When I started learning Spanish here in Spain over 10 years ago, one of the things that most motivated and inspired me was picking up and trying out the real Spanish phrases and expressions used by Spanish people in their everyday conversations. With Marina’s help I’ve been collecting these colloquial expressions for years, and at last we have finished a really exciting project that means we can share them with you.

Our Real Spanish Phrase Book and Audio Guide contains over 100 of these wonderful, typical Spanish phrases, with over 1 hour and 20 minutes of exclusive audio that won’t be released in any of the usual podcast feeds. We really think this is going to be tremendously useful and exciting for anyone learning Spanish, no matter what your level.

Check it out here for full details:

The Real Spanish Phrase Book and Audio Guide

Important news for all of you who regularly dive into the forum at our sister site, Notesfromspain.com - we have a new section dedicated to clearing up Spanish Grammar and Vocab Basics!

Check out the new “Spanish Basics - Vocab and Grammar Q & A” section now and be one of the first to ask a useful question!

It’s ‘promote the forums’ time here at notesinspanish.com! Why? Because they are the best place we know to clear up any doubts you may have connected to absolutely anything to do with learning Spanish! Got a question about verb tenses, learning techniques, or language courses? Head over to our forums, register, and ask away!

There are loads of nice people in there waiting to help, and the Learning Spanish section is full of useful information! (Ever wondered how to compliment men in Spanish for example!?)

Find our forums here!

Reading Harry Potter books in Spanish is a great way to practice your reading… once you get used to the strange names of all the spells and so on. The official Spanish translation of the latest book won’t be out for months, but it looks like one inspired fan has produced his own unofficial translation already… now that’s fast!

Alexander Atallah has updated his excellent Notes in Spanish Mac widgets to include our new beginner’s Spanish podcast - you can download all the widgets from his site. Thanks again Alexander!

For those of you that love Spanish and Latino tunes, then don’t forget to check out the Ritmo Latino podcast - lots of great music there!

Echando la vista atrás a mis años en el colegio, y a los problemas que tuve para escribir sin faltas de ortografía, me vienen a la cabeza dos reglas muy fáciles pero muy útiles:

-m siempre antes de p - es decir delante de una p nunca escribiremos una n siempre será una m.

Ejemplos:

Ca-mp-ana

Co-mp-ás

Incluso en palabras compuestas donde originalmente usamos una n, transforman su escritura a m si van seguidos de una p

Ejemplos:

Cien+pies = Cie-mp-iés

Cien+pozuelos = Cie-mp-ozuelos

-m siempre antes de b - en este caso usaremos una m antes de una b y nunca una n. En caso de que se use una n está irá seguida de v en vez de b.

Ejemplos:

Co-mb-inar

Co-nv-ento

Listening to music is a great way to learn a language, especially with all the lyrics sites on the net these days. There is a huge discussion in the forum about great Spanish bands, but at the moment I am really enjoying the catchy tunes from Julieta Venegas, a Mexican singer who is doing well in the charts over here with hits like Me Voy.

Here’s the video for her latest song, Limon y Sal (direct youtube link, and lyrics here):

Muchos de vosotros ya habréis leído en el foro que Ben y yo fuimos a Radio Nacional de España a grabar una edición del programa “Un idioma sin fronteras” dedicada a Notes In Spanish. Podéis escuchar la entrevista completa aquí.

Un idioma sin fronteras es una fuente de audio dedicada por completo a la lengua española y literatura hispánica. Me gustaría recomendaros alguna de sus secciones, como el cuento de la semana y poesía en la calle.

Foto: Ben y Marina con Isabel Cavanillas y Rubén Vidal.

As I progressed from a beginner, to an intermediate learner, and finally an advanced user of Spanish, I found that different areas of my Spanish ’skill set’ (reading, writing, listening, speaking) developed at different rates. One month I was speaking really well but having real trouble listening, three months later I suddenly felt that my listening comprehension had overtaken my speaking skills!

Once or twice a year it pays to identify where your Spanish is weakest, and concentrate hard on that area for a while, to choose a ‘Primary Focus’ for a month or two. Feel like your reading comprehension is a little behind your listening? Focus on that for a month by reading as many web pages, news articles and books in Spanish as you can get your hands on. Feel your spoken Spanish is falling behind? Get an intercambio, join a meetup.com group, talk to yourself in Spanish in the car, take some classes with Marina…

By occasionally choosing to work extra hard on one piece of the puzzle, you should make progress in giant leaps. Try focusing on one area of your Spanish for the next month, and why not let us know if you notice a big difference at the end of that time. Then you can go back to an all round approach until, a few months down the line, you notice that your grammar for example, or writing, need a month at the top of the agenda again!

Is your New Year’s Resolution to improve your Spanish this year?

Here are a few ideas to get you going:

1. Join, or create, a local Spanish enthusiasts meet up, with meetup.com - read more about this here, in the forum.

2. Make a list of three or four grammar points you feel you have never got the hang of and resolve to clear them up once and for all. Spanish.about.com has great explanations for this sort of thing. Still annoyed by saber and conocer for example? I finally managed to clear up the four ‘porques’ last week!

3. Plan a trip to Spain or South America. But steer clear of touristy areas, and you will have much more chance to use your Spanish. Just knowing you will have to test your Spanish later in the year can provide a big motivation boost.

4. This one is really random: make a video diary in Spanish and publish it on youtube! Just make sure you tell us about it afterwards!

5. Share your favourite words, ask questions, look for interesting resources in the Learning Spanish section of the Notes in Spanish Forum!

Over to you: more ideas in the comments below please!

We spoke before about Spanish social news sites Fresqui and Meneame. The latest to hit the scene is Wikio. Users vote a good range of stories to the front page (not too much tech, as tends to happen with these sites), hopefully meaning that others do all the hard work in finding us interesting things on the Spanish side of the net.

Gentilicio es un adjetivo que nos indica la procedencia geográfica de las personas o su nacionalidad.

En algunos casos son muy parecidos al nombre de la ciudad o país.
Ejemplos:

- Persona de Valencia - valenciano / valenciana

- Persona de Sevilla - sevillano / sevillana

- Persona de España - español / española

Sin embargo otros gentilicios cambian mucho respecto al nombre del lugar.
Ejemplos:

- Persona de Buenos Aires - bonaerense

- Persona de Huesca - oscense

- Persona de Valladolid - vallisoletano / vallisoletana

- Persona de Salamanca - salmantino / salmantina

Si tienes dudas sobre algún gentilicio en concreto puedes encontrar una lista muy completa en la wikipedia

¡Ah!… y no te olvides de que los gentilicios siempre se escriben con minúscula.

A diferencia del inglés, en castellano los días de la semana y los meses del año no empiezan por mayúscula.

Ejemplo:

- En España, el día de la madre es el primer domingo de mayo.

Ocurre lo mismo con las lenguas, en inglés escribiríamos English or Spanish. Sin embargo en castellano escribiriamos: inglés o español.

Ejemplo

- Ahora que tengo tanto tiempo libre me he apuntado a clases de inglés y de francés.

Jerga, argot, or Spanish slang, may change year by year, but there are a few core phrases that always hit the mark. I was surprised by the BBC Cool Spanish link mentioned in comments below, some of it is quite, well, racey for the BBC! (Although the delivery of some terms, like the wonderful ¡Hostia! is rather tame).

Meanwhile Jergas de Habla Hispana is an interesting project, trying to bring together all the slang from all the Spanish speaking countries around the world. The interface is slightly confusing, but there’s a lot in there, just check out all the ‘C’ words in Spanish!

Do you get your tech news (and more) from Digg.com? I have just stumbled upon two Spanish versions that may be of interest to the technophiles amongst you: Fresqui and Meneame

Happy surfing!

OK, point one below is a pretty major first requirement, without which it may be difficult to achieve this pretty tough goal. But hopefully there will be some useful ideas in here for everyone, even if you are just studying Spanish in Spain for a week or two, or swatting up at home. The following is based on my personal experience of going from zero to fairly fluent in 9 months:

1. Spend 9 months in a Spanish speaking country (ideal, but not essential!)
There, that’s the big requirement out of the way. Now, once you get here, the following tips should really help you to speak fluent Spanish within 9 months or less… (But they might really help if you stay at home too!) (more…)

If only all of us took notes like Tim Gambrill’s while we were studying Spanish… Tim G (who you may have come across in our forum) has been studying Spanish since 1998, and has taken his level all the way to the top. Luckily for the rest of us, Tim has put his incredibly detailed notes on the Internet, creating a fantastic Spanish grammar website that we really recommend checking out.

We asked Tim how he came to put this great resource on the web, and for a couple of tips for anyone keen to learn Spanish: (more…)

This is another new feature that we hope to run once a week here at Notes in Spanish. And we’d love your help! If you have a great tip for learning spanish, send us details via an email and we’ll publish it here (send us a photo along with your idea and we’ll publish that too, so everyone knows who had the great idea!)

To get started, we have two top tips this week:

1. Use a new word 6 times!

A linguistics expert once told us that in order to commit a new word to memory we have to use it 6 times. So, next time you hear a great new Spanish word and want to commit it to memory, find 6 ways to use it as soon as possible - speaking in class, thinking random sentences, writing a post using the word in the Spanish part of our forum… it really does work!

2. Speaking of the forums… The ‘El Pais’ test.

The number of tips you can pick up in the Learnin Spanish section of the forum is incredible. Here’s one of our favourites, from Steve W.:

When I’m learning anything I like lots and lots of examples, and sometimes the textbooks are a bit sparse. When I’ve learned a new word or especially a phrase, I type it into google and follow it with site:elpais.es (or another grammatically correct site).

e.g. “al menos de” site:elpais.es

…this will return a list of articles using that phrase, from the El Pais website. Pick one and search for the phrase on the page and there is your example. Guaranteed to be used correctly.

Thanks Steve! Don’t forget to send us any top tips, and if you haven’t yet, why not register in the forum and join us for a chat?