consider giving them your money).  Speaking of money, I should note that it’s really quite reasonably priced compared to similar courses, you’re looking at less than $100 for a comprehensive video/audio Spanish course.
2. A great free website is Conjugemos that uses a simple but effective interactive quiz with countdown timer where you have to fill in the blank with the correct verb conjugation for the verb given to help you review (they also include verb charts if you don’t already know the tense/mood in question).
3. In terms of references just to look up the conjugation of a verb, I personally use and recommend SpanishDict and the RAE Dictionary.  The RAE site is entirely in Spanish, so it’s more for intermediate/advanced students, and I only tend to use it because at this point I prefer definitions in Spanish for Spanish words that I’m looking up as opposed to an English translation, and then when the word I look up happens to be a verb it’s easier for me to just click the the “Conjugar” button at the top (e.g. see “ver”) than opening a separate tab to navigate to a separate site in order to get that verb’s conjugation (why would I do that?).  So I’m not particularly recommending one over the other, if you tend to prefer English definitions then just use SpanishDict’s conjugator, if you prefer Spanish definitions then I recommend the RAE’s dictionary and oh by the way they have a conjugator there on-site, just click the little blue button when you look up a verb.  That’s all.
4. A good introductory video is one called Overview of Spanish Verb Tenses, Conjugations, and Uses by Professor Jason on YouTube.

Also be sure to check out my post, A Brief Guide to Regional Variation of the Forms of Address (Tú, Vos, Usted) in Spanish, it’s not specificaly about verbs but it addresses how their conjugation can change depending on which form of address you use, which is dictated by where you are and who you’re talking to.

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

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

Today’s Word: “Carajo”

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

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

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

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

“Porque es una berraca, carajo.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Additional Resources and Further Reading

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

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

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

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

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

Interested in Colombian Spanish, specifically?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers,
Andrew

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

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

The following list of resources are the ones that I use the most, by far.  These are my “daily tools”, that is things that I use every. single. day. to learn more and more Spanish, and that I’ve been using for a very long time now.  They are time-tested and proven.  These tools are essential if you’re using The Telenovela Method–that’s how I learn, that’s my own personal method–but this is an excellent list that will be immensely valuable to any Spanish-learner regardless of which method or technique(s) you’re using.

1. A modern source of Spanish in a form that you enjoy using

This is the crux of the Telenovela Method (you need a source of modern, contemporary Spanish that you’ll enjoy watching, listening to, or reading) and the only item on this list that you might want to skip if this isn’t the method you’re using, but even then I doubt it since just about every person I’ve encountered interested in learning Spanish is interested in finding out where they can get Spanish-language movies and TV shows, especially those with Spanish subtitles, as well as Spanish-language books, newspapers, magazines, and even comics.

To find free online TV shows as well as many other videos in Spanish I highly recommend you consult the two lists that I’ve put together and currently maintain and am constantly updating:

List of Websites Where You Can Watch Spanish Videos with Spanish Subtitles or Transcripts Online for Free

and

List of Best Free Sites to Watch Spanish-Language TV Online (these generally do not have Spanish subtitles, though there are a lot more of them simply due to the fact that most videos available online don’t have subtitles for them)

For children’s books and cartoons (which I highly recommend for beginning adult language learners, see here to learn why), see the following:

The Awesome Language-Learning Resource that is Children’s Books

Learn Spanish with comics! Do you like Garfield, Calvin & Hobbes, Cathy, Foxtrot, Marmaduke, etc.? I’ve got something for you!

It’s mentioned in the above list of websites where you can watch Spanish videos with Spanish subtitles but it deserves another mention here because it’s perfect for beginning learners (adults and children) and also falls under this category: Bookbox, which is a site that turns traditional children’s stories into cartoons in various languages with subtitles in that language.

For newspapers simply go to NewspaperMap.com, filter by language, and then pick a newspaper (I would go with one in the country that you’re interested in traveling to).

2. Dictionaries and a verb conjugation tool or book

Just use SpanishDict. Trust me, I’ve used all the online dictionaries and several paper ones in addition to verb conjugation books and the only one I use anymore is SpanishDict, they’ve got everything you need right there on that one single site and it’s better organized and set up than anything anyone else has got. If you’ll just go to their homepage you’ll see that they’ve got a big search box right up at the top that functions as the search for their dictionary as well as three different translation engines they use all in one, just enter any word or sentence and it’ll detect whether it’s a word to look up in the dictionary or a phrase that needs translating and then take the appropriate action. Additionally, when you look up a verb in the dictionary you’ll see a short conjugation in the form of a table at the bottom of its definition with a link to the full conjugation (right under the table will be a link to “Complete [verb] conjugation”, e.g. “Complete ser conjugation” if the word you looked up was the verb “ser”). There’s also a conjugator on there that you can just go straight to if you’ve got a verb you want conjugated (note the “Conjugate” button in the bar at the top of every page).  Here’s a 12-minute video of me explaining precisely why SpanishDict is so good and how to use all the various features of it:

Of course, you can also use any other similar reference that you want: you’ll need a dictionary (if you want a recommendation for a good paperback one, this one by Merriam-Webster is my favorite that I used for years before primarily switching over to online dictionaries), conjugator (e.g. the one on SpanishDict’s site) or a book of Spanish verb conjugations such as Barron’s 501 Spanish Verbs (I have it, it’s excellent), and a translator will help though it’s not absolutely necessary if you don’t have internet access at the time.

3. Google Translate

There are several web-based translators and translation programs you can download, I’ve yet to find one that beats Google Translate. When looking up the definitions of the individual words doesn’t tell you the actual meaning of what was said, this should be your next tool that you try. It can not only translate any text you enter into it, but it can also translate entire webpages for you: simply copy and paste the URL (the web address that starts with “http://”) into the box on the left and click the link that shows up in the box on the right.  Here’s a short video I did on using Google Translate:

4. Urban Dictionary

Didn’t expect to see this one on here, did you? Urban Dictionary is, by far, the best reference for looking up Spanish slang and curse words that I’ve ever found. It doesn’t have everything, but it has a lot of things. If you run across a word or expression that the dictionaries and translators can’t crack, run it through Urban Dictionary and see what happens.  Here’s a short video I did on using Urban Dictionary to look up slang:

5. Google

Yes, seriously. If you can’t figure out what a word or phrase means through any of the above resources, just google it like this: “what does [“Spanish stuff”] mean”, e.g. “what does ‘buenas noches’ mean” (I do recommend putting the Spanish in quotation marks when you do your search that way you get only exact matches for that phrase). I’ve rarely had this fail and, interestingly enough, I’ve found that frequently the first result, or at least the first relevant result, you’ll get will be to a WordReference forum post explaining the item in question (I’ll get to the WordReference forums in just a minute).  Occasionally it’ll be a Yahoo! Answers page or something else that does actually give you the answer you were looking for.  Regardless, my point is that if the above obvious references fail to turn up what you’re looking for, just run it through Google, you’d be surprised how often this works.

6. Forvo

Forvo is a website where people volunteer to make recordings of words in their native language so that people who don’t speak that language can hear how to correctly pronounce them. It’s brilliant, it perfectly solves the age-old problem of not knowing how to pronounce things when you’re reading in a foreign language. I’ve found it to be utterly indispensable, I use it constantly when reading in a language that I’m just learning where I don’t yet know how to pronounce most words.

Forvo covers 299 different languages and currently has 57,100 words (this goes up every day) in its Spanish index that you can look up and hear a native speaker pronounce for you.  Here’s a video I did on what Forvo is, how it works, and how to use it:

7. WordReference forums

The WordReference forums are a great place to ask questions about anything related to language-learning: a word or phrase you don’t understand, anything regarding the how or why of what a native speaker said (i.e. grammar and syntax), general language-learning advice regarding your techniques, etc. They’re very friendly and eager to help, just be sure to search to see if your question has been asked already: do this first.

If you do find that you need to post a question there, just leave the tab open and reload it a few minutes later: I find that I generally have several responses to my question within ten to fifteen minutes of posting it. Like I said, it’s a fantastic resource and excellent forum.  Here’s a video I did demonstrating the use of the WordReference Forums and talk about when and how it should be used:

8. Places to look up any grammar or syntax you don’t understand

You’ll need some way of learning any Spanish grammar or syntax that you don’t understand, and there are so many ways to do this via so many different free online resources it’s ridiculous, I’ll try to cover some of the main ones right now that I think are the best:

YouTube – Yes, just YouTube in general, there are so many Spanish lessons and courses and individual explanations of single concepts (e.g. tu vs. usted, the preterite, the subjunctive, etc.) I can’t possibly list them all but I’ll tell you one of the most effective ways of utilizing YouTube when you want a concept in Spanish taught to you is to simply search YouTube for that specific concept because I can almost guarantee you there will be a video out there (probably several, which allows you to have the same thing explained to you several different ways thereby significantly increasing your understanding of it) made for the sole purpose of addressing that specific aspect of the Spanish language. Here is my short list of outstanding YouTube channels that focus on teaching Spanish:

• Señor Jordan’s Spanish videos
• The Spanish Blog
• SpanishDict’s channel
• Spanish Ben (this is Ben of Notes in Spanish fame, a website with tons of free Spanish podcasts that I highly recommend)
• Spanish Sessions

Additionally, you have excellent written resources such as:

SpanishDict’s section on Spanish grammar and syntax – This is a great little list of various Spanish grammar and syntax components. They have good, easy to understand explanations and a quiz at the end of each one.

Wikipedia’s Spanish grammar section – This is an excellent reference for looking up specific concepts once you know what they are (or have a good general idea), but I would advise against attempting to utilize it as something like a set of lessons or a course in Spanish grammar—you can, but it’s very dry and things are explained as concisely as possible with only a few examples per concept (great for a reference, again, but not so much as a full and proper lesson). Also, note that the above link just goes to the general Spanish grammar section and that they have separate and more detailed sections on:

• Spanish verbs
• Spanish conjugation
• Spanish irregular verbs
• Spanish nouns
• Grammatical gender in Spanish
• Spanish adjectives
• Spanish determiners
• Spanish pronouns
• Spanish prepositions

9. An SRS such as Anki or paper flashcards.

We’re going to need some way of actually noting everything that we look up and initially learn so that we can study it later and won’t forget it (that way it will be available for us to use when we’re trying to understand a Spanish TV show, movie, or song, or trying to talk to a native speaker, and that particular bit of Spanish gets used), and of course you don’t want to be stuck trying to memorize everything you look up (vocab, grammar, etc.) as soon as you do so, you want to just quickly look it up, understand what’s being said, note it for later study, and then move on with your movie, show, or book, right? Of course. Trying to learn it all the very second you look it up would mean you’ll spend an hour on a single sentence, it’ll be horribly tedious and boring, and that’s the opposite of what we want. So we need some way of noting what we learn for later review so that we can move on without getting bogged down: this is where our SRS comes in…

I highly recommend Anki (click here to go to their site and download the software). Anki is a Spaced Repetition System, or SRS, that is essentially a software version of flashcards. The way a SRS works is on the principal of spaced repetition where review of previously learned material is spaced at longer and longer intervals which allows the student to learn large quantities of small individual data or facts and retain them indefinitely. It takes advantage of what’s known as the “spacing effect” which is the psychological effect where people will learn things better if they’re reviewed a certain number of times over a long period of time than if they’re reviewed the same number of times over a much shorter period of time. This, of course, makes it perfect for learning vocabulary, grammar, sayings and idioms, and just foreign languages in general. The above was just a summary on Anki and how to use it, I highly recommend that you go read my full-length post that I did on Anki, what it is, how it works, how to use it, and which includes a 12-minute video of me demonstrating everything which I will also put below here for you:

If you really want, you could use paper flashcards instead, though I don’t know why you would.

What we’re going to do is have Anki open while we’re watching our movie or reading our book, in addition to SpanishDict or a similar reference to look up what we need to look up, and as we learn what we need to in order to understand what’s being said, we’re going to put that information into Anki in the form of flashcards for later review. Just put whatever you need to in there: vocabulary words, grammar rules, expressions and their meanings, etc., then move on—you’ll review that stuff later.

Optional but recommended:

The BBC’s Spanish site, particularly their basic grammar explanations.

If you really want an organized grammar book to refer to (having a physical book can come in handy if you’re, for example, reading a book in Spanish and don’t have a computer handy to look things up with), I will happily recommend Baron’s Spanish Grammar by Christopher Kendris, it’s fantastic, I’ve got half a dozen books on Spanish grammar and this one is by far the clearest and easiest to understand and it has the added bonus of being very compact such that it’s slightly larger than a wallet and can easily be carried in your pocket. Of course, you can always look up Spanish grammar online but I know that a lot of people prefer to have a hard copy book as a reference since it’s a bit faster and easier under some circumstances (pretty much anytime you’re not right in front of a computer).

Some workbooks I really like are The Practice Makes Perfect Series of workbooks, and I’ve personally completed several of them and they’re excellent. The easiest, cheapest way to do this is the Practice Makes Perfect series of workbooks that you can find on Amazon for around $7 each. These are excellent choices for learning the must-know fundamentals and, unlike other workbooks, have space in them to write the answers (that’s a pet peeve of mine: workbooks that don’t do this so you have to keep a separate notebook for all your work, just makes things so much harder to keep organized). I especially recommend you get the Basic Spanish workbook and the Spanish Verb Tenses workbook.

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 just found a new resource that I really like and wanted to let you guys know about it (it’s free, before you ask): Edustation.es

It’s a website for people learning languages that’s entirely in Spanish (not a big deal, even if you’re a complete beginner you can always either look up whatever you need to in order to understand it or you can just plug it into Google Translate: just copy and paste the URL into the translate box on the left and hit ‘enter’).  Right now they support Spanish, English, Polish, French, and German.  Obviously we’re going to be focused what they have available for Spanish.

What is it?

What they do is run a site where all the material (texts, video, recordings, pictures, etc.) is uploaded by the users who also provide subtitles in the case of videos (Spanish subtitles! yay!) as well as explanations and translations. You get points for everything you upload and those points increase your public ranking in the community where everyone can see how much everyone else has contributed, which thereby encourages people to contribute new material (and it works, new stuff is added every day). What I really like about it is the following:

1. That the texts have audio transcriptions so that you can listen to the text being read in Spanish while reading it so that you learn the proper pronunciation plus you can practice your listening comprehension

2. That the videos all have Spanish subtitles!  This is the best possible combination: videos in Spanish with Spanish subtitles.  This allows you to figure out what they’re actually saying, it’s far more useful than English subtitles (with the Spanish ones if you don’t know what something means you can just look it up, no big deal) where you can’t be sure what exactly they’re saying (in Spanish) unless you’re already at an advanced level–you can determine the meaning of what they’re saying with English subtitles, but most learners will have a hard time figuring out the actual Spanish that was used and if they can’t figure that out then they can’t really learn much in terms of Spanish from it.

3. They have a wide variety of interesting content presented in a variety of formats: texts, videos, and pictures.  The videos include music videos, TED talks, fun Spanish lessons, interviews with flamenco dancers, documentaries about Spanish-speaking countries (note that that is part 12 of a 12-part documentary about the Spanish Civil War), short fun educational cartoons for kids, short travel videos about Spanish-speaking places (like Cádiz, Spain in this case),  and much more.  Absolutely awesome video selection, and, again, all of them have Spanish subtitles! Fantastic! I’m so excited!  I’m always looking for these and they’re generally so hard to find, 98% of the Spanish videos you find online either don’t have subtitles or they’re English or instead of subtitles they provide an English translation of what was said but not a Spanish transcription.

The texts they have include an equally wide variety in terms of subject matter and difficulty, such as: a short article about the Ocelot (with audio transcription which they all have! yes! it’s right at the top, just click the blue ‘play’ arrow in the top left directly above where it says ‘Lección’) , fascinating articles that teach you about Spanish-speaking countries like Chile and Argentina and Bolivia and more, articles on economics and politics (advanced level), history and culture of Spanish-speaking countries like Machu Picchu in Peru, Spanish translations of movie quotes like this one from Fight Club, etc.

Why I like it

Because it provides what I think is the most useful sort of resource: spoken Spanish accompanied by some sort of transcript allowing you to determine what they said, which words they used in Spanish, no matter what level you’re at in the language.  I especially like the fact that they have a ton of videos in Spanish all of which have Spanish subtitles.  Additionally, between the videos and the articles and the pictures, the sheer quantity of what they have is quite impressive, just what’s on there now is more than enough to keep a beginning learner fully occupied for several months at a minimum, and the fact that other users are adding new material daily means that you won’t ever actually run out no matter how long you keep using the site.  Oh, and it’s free, that too, haha.

A minor bonus is that the whole site is in Spanish if you want it to be (again, if you don’t, just have Google Translate translate it for you) so you can actually use the navigation of the site itself to teach yourself Spanish.  Nifty.

Once again, the address is Edustation.es, and please remember to let me know what you think in the comments, as well as any tips or suggestions, similar sites, etc., 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

Just found this, I smiled a bit, kind of funny (“Merci beau coup!” lol), but he’s absolutely right:

Most Western Europeans speak at least two languages fluently, and someone speaking 5 or 6 isn’t the least bit abnormal or special over there at all.  The fact that we’re a first-world, wealthy nation and we’re also the worst, among first-world wealthy nations such as Western Europe, Canada and Japan, when it comes to language education is just embarrassing.  Our education system is bad enough, this is just one more facet of it.

Why do you think it is that we are this way (the worst as far as language education goes amongst wealthy nations)?  Seriously, let me know, leave a comment, 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