Have you ever tried using flashcards with a foreign word on one side and the English translation on the other or, even worse, repeatedly reading a list of vocabulary and each word’s translation over and over again, attempting to memorize them by rote?  Most of us have, which is good, because that’ll save me the trouble of convincing you just how inefficient and boring this is.  We can do much better.

This is the second in a series of posts I’m making explaining why I think using popular media such as movies, songs, and books is such an effective way to learn a language, presuming of course you do it correctly (“passively” is just about the opposite of “correctly” here, but we’ll get to that later).  In the first one I talked about how important it is to choose something that interests or entertains you in the immediate term so that the learning process is never unpleasant (being bored is horribly unpleasant for most people).  In this post I want to illustrate how much more efficient popular media that you’re enjoying (and therefore paying close attention to with little effort) is at helping you to learn the language being used, and by “learn” I mean understood and then stored in long-term memory.

What we remember: emotions, action, and weird stuff, especially if performed by or on other people

Millions of years of evolution have resulted in our brains having been specially programmed to remember black-and-white written text on paper.  No, wait, that’s not right…they haven’t been programmed to do that and so are terrible at it.

Right…what to do?  Well, how about instead of trying to force a square peg through a round hole, we take the square peg and find a square hole for it?  That is, let’s present the information we want to remember to our brains in a format that it’s programmed to remember.  If you’re thinking, “But we have language centers in our brains, you can see them functioning on MRIs.  We’re very good at learning languages.”, you’re right but only partially because you’re not seeing the whole story.  How are we programmed to learn languages.  That is, in what form or format does our brain best understand and remember new language?  Certainly not in just black-and-white text with little to no imagery associated with it.

The brain understands and remembers: action, other people, emotions, compelling visual imagery and sounds, and especially when these things are all combined to make a sequentially logical story.  “Logical” doesn’t mean it has to be realistic: you can have a story about giant, cartoon purple rabbits flying about in space ships, that’s fine, it just needs to have some sort of understandable order to it where each scene follows from the previous ones in such a way that the brain can make a single, entire, comprehensible story by putting all of them together, in order.

Can you quote a movie you really like but haven’t seen in years?

Yes.  The answer is “yes”, for almost all of you.  Now why do you think that is?

It’s a story in multi-sensory format (audio-visual) involving action and people that especially interested and entertained you (you really liked it, in other words) and which thereby triggered lots of emotions in you, and all of this was associated with what you heard them say while these things were occurring, that’s why.  The brain is really good at associating action and emotion, especially when it pertains to other people, with things and then remembering all of it together.

So if we want to remember the language that was used in a movie, series, song, or book, let’s pick ones we really enjoy and will therefore remember, shall we?

We shall, because we have so much to choose from nowadays.  Between movies/series on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, cable TV, Disney+, National Geographic, and YouTube…music on Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, and YouTube…books on Amazon, blog posts, news stories in both written and video format, podcasts about everything under the sun and in every language on earth (even dead ones: yes, you can get podcasts in Latin).  You can even use services like Yabla which take regular TV series that were made in foreign languages (by and for native speakers) and adapt them for language learning.

I hope this helps you.  I think I’ll stop here but make another post at some point where I take some video clips from foreign language movies showing entertaining scenes, explain the language they’re going to use to you so that it’s comprehensible, have you watch them once, wait a bit (a few paragraphs, a few days til a new post? I haven’t decided yet), and then quiz you on it and we’ll see how well this really works.

If you’re learning Spanish and especially if you want to use movies, TV shows, Netflix series, music, books, etc. to do it…

I literally wrote the book about how to do that: it’s about how to learn Spanish from popular media that you can get on Amazon in Kindle or paperback format.  If that interests you and especially if you’d like to support my work, I’d really appreciate if you could check it out here on Amazon, it’s called The Telenovela Method.  Also, if you’re interested in memory/meorization/mnemonics there’s someone else’s book you should have a look at: The Memory Book by Harry Lorayne.

Hope that helps, please consider subscribing to my emails (sidebar on the right) or at least push notifications for when I put up new blog posts.  My social media accounts are on the slidey thing on the left (I’m active on YouTube, Instagram, Tiktok, Pintrest, Facebook, and Twitter).

Cheers,

Andrew

I’ve got an excellent guest post for you today very much in line with my methods and previous posts, enjoy.

-Andrew

Watching Spanish-language TV series and movies is one of the best ways to improve your Spanish. First, you’ll be engaged and entertained, which will keep up your motivation. Second, you’ll hear people speak as they do in real life, which will give you invaluable exposure to natural speech — something you can’t extract from a textbook. And finally, you’ll gain not just linguistic knowledge, but cultural knowledge as well, as the stories and attitudes of the characters will shed light on the culture that’s being portrayed.

For learning about language and culture, there’s no better series than En Terapia (“In Therapy”), which consists of 30-minute dialogues between a therapist and his patients. In fact, En Terapia is an Argentine version of an English-language series In Treatment, which makes it a great educational tool for a variety of reasons. First, given that En Terapia is essentially a scene-by-scene remake of In Treatment, you can see directly how certain words and phrases are translated by comparing the two versions. And second, you can compare how characters handle the same situations, which illuminates interesting differences between the two cultures.

Image via TV Pública Argentina

Scene Analysis: Marina / Laura

To see what I mean, let’s analyze a scene! I’ll write out the dialogues below; if you’d like, you can follow along with these videos.

English-language video: click here (start from the beginning)

Spanish-language video: click here (start from 21:20)

Laura, one of the patients of In Treatment, is a young, intelligent woman who is having problems in her relationship, as you can see in the dialogue below:

PAUL: You were the one who made it specific: get married or to split up. That was your ultimatum.

LAURA: No no no, he had this thing with this on-and-off . . . the ultim- . . . yeah, okay. I was the first one to say it, you’re right. But he jumped all over it. I said, I didn’t know what I want, and he said you have a day or two, max, to decide what you want, and I said fine. And then he started crying, and . . . blah blah blah. The whole thing was really scary to him, I think.

PAUL: What about you? Weren’t you scared?

LAURA: Of what?

PAUL: Of splitting up.

LAURA: I wasn’t suggesting that we split up, that’s not the point.

In En Terapia, Laura’s equivalent is named Marina, and she describes basically the same dilemma:

GUILLERMO: Vos lo llevaste algo específico: casarse o terminar. Vos pusiste el plazo de uno o dos días para contestar.

MARINA: No. Él dio el ultimátum. O sea . . . Bueno, está bien . . . Yo di el ultimátum. Pero él aprovechó y me dijo que si no le contestaba en uno o dos días, se iba. Y después se puso a llorar. Como si se hubiese asustado de lo que dijo.

GUILLERMO: ¿Y a vos no te asustó?

MARINA: ¿Qué cosa?

GUILLERMO: Con la idea de separarse.

MARINA: Es que esa no era la idea.

There are a few notable points to look at in comparing these two scenes. First, you get a beautiful example of the Argentine dialect, which you might recognize from popular Argentine movies like El secreto de sue ojos or Relatos salvajes. You’ll see the use of the pronoun “vos” (which is used instead of “tú” in Rioplatense Spanish), and you’ll hear the distinct pronunciation of the letters y and ll, which sounds like “sh”.

There are also plenty of insights in vocabulary that you can take away from comparing the two clips. In the English-language version, Laura says that her boyfriend “jumped all over” the ultimatum. How would you translate a complex colloquial expression like that? Given that no exact translation of “jump all over” exists in Spanish, the writers of En Terapia decided to use a more common verb — aprovechar — to achieve the same effect.

Even in just these few lines of dialogue, we see more solutions to these tricky translations. For example, “splitting up” translates to “separarse”, and the question “Of what?” translates to “Qué cosa?”. This offers us an inside look as to how a Spanish speaker would naturally produce common utterances.

Laura, from the United States version of In Treatment

Later in that episode of In Treatment, Laura and Paul discuss an argument that Laura had with her spouse the night before. Paul suggests that Laura may have been the one who started the fight:

LAURA: I didn’t initiate anything.

PAUL: No, you may not have meant to, but you did. It sounds like you wanted to bring this relationship into crisis. I-I know you say that Andrew hates uncertainties, but perhaps you’re the one who can’t live with them. I mean, why did you choose this particular time to bring things to a head?

En Terapia progresses in the same way:

MARINA: Yo no empecé la pelea.

GUILLERMO: Quizás no te diste cuenta, pero sí, la empezaste vos. Como si quisieras llevar la relación al límite. A lo mejor, Andrés le puso palabra, pero la que no puede vivir en ese indecisión sos vos. ¿Por qué te parece tan importante tener una definición en este momento en particular?

Again, comparing the two scenes gives you an insider’s look at the challenging task of translating colloquial expressions. “Bring a relationship into crisis” becomes “Llevar la relación al límite”; “bring things to a head” is reduced to “tener una definición”. Here, you can also see some expressions that don’t exist in the American version, such as “ponerle palabra”, which translates to “put it into words”.

Marina, from the Argentine version of En Terapia

Finally, in En Terapia, the episode culminates in the moment when Marina admits that her relationship problems stem from the fact that she is in love with her therapist:

MARINA: Lo estoy engañando hace mucho tiempo.

GUILLERMO: Es interesante porque nunca lo mencionaste aquí.

MARINA: Sí que lo mencioné. Está presente todo el tiempo. ¿Me vas a decir que no te diste cuenta?

GUILLERMO: No . . . no creo . . . entender lo que querés decir.

MARINA: Entonces, te lo digo claramente. Yo estoy enamorada de vos.

But the same scene in the English-language version is a bit less climactic:

LAURA: Cause he’s right. Andrew’s right. I am being unfaithful to him.

PAUL: You mean what happened last night, at the club.

LAURA: Not just last night. I’ve been unfaithful to him for a long time.

PAUL: So why haven’t we talked about this before?

LAURA: I think we have. It’s been here all along. You mean to say you’ve never noticed it?…You’re surprised.

PAUL: No, I’m not surprised, I just…I don’t follow what you mean.

In both versions, a confession of love has occurred, but only in the Argentine version does Laura say it explicitly — “Estoy enamorada de vos”. This taps into the cultural insight that you can gain from Spanish-language TV series. Whereas people from the United States tend to be more implicit and subtle with expressing their feelings, there’s none of this beating-around-the-bush in Argentina. The writers of En Terapia decided that it would be more realistic if Laura stated her feelings “claramente”, instead of simply giving hints.

Are you intrigued by the dramatic storyline? Episodes of In Treatment can be viewed or purchased on HBO; episodes of En Terapia are available on the website for Argentina’s public television channel — it’s free for those in Argentina; outside of Argentina, episodes can be found easily on Google and YouTube.

The scenes that we’ve reviewed in this article are just a few seconds of an entire 30-minute episode that’s chock-full of dialogue, idiomatic expressions, and dramatic love confessions. This makes En Terapia ideal for improving your Spanish-language comprehension. Further, watching both versions is perfect for beginners who would prefer some English-language guidance before fully immersing themselves in Spanish television. Ultimately, En Terapia is a perfect choice for the Spanish-language learner who seeks to be enlightened both linguistically and culturally.

Paul writes on behalf of Language Trainers, a language tutoring service offering personalized course packages to individuals and groups. Check out their free Spanish-language level tests and other resources on their website or send them a quick inquiry to find out more about their tailor-made lesson plans.

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 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

Making it fun and interesting.  Period, hands-down, no contest, that’s it.

Seriously. Nothing else even comes close.

I honestly believe that this is the most important post I’ve ever written, if I could give you only one single piece of advice about learning a language and nothing else whatsoever, it would be this, this is the key, this is how you succeed, this is how you get fluent, this is what really makes the difference between people who succeed at learning a language and those who fail.

You make it fun, you make it interesting, you make it entertaining, you make it enjoyable, and you will succeed, I promise you.  Why? Because you’ll keep doing it, you’ll continuously work on your language skills every

single day over a long period of time, you will be persistently consistent, the inevitable result of which is you becoming fluent in the language in question, that’s why.  Simple.

Want to make fluency in the language you want to learn ‘inevitable’?  And I do mean ‘inevitable’ in the literal sense of the word, as in it will happen no matter what whether you like or not if you’ll simply do this.  Then do this.

It’s that simple.  I didn’t say it was easy–there are many things in life which are very simple to accomplish but which are also very difficult (deadlifting 1000 pounds is an extraordinarily simple task and there are only a very few people in the world who can do it)–I said it was simple, learning any complex skill such as how to speak a new language is never easy, but it can be simple and it can be fun such that we will want to work towards accomplishing it every single day (which is precisely what’s required to accomplish it: persistent consistency), so let’s do it that way!

Why people fail

The most common reason by far that people who try to learn a language don’t, the reason that probably 90% of people who try to learn a language fail, is that they get bored and because they get bored, they quit.  Their motivation simply cannot overcome their pain.  What do I mean by pain? I mean anything you don’t like, that causes you to feel negative emotions (oh yeah, boredom is definitely a negative emotion, find me someone who says they love feeling bored), I mean the amount of effort they have to put forward (people hate putting forth any more effort than they absolutely have to), I mean the time they have to take to do it, the trouble they have to go to, the feeling they get of not seeing much in terms of results after putting forward what felt like a good deal of effort, I mean the feeling they have after several months of study when they realize they still can’t have a simple conversation with a native speaker.  And the problem, the real problem that causes them to quit, that causes them to fail ultimately, is that the pile of pain is larger than the pile of motivation they have (imagine the two side-by-side in your head, like two mounds of dirt), and the very second that they realize that they don’t have enough of a reason to overcome that particular amount of pain, they quit.

Now, as you can imagine and have probably been told, you can always just grit your teeth and push through it: yes, you can, anyone can, but why would you?  And that’s why you don’t, because you just don’t have enough of a reason to do it.  If your job depends on you learning this language, then yeah you’ll learn it, you’ll grit your teeth and force yourself to pay attention in the class to do the boring, confusing, difficult homework–you have enough of a reason to (even then, why make it any harder for yourself than it has to be?), but that’s not most people who want to learn a language!  Most people want to do it because they’d like to have access to a little bit bigger slice of the world, essentially, they just want to be able to communicate with people who don’t speak their language, primarily for fun (they don’t need to be able to talk to these people, they’d just like to), or they just think that learning a language would be a fun thing to do (it can be! if you do it right). If someone were holding your kids hostage and threatening to throw them off a cliff if you didn’t learn this language in 3 weeks or something, oh you damn right you could do it, and you could do it no matter how boring or dry the learning material you had to work with was.  Sure.  But that’s the problem, isn’t it?

You don’t have that kind of motivation, and trying to concoct it out of thin air, regardless of what people have told you, isn’t possible.  So…what’s the nonsense about “making it fun”?  It does two extraordinary and amazing things simultaneously: it gives you a lot of additional motivation and it eliminates a lot, almost all, of the pain.  Blammo, problem solved, now you can learn the language.  Done.  How does it do this?

Because it makes it so that you don’t need any additional motivation related to learning the language whatsoever: if you will follow this principle, you can have a just little bit of motivation to learn the language in question and you’ll still do it.  Why? Because we follow one simple criteria here, now listen up: if you would not read/watch/listen to the item in question for fun or enjoyment, were it in your native language, then don’t do it with an item in your target language.  If the item in question is not something you would otherwise like to spend your time bothering with, if it were in your native language, then you don’t bother with it now when it’s in your target language (the language you want to learn).  This way, you need very little additional reason, justification, or motive for taking the time and effort to bother with it now–do you need at least a little bit due to the fact that it’s going to be more difficult to decipher since it’s in a foreign language and not your native one? Yes, sure, I’m not Morpheus and this isn’t The Matrix, I can’t download this stuff into your head for you, but what we can do is increase that pile of motivation as much as possible and decrease the pile of pain as much as possible, which this does with great effect.  That covers motivation, what about pain?

Solving the puzzle

It reduces pain primarily by getting rid of every single ounce of boredom you would’ve otherwise encountered had you gone with something not particularly fun or interesting (such as a textbook or formal organized lessons, whether online or from a book or class or whatever) and also by greatly reducing the effort required by making the learning process much easier: it’s a lot easier to understand what the language means and why it’s being used that way when you’ve got a real live person using it in an actual situation (e.g. a movie) where there’s context and a reason for them saying what they’re saying, than if it’s just part of some example sentence or workbook exercise with a crappy explanation you can’t understand and have to spend 20 minutes deciphering.  Plus, does watching a movie or listening to a song that you enjoy really seem like work to you? I mean, at all?  It doesn’t to me, even when it’s in a foreign language I can’t quite understand…you know what it seems like to me? It seems like something that I would normally enjoy with the added bonus of a puzzle, the puzzle of figuring out what they’re saying and the immense joy I get from solving the puzzle and, additionally, from learning how to solve similar puzzles in the future.  The puzzle is what they said, solving it is looking up the necessary words and grammar to figure it out, and the learning is what I learned in terms of new words and how they work and are used (aka “grammar”) which will allow me to understand similar speech that uses those same words and grammar in the future.  Awesome, so much fun 😀

Bonus: Not sounding like a doofus when you actually try to speak the language

You know how else this adds to your motivation pile? Because when you’re using popular contemporary media like movies and books you’re learning popular contemporary language, you’re learning the language the way that people actually use it, not the outdated or overly formal manner that you find in most textbooks and even a shocking amount of lessons in various ‘Spanish learning systems’ (Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone, etc.).  Most of you are learning a language in order to be able to actually converse with native speakers and therefore this is precisely the sort of learning that you want to do and making 100% of the language you learn the sort of language that you want to learn makes for fantastic motivation for actually doing that learning.

Ok, so where should I go from here?

The first thing I’d tell you to do is read my post on The Telenovela Method (also the name of the book I’m writing–gasp! first time I’ve mentioned this on my blog) where I’ll teach you the precise method that I use to learn Spanish (can easily be applied to any other language) using movies, music videos, TV shows, books, etc.  Next, a really useful resource for you would be my List of the Best Free Sites to Watch Spanish-Language TV Online, then I would probably tell you to check out some of my posts where I take a music video and dissect it and use it to teach you Spanish: the primary purpose of this is not to teach you Spanish (though the Spanish you’ll learn is a nice bonus), it’s to teach you how I do this so that you can go and do it to any song you like!  I’ve done 6 such posts:

Learning Spanish from Music Videos: Shakira’s ‘La Tortura’ Dissected

Learning Spanish From Music Videos: Shakira’s ‘Suerte’

Learning Spanish from Music Videos: Shakira’s “Ojos Así”

Learning Spanish from Music Videos: Shakira’s ‘Te Aviso, Te Anuncio’

Learning Spanish from Music Videos: Juanes’ ‘Yerbatero’ Dissected

Learn Spanish from Music Videos: Shakira’s ‘Lo Hecho Está Hecho’ aka ‘Objection (Tango)’

Yes, I like Shakira.

Additionally my post on motivation is a really interesting corollary to this in that it was written like two years ago but still absolutely applies (I like the stuff I wrote about getting a girlfriend/boyfriend that speaks the language, I still say that’s the best motivator I’ve ever seen, hands down, haha).  Also, let me ask you something…what could possibly be more fun than doing kids’ stuff, I mean like playing games and stupid comics and TV shows for kids and what-not? Exactly.  Children’s resources and entertainment in your target language are a fantastic language-learning resource and there’s a metric shit-ton of them online for free.  First, read this: Why you should use kids’ stuff: because you’re a simpleton who needs to be entertained lest you lose interest and wander off, that’s why.  Next, go look at the following and find stuff that you like, pick comics (I love Garfield! and yes it’s available in Spanish!) and books that you would personally find amusing:

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

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

How do I determine if something is too difficult for me or not?

This is an excellent question because if you get stuff that’s too hard for you then the effort required to deal with it could easily overpower your motivation to do so thereby resulting in you not doing it.  It’s a big “demotivator”, as David calls it.  David? Eh? Yeah, I was actually inspired to write this blog post by a friggin’ awesome one that David Snopek over at LinguaTrek just published today that I cannot possibly encourage you strongly enough to go and read right now: Is this book/movie/song too hard for me?

Not only am I going to let him answer this question because I’m lazy, plus I’ve already just broken 2000 words so this is plenty long enough as it is, but because, honestly, he just plain did a better job explaining it than I can, seriously.  He was far more clear and concise than I could’ve been (yeah, I need to work on that, I know).

On being persistently consistent

I mentioned this in the beginning, and now I’m going to explain it as the very last thing I do, because these two words are really the key to learning a language.  There is something I call “persistent consistency”, I like to say that you have to be “persistently consistent”.  What I mean is that you must be consistent in your study of the language, that is studying every single day and accomplishing a minimum pre-specified (by you) amount of work (if you can call it that!), and you must be persistent about it: that means not giving up, continuing on through all the various difficulties and complications that life will inevitably throw at you.  If you do this, success is inevitable.  What I’m talking about is making it as easy as possible to accomplish this.

Make it fun!

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

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

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

professing her love, acknowledging her shortcomings (small breasts that cannot be confused with mountains 🙁 ), and begging him to stay with her if he feels the same way.  Let’s dive right in.

Ground Rules

1. I will post the video below this. The way I want you to do this is to play it once all the way through, then let’s look at it and analyze it one verse at a time.  Below the video will be the Spanish lyrics so that you can listen to the music video while following along with the lyrics–this is the intermediate step after you learn what the lyrics mean but before you can just listen to the song and understand everything without the lyrics to read.  Having the actual Spanish being spoken in front of you in written form so you can follow along with the audio allows you to attune your listening comprehension, it’s that intermediate step that gets you to the point where you can understand everything being said without the lyrics to read, they’re sort of like training wheels (thanks to Eiteacher for this suggestion).

2. Under the lyrics will be my translation and analysis of what was said, here is where you’ll actually learn the Spanish that was spoken during the song.  I will post the Spanish lyrics and then the English translation of them.  Use the English lyrics and SpanishDict (I highly recommend you have this open in another tab while you’re doing this) to determine the definition of any words you don’t know (I will cover a lot of the words used, but not all of them)–if the regular definition of a particular word isn’t being used or the word is being used in such a way that simply knowing its definition won’t help you, I will explain it.

3. Next I will pick out various aspects of the Spanish that she’s using that I think require an explanation–I will not cover simple things like the definition of words like “el” (which means “the”), “ser” (which means “to be”), etc. unless there is something about the way they’re being used that I think warrants explanation.  If you don’t understand what a word means, like I said, just check the English translation and/or SpanishDict.  I will link to a lot of external sites with explanations for the grammar used, or the conjugation of a verb used, or the definition of a word–I’m doing this because I don’t have the space here to explain every single detail of what’s going on, there’s an enormous amount of Spanish being used in a single song like this which is precisely why I advocate this method (this is essentially The Telenovela Method, FYI), because you can learn so much from a single song or movie or book, etc.  If you don’t understand a grammatical term that I use and it’s a link, click it!

4. Now, go back and play the verse we just analyzed several times and see if you can hear and understand everything being said, then go on to the next one.

5. If you are confused about anything and feel there’s something I didn’t cover or explain but should have, please let me know in the comments.  As a matter of fact, please leave a comment and let me know what you think regardless, I need feedback and love getting it, each individual comment allows me to make an improvement or fix a problem thereby making this blog just a little bit better each and every time I get feedback of some sort.  Oh, and you can also contact me via my contact form (this will go to my e-mail inbox).

The Video

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

The Lyrics

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

Suerte que es haberte conocido
Y por ti amar tierras extrañas

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

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

Sabes que
Estoy a tus pies

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

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

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

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

Sabes que
Estoy a tus pies

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

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

Translation and Analysis

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

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

Which translates to:

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

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

The next word we come to is a bit tricky, and I honestly have to admit I’m not sure I’ve nailed the translation (if not, I’m sure I’ll hear about it in the comments): burlar.  Its primary definition is “to evade”, however it could also mean “to make fun of or mock”, and in this case it could be either one, however I personally think that “evade” or “get around”, i.e. “overcome”, makes more sense–maybe they’re making fun of the distance between them, but it makes more sense to me that she’s saying that they’re lucky they got around it.  Also, “burlemos” is the present subjunctive form of “burlar” (the subjunctive gets a lot of play in this song). Edit [07/13/2012–a year and a half later, haha]: Nah, I’ve changed my mind on this.  Someone asked about it in the comments and mentioned that in her English version of the song in this verse she says “Lucky you were born that far away/ So we could both make fun of distance ” so I’m going to go with the “mocking/making fun of” translation instead.  Thanks, Miranda! And if you have a correction for any post on this blog you think might be right, please leave it in the comments, I always appreciate it not only because I get to correct an error I would have otherwise missed which makes my blog just a little bit better but I learn something, too!

Next stanza:

Suerte que es haberte conocido
Y por ti amar tierras extrañas

Which means:

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

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

Next:

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

Which translates to:

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

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

Next:

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

Sabes que
Estoy a tus pies

Which means:

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

le ro lo le etc. etc.

You know that I’m at your feet.

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

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

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

Next:

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

Which means:

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

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

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

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

Next verse:

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

And that translates to:

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

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

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

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

The following stanza is:

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

Which means:

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

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

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

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

haber de hacer algo -> to have to do something

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

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

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

Next:

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

Sabes que
Estoy a tus pies

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

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

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

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

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

Which means:

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

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

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

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

That’s it folks, we’re done.  Again, I congratulate you if you’ve made it this far because if you have you’ve learned a lot of Spanish in the process.  I hope that was interesting, let me know what you think in the comments (and would like me to write about in the future), 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

This simple, easy-to-learn secret that even the most linguistically-challenged can master literally overnight is used by many of the most respected and skilled polyglots and language teachers in the world, and it’s never really been laid out, explained, and demonstrated (on included videos!) in full, point-by-point, step-by-step detail until now.

Hi, my name’s Andrew Tracey, I own and run the blog you’re currently reading (and enjoying, I hope). I’ve had a passion for learning languages since I was 12 years old when I decided to take up French on my own (using an old ‘50s era Berlitz book and Pimsleur cassette tapes, for those of you old enough to remember what those are), which led to me taking 4 years of French in high school during which time I went on a school trip to France where I learned…

I didn’t speak French worth a damn!

3 years of French (the trip was after my Junior year) and all the work I’d done on my own time: wasted! Pointless! I later tried to learn German, Swedish, Spanish, and Japanese…on my own and by taking classes while at university. All failed. The textbooks, classes, and audio tapes didn’t work. What does this have to do with you? Well, first of all it probably sounds depressingly familiar since I’ll bet a lot of you have experienced something similar, but secondly and most importantly…

I NEVER GAVE UP: A few years ago I stumbled upon a centuries-old language-learning technique that allowed me to become fluent in Spanish in just 6 months and talk just like native speakers did (not some strangely-weird Spanish awkwardly spoken and learned from a textbook that just confuses native speakers and embarrasses you)…

And it’s something that anyone – no matter how inexperienced, language-learning-impaired, or time-crunched – and I mean anyone, can learn overnight and start applying the next day to teach themselves Spanish. If I, someone who couldn’t learn a language by almost any other means (years of classes at both high school and university, all sorts of courses and workbooks, etc.), can do it then you can do it…and I’m going to tell you how you can learn to do it right now.

Let me ask you something: when you’re watching a TV show or movie (in your native language), do you have a hard time understanding the actors? Meaning: do you have to stop and think about what they mean or look things up in a dictionary? Do they sound completely different from how you and your friends and acquaintances talk every day? Unless you’re watching a Shakespearian play: no, of course not! They talk normally, just like you and everyone else does.

They’re speaking the language normally, in precisely the way that someone wanting to learn that language would want to learn to speak it! Ah ha! Eureka!

When characters in a movie or TV show are speaking the dialogue, unless it’s set in a previous period like the 1800s or something, they speak normal everyday English (or whatever your native language is). So if you wanted to learn Spanish, the type of normal everyday Spanish that native speakers use every day, aka “conversational Spanish”…

Don’t you think that Spanish-language TV shows, movies, music, and books might be a good source to learn from…if only you knew how?

Not only that, but it would be fun, wouldn’t it? Far better than learning the language from some boring, dry textbook or workbook that, even worse, is teaching outdated, formal, “non-conversational” Spanish (look at the dialogue in one sometime: do people actually talk like that? NO!).

But why the hell should you listen to me?

Well, besides what you can glean from reading what I’ve written on my blog, how about if I told you I wrote a book specifically on how to do this and that it’s been a bestseller in multiple categories (namely “Language Instruction: Spanish” and “Linguistics”) on Amazon.com for over two years now, and that it currently has a 4.6 out of 5 stars rating with 34 reviews on it? Screenshot below (from the 1st edition, the 2nd edition is now available, that’s why the covers look different) and I’ll link to it further down so you can verify for yourself:

So how does this help you? In The Telenovela Method:

• • I will show you how to completely prevent (so you don’t have to experience it at all) the #1 cause of failure for language-learners, which is: boredom and frustration. If you’ve ever tried to learn a language before you know what I’m talking about: you make it a few weeks or months, get bored, get frustrated that you’re not making the progress you expected, and quit. I’ll show you how to avoid this massive pitfall ALTOGETHER.

• I will show you, in simple and easy-to-understand written instruction accompanied by over 7 hours of video demonstration, precisely how to learn to speak, understand, read, and write real, modern, native-level Spanish such that you will have the same competency as a native does: you will be able to understand them and their media (movies, newspapers, songs, books, etc.), write just like them, and, most importantly…you will be able to speak just like a native – meaning that you can hold a conversation with them on any topic you choose and talk to them just like you do with right now with people in your native language.

• • I’ll show you my own personal secret technique that combines a specific way of learning (initially) and then reviewing Spanish that means you will never forget ANY of the Spanish you have learned…EVER. You will have it, all of it (all the Spanish you’ve ever learned), available to call on for immediate use whenever you’re talking to somebody in Spanish and need it. Oh, and did I mention this requires less than 15 minutes per day in “review” work? This means you get fluent in Spanish far faster than if you didn’t have this tool and the knowledge to use it effectively – don’t waste time with ineffective methods, don’t spend 2 years doing something that could be done in 6 months!

• By learning Spanish from popular media like TV shows and movies you also learn common slang and curse words. Yeeeess, the dirty words, the naughty stuff. Hey, even if it’s something you would never use, wouldn’t you want to know them anyway so you can understand it when somebody else uses them when speaking to or about YOU? If somebody used a curse word when talking to you, or in reference to you when talking to someone else, wouldn’t you want to know what they said? You need to know these words, like it or not (and they’re not all dirty, many slang terms are not, they’re just slang).

• • In relation to the previous point: this gives you something to talk about with native speakers. When you do get around to talking to them, either in person or via an online language exchange through Skype, you’ll actually have something to talk to them about so that you’re not awkward and tongue-tied, something they are interested in and know about (recent movies, TV shows, and books in their own language that they’ve seen or read). You will speak Spanish like a native to them and be interesting while you’re at it!
    

• You’ll know exactly what to do, in what order, how, and when (and I’ll explain everything so you understand why). You get extremely specific instruction on what to do and how, complete with examples galore and hours of video demonstration by me, the author. I promise you will not end up confused and having to resort to either guessing or googling something in order to figure it out on your own. I’ll hold your hand the whole way and show you just what to do.

• • I’ll provide you with a long, up-to-date, list of websites where you can watch not only Spanish-language videos (TV shows, movies, etc.) online for free but also a separate list of websites where you can watch videos in Spanish with Spanish subtitles online for free. No, you don’t have to pay for anything if you don’t want to (in terms of Spanish language media and the resources needed to learn Spanish from it).

• I’ll also provide a long list of websites where you can read both Spanish and English versions of books and stories that are no longer under copyright (such as stories and fairy tales by The Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen). Not only that but some of these sites even include audio of the stories being read out loud (in Spanish)! Do you realize how useful that would be for working on listening comprehension and speaking?! And it’s all free! You learn Spanish quickly and easily, have fun doing it, and don’t have to pay a dime.

You can even try this for free by stealing it and ripping me off if you want…but please don’t!

Because this is available as not only a paperback but also an an e-book, and it’s only being sold via highly reputable vendors (Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, etc.) who force me to accept any refund request immediately and without question by automatically taking the money out of my account and giving it to the buyer, you could very easily buy this product, download it, and then immediately get a refund for it from Amazon and, obviously, since it’s a digital product you’ve already downloaded there’s nothing to “send back” so you get to keep it (and no, it doesn’t have DRM for those of you who know what that is, I hate DRM). You could do this to me if you wanted to and I’m actually telling you about it because I’m so sure you’ll be satisfied with the product that I don’t care if you know this, I don’t think you will!

It also gives me the opportunity to point out the absolute, iron-clad, no-questions-asked, 100% money-back-instantly GUARANTEE that Amazon, B&N, and all my other retailers provide with this product by virtue of allowing me to sell it through them. They’re the ones who make the guarantee, not me, which is nice because I know that almost everyone trusts them to refund their money on any purchase for any reason – you know you can get your money back since you bought it through Amazon or Barnes & Noble or whoever, I don’t have to convince you that I will give it back to you since it’s not up to me.

What you get:

The brand-new, recently updated (published March, 2017), 2nd edition of The Telenovela Method as either a 298 page paperback or the e-book equivalent.  Check out my blog post here if you’d like to know what improvements were made for the 2nd edition (new chapter on lessons learned during 3 months in Spain and 2 new appendices, among others).  The book also includes access to over 7 hours of video instruction by me personally (they’re hosted on both YouTube and, as a backup, iPlayerHD and linked to within the book). You can download the videos from the hosting site I use if you want, also. Oh, and since the videos are hosted on both iPlayerHD and YouTube (privately hosted, you have to have the link) with each one serving as a back-up for the other, if you’re in a country that blocks YouTube or a large portion of it (e.g. Germany, China, or Iran), yes you can still view the videos.

Oh…and did I mention that you get all of this for $9.99 (or $16.99 for the paperback)? Yup, and here’s why it’s so cheap:

I decided that I had to sell this book on Amazon because I wanted it to have the credibility and legitimacy that goes with that – you’re not making it onto anyone’s “Best Seller” list by selling your book just directly through your own site as a PDF or via an affiliate network like Clickbank or something like that. I wanted this thing to have a shot at making various Best Seller lists and book club lists and what not so I knew I had to sell it on Amazon, but Amazon only pays their full 70% royalty if your e-book is priced at $9.99 or less, if you go above that it drops immediately to 30%. They did this in an effort to standardize e-book prices at $9.99, and it worked. As a result of this, very, very few other Kindle e-books on Amazon are priced above $9.99 – so that’s what people are used to, that’s what they expect – therefore I knew that if I priced mine above that not only would I receive less money (unless I priced it really high) but also it would be perceived as overpriced by customers since they’d be comparing it to the other e-books on Amazon.

What to do now:

Well, if you want the e-book, just select the retailer you’d prefer, purchase (it’s on sale on B&N right now, by the way), download immediately, and start reading.  For the paperback, since it’s currently on pre-order status with most retailers, your best bet of receiving it as soon as possible is to just place a pre-order with them right now.  When they get it in stock (Amazon is saying March 23rd, others will probably be similar) they’ll send it to you.  If you’re outside the U.S. my publisher tells me you’ll be able to pre-order it within the next couple weeks, so apologies if this is you, it’ll only be just a bit longer (the e-book, of course, should be available to you right now).  You can currently get the e-book (I cover the print version below) from:

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

You can get the print version online from: