Welcome to 2011 at NotesinSpanish.com! Feliz año nuevo!

Many of you will have made improving your Spanish a New Year’s Resolution, and we aim to do our best to help you.

Hopefully you have already started to explore all the free Spanish learning audio and Spanish videos on these pages, and signed up for our newsletter – as usual we’ll be sending out frequent updates this year with our best Spanish learning language tips and advice.

Plus we’ll be making new audio and videos (starting with a great new video this week hopefully! Stay tuned!)

In the meantime, if I had to pick one free report from our archives to really encourage your big New Year’s Spanish-Learning Push, it would be our ‘Zero to Fluent in 9 months’ report.

Please download it here, and have a look at the ideas inside. Even if you do just one thing mentioned in the report, it could make a big difference to your Spanish.

Zero to Fluent in Spanish in 9 Months: PDF Download Link

Please note though, the report refers to my (Ben’s) learning experiences when I was young, free and single – I now know that things are very different when you are trying to fit learning in around a busy family and working life!

My biggest, best piece of advice today is to try and find consistency in your learning – try and do just 10 to 20 minutes a day if you like, but make sure those 10 to 20 minutes make you happy! Whatever learning method makes you feel comfortable, interested and relaxed – go with that!

What are you planning to do for your Spanish this year? Have you got any tips to share with us? Please leave us a comment, and once again, Happy New Year, and good luck with your Spanish!

Ben y Marina, 10 de enero, 2011

In one of our Notes in Spanish Gold Q and A sessions, we were asked the following common question:

When can I say that I am “fluent” in Spanish?

Our listener went on to clarify: When people hear that I travel to Spain or Mexico to study Spanish, they often say “so, are you fluent in Spanish?” My eyes glaze over as I contemplate the question and try to formulate an honest answer.

Here’s the problem: While I can converse with almost anyone, anywhere, I still make tons of mistakes. And while I can understand most of what I hear on the news, I understand very little of the morning radio show (mostly comedy) on my way to work. Even if I follow a joke, I often miss the punch line! So it seems misleading to say I am “fluent” when I have so many gaps, even though I can communicate in Spanish all day long.

Interestingly enough, I’ve heard many people at levels much lower than mine declare confidently that they are “fluent.” Obviously, they have different criteria than I do. When did the two of you start answering “yes!” to that question? What should be my criteria for knowing I’ve crossed the line into “fluency?”

The Answer…

First of all, it is common to make mistakes when it’s not your mother tongue, no matter what your level. We (Ben and Marina) make mistakes, but can communicate fine and consider ourselves fluent in each other’s languages. When you hear someone with a difficult accent, or if you still find it difficult to listen to the radio, don’t worry! You just have to keep working at it.

And if you communicate in Spanish all day long, you’re definitely fluent! With reference to the jokes on the radio, Ben and Marina have the same problem. The phone and radio are two of the trickiest places for comprehension.

So, what can you do to increase your chances of getting fluent fast?

Make sure you have a copy of our free PDF report:

Zero to Fluent in 9 Months (PDF) (Just click on the link to automatically start the download of the pdf document.)

And make sure you keep filling your life with real Spanish! Listen to our real Spanish audio conversations, and if you need help with getting every bit of language-goodness from them, pick up the worksheets in our store to follow along with the transcripts and drive it all home with the vocab analysis and exercises included.

- Ben y Marina

Can’t see the video here? You can see it direct at youtube.com here

Context

Another great Spanish learning video! Ben and Marina tell a quick story about why the Spanish never send ‘thanks’ a few days after a lunch/party etc, and why Ben is a ‘paleto’! Plus we thank all of you that have signed up for Gold Season Two on the first day!

Vocab and phrases from the ‘Analysis’ section

Eres un poco paleto – You are a bit of a country bumpkin
Despiste – Absent-minded
Soy un poco despistado – I’m a bit absent-minded
Mi cuñada – My sister-in-law
Yerno – Son-in-law
Nuera – Daughter-in-law
Aqui hay tomate – There’s some juicy stuff to talk about here!

Muchas gracias once more to everyone that has joined us already in Gold Season Two!

Update: the above-mentioned Gold Season Two is now available as a complete season pack in our store:

Get the Gold Season Two Complete Pack Here.

Can’t see the video here? You can see it direct at youtube.com here

Context

Ben and Marina discover that although a lot of shops are going out of business in their neighbourhood, fruit and veg shops continue to open continuously and thrive!

Vocab and phrases from the ‘Analysis’ section

Los pequeños comercios – Local shops / small businesses
Están cerrando sus puertas – They are going out of business
Grandes almacenes – Superstores
¿Qué te contó la dueña? – What did the owner tell you?
Hola, ¿qué me cuentas? – Hi, what’s new?
No suele estar lo suficientemente madura – It (the fruit) doesn’t tend to be ripe enough
Está un poco entera /un poco verde – It’s a bit unripe
5 raciones de fruta al dia – 5 portions of fruit or vegetables a day
Una ración – Like a big tapa, a big plateful of ham for example
Un racimo de uvas – A bunch of grapes
Las generaciones mas mayores – The older generations
Los mayores – Older people
“Mis viejos no me dejan ir a la discoteca” – My parents won’t let me go to the disco (very informal/teenager only!)

Update: Gold Season Two, as mentioned in the video, is now available as a complete season pack in our store:

Get the Gold Season Two Complete Pack Here.

Saludos desde Madrid,

Ben y Marina

Can’t see the video here? You can see it direct at youtube.com here

Context

Ben and Marina head off to the Puerta del Sol and find some things have changed!

Vocab and phrases from the ‘Analysis’ section

Han hecho obras en la plaza – They’ve done some work on the Plaza
No hay bancos – There are no benches
El gordo de navidad – The Spanish Christmas lottery
…donde supongo que habra caido algun premio importante – where I think a big prize must have been awarded
El estatua del oso y del madroño – The statue of the bear and the strawberry tree
Un punto de comienzo de las manifestaciones – A starting point for demonstrations
La puerta del sol también aloja el kilometro zero – The Puerta del Sol is home to ‘Kilometer Zero’
Tanto turismo a mi me agota – So much tourism exhausts me
Agotarse – To become worn out
Bacalao rebozado – Battered cod
Está que te mueres – It’s delicious

If you are interested in finding out when Gold Season Two (as mentioned in the video) is next open to the public, please make sure you are signed up for our newsletter, via the form at the top of the right hand column of this page.

Update: the above-mentioned Gold Season Two is now available as a complete season pack in our store:

Get the Gold Season Two Complete Pack Here.

Saludos desde Madrid,

Ben y Marina

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Q and A Audio: [Download MP3]

Q and A PDF Notes: Download the Q and A PDF Notes

We really hope you enjoy the Q and A recording above, do download the notes PDF for your reference as well!

Again we are really sorry not to have been able to answer all 250+ questions!! But we will try and cover some of the other great questions in future newsletters, reports, and audio.

!Hola!

Some of you will have heard our Q and A recordings in the past – it’s where Marina and I directly answer your questions about learning Spanish in a special audio, and give a big prize for the best question!

We are planning to record a new Q and A for you all this Wednesday (November 10th), so we need your questions by late this Tuesday night (tomorrow!)

The prize for the best question will be a 100 euro Amazon voucher (amazon.com or .co.uk)!

We’ll release the Q and A next week and announce the winner then.

Update: The audio has now been released, with details of the competition winner – click here to listen now!

Saludos from Madrid,

Ben y Marina

Many thanks to one of our listeners, Bill, for letting me know about this…

The famous Spanish writer Lucía Echevarría, winner of the “Planeta” literature prize, recently mentioned in an interview the much-held belief that “murciélago” is the ony word in the Spanish language that contains all 5 vowels.

An ABC reader, José Fernando Blanco Sánchez, sent the following letter to the newspaper, with the aim of “broadening her knowledge”:

———
Carta al director del diario ABC

Y repita conmigo, como diría Cantinflas: ¡Lo que es la falta de “ignorancia”!
———

Well, he pretty much put her in her place I think! Don’t worry if you don’t know all the 5-vowel words in the letter above, José Fernando Blanco Sánchez is obviously a bit of a word-smith!

Just stick with our free real Spanish audio conversations, and you’ll learn all the Spanish you need! And don’t forget that you can really see and dig deeper into all our conversations in the special accompanying worksheets.

¡Hola!

Sometimes I’m truly amazed by the places you can find new Spanish phrases…

The other day I was washing my hands in a public lavatory in Madrid’s Retiro park, when an old man came and stood at the next wash basin.

In a small room behind, the lavatory attendant was watching one of the hundreds of ‘tele-basura‘ Oprah-style afternoon talk shoes that Spanish TV is currently plagued by, and it seems they were talking about some celebrity’s new shoes!

‘Madre mía‘, said the old guy next to me, ‘sacan punta a cualquier cosa…‘

‘Sacar punta‘ literally means to sharpen your pencil, but it’s also used like this to mean ‘they squeeze a topic of conversation out of practically anything!’

If you’ve heard a useful/interesting Spanish phrase ‘out in the wild’ recently, please do leave a comment and let us know what it is!

Un saludo,

Ben

P.S. If you enjoy these ‘straight from real life’ phrases, then you’ll enjoy an audio I made a while ago, a special ‘Real Spanish Hunting’ mp3 with 20 more great phrases like these and details of just how I ‘found’ them – it’s available as an extra ‘secret’ bonus on the download page after you purchase anything from our store:

http://www.notesinspanish.com/store/

Hola!

I (Ben) had a great ‘in at the deep end’ Spanish learning experience this weekend! I offered to help translate for a friend who was running a deep relaxation course here in Spain.

He spoke in English, and I had to simultaneously translate into Spanish for the Spanish people who had come to the course.

All went well as I translated to the 70+ people present that they had to first lie down, relax their breathing, put their arms by their side… but things got tricky after that.

‘Put your hands on your cranium…’ OK, craneum is ‘craneo‘, I knew that one, feel your brain, ‘cerebro‘, relax, and on down the body he went, talking them (via me) through the face (cara), the lungs (pulmones), the heart (corazón)…

Then the first major problem arrived. ‘Put your hands over your liver’… said my friend.

Now, I always get this word wrong. Is it ‘hígado’, or ‘hidalgo’… One means liver, the other means nobleman… when I usually get this one mixed up, Marina always laughs at me (e.g. when I describe how alcohol is bad for your nobleman!) so I had to get this right!

And I had a split second to decide which one it was before I announced the Spanish instruction to 75 already-very-relaxed people! I went for Hígado, and luckily no-one made a squeak as they carefully lowered their hands to their livers…

Then, the final nightmare, with the instruction ‘Put your hands under your armpits’.

I know two words/phrases about armpits, one is ‘te canta la ala‘, which is a very very informal way of telling someone you know very very well that they didn’t use enough deodorant this morning, and the other word is ‘sobaco‘.

I knew it sounded a little informal, but it’s all I had, so I went for it: ‘Manos debajo de los sobacos‘… at which point 15% of the assembled relaxed people started giggling!

Someone lying on the floor near to where I was sitting opened their eyes, looked at me, and hissed ‘¡Axilas!’ That was the word I was looking for!!

Sobaco was way too informal still for the setting, whereas Axila was the correct ‘anatomical’ version.

In the end it didn’t matter at all. After 2 hours of simultaneous translation into anatomical Spanish, I felt like my Spanish had leapt to another level, and a lot of the now-very-relaxed Spanish people said I’d done a great job!

It was a great reminder of how it pays HUGE dividends to challenge yourself beyond your pre-conceived limits. Often you are ready to make the jump up to another level with just a tiny bit of help, just a tiny bit more effort (and it’s often when you think you are most ready to throw it all in and give up on Spanish for good!)

So forget about worrying about Spanish being too hard, or about making mistakes in public – forget all your worries, and jump in with both feet as I did this weekend!

Check out more of our audio, get the higher level worksheet pack you’ve been thinking about in our store, and amaze yourself with what you can do with your Spanish!