Context

In our latest Spanish learning video Ben and Marina begin by explaining how Marina’s sister and her boyfriend came back from a Kitesurfing holiday in Brazil keen to improve their eating habits, and started buying more fruit and vegetables from the local market.

This reminded us about how lots of children these days don’t know the names of many fruit and veg, and so we thought we’d test your knowledge of the names of fruit and vegetables in Spanish! Watch the video and see how many you get right!

Spanish vocab and phrases from the video

Hacer kitesurfing – To do kitesurfing
Le gusta mucho hacer kite – He really likes kitesurfing
Han vuelto con muchas ganas de cambiar su estilo de vida y llevar una alimentación mas sana – They’ve returned [from holiday] really keen to change their lifestyle and eat more healthily
[En el mercado] se supone que la verdura y la fruta es de mejor calidad – In the market the fruit and vegetables are supposedly better quality
[La fruta y verdura] no ha pasado tanto tiempo en cámaras – The fruit and vegetables haven’t spent so long in refrigerators
Un limón – A lemon
Un aguacate – An avocado
Una berenjena – An Eggplant/Aubergine
Un calabacín – A zucchini/courgette
Una manzana – An apple
Una calabaza – A squash/pumpkin
Lo tengo en la punta de la lengua – It’s on the tip of my toungue
Un plátano (de Canarias!) – A banana (from the Canary Islands!)
Están super ricos – They are really nice/tasty
Una mandarina – A mandarin/tangerine
Una Clementina – A Clementine
Una nuez – A walnut
Un cascanueces – A nut cracker
Un cazo – A ladle
Un mortero – Pestle and Mortar
Una cabeza de ajos – A bulb of garlic
Un diente de ajo – A clove of garlic
¡Tampoco te pases! – Don’t go over the top!

And finally, Marina rembered a typical Spanish phrase with apples:

¡Estoy mas sana que una manzana! – I’m really healthy!

More Great Spanish Learning Resources…

- Learn Spanish with our best materials: Our free Spanish Learning Audio / Podcasts and the Premium Materials in our Store
- Watch more of our Spanish learning videos here
- Sign up for our Spanish-boosting newsletter here

‘Miedo‘ (Fear) is another great Spanish word that changes meaning completely depending on whether it is used literally or colloquially:

Literal Meanings:

Ay, ¡me das mucho miedo! – Ah, you’re really scaring me! (For ‘ghosts’ at Halloween!)

Hubo una gran tormenta mientras íbamos caminando por el campo y pasamos mucho miedo – There was a big storm while we were walking in the countryside and we got really scared

Una película de miedo – A horror film

Colloquial Meanings:

Miedo is also used colloquially here in Spain (by people of all ages) to mean something is great:

Este helado está de miedo – This ice cream is amazing

Fuimos a los Alpes este verano y lo pasamos de miedo – We went to the Alps this summer and had a fantastic time

It’s Halloween time in Spain, and the streets are full of witches, ghouls and ghosts! We’ve got some special treats for you (and no tricks!) – Some great ‘scary’ Spanish vocab and phrases!

The Super-Useful, Real Spanish ‘Scary’ Vocab and Phrases!

Here are some ‘frights and scares’ Spanish phrases for you to use all year round, and not just at Halloween!

Asustar – To scare someone or give someone a shock

¡No me asustes! – Don’t scare me

Ben: No arranca el coche – The car won’t start
Marina: ¡No me asustes, que acabo de recogerlo del taller! – Don’t scare me like that, I just picked it up from the workshop!

Un susto – a shock

¡Qué susto me has dado! – What a fright you just gave me (e.g. when someone comes into a room without you noticing)

¡Qué susto me ha dado el perro! – What a shock that dog gave me

Me llevé un susto que no veas / me he dado un susto de muerte – I got a really big shock (for really serious situations/shocks)

Ha habido un accidente de tráfico justo delante mío, y pensé que no iba a frenar a tiempo. Me he dado un susto de muerte. – There was a car accident right in front of me, and I thought I wouldn’t be able to stop in time. I got a terrible shock.

¡Qué susto, un vampiro! – What a fright, a vampire! (When your neighbour appears in his vampire costume this halloween!)

Here is a quick round up of our summer holidays incorporating some useful Spanish expressions (in bold):

¡Ya estamos de vuelta! – We are back!

Hemos recorrido 6,500 km en coche por todo europa – We’ve covered 6,500 km around europe in the car.

Es posible que nuestro pobre coche no vuelva a ser el mismo… – It’s possible our poor car will never be the same again… [Note the Subjunctive (vuelva, from volver) after 'es posible que' - have you got our Super-Subjunctive report yet?!]

Pasamos por Francia, Inglaterra, y Alemania… – We went through France, England and Germany.

Lo que mas nos gustó fue la Selva Negra – What we liked most was the Black Forest.

La vuelta desde Alemania se nos hizo un poco larga – The return journey from Germany felt a bit long.

Aproveché la visita a Francia para recuperar mi francés – I made the most of our time in France to get my French going again.

He metido la pata en varias ocasiones intentando hablar en francés y alemán – I put my foot in it a few times trying to speak French and German!

[This last point reminded me how easy it is to meter la pata in Spanish - see our essential “Top Ten Dead-Giveaways That You’re a Foreigner Speaking Spanish, Even if You Speak Well …!” post for how to avoid common Spanish mistakes!]

Feel free to leave us a comment below about how your summer went, using some of the expressions in bold above if you like, and keep up with your great Spanish learning progress using our real Spanish audio conversations and worksheets!

May 10, 2011

Here is a great email we got recently from a listener (when it was still cold here in Madrid!):

“Hola Ben, I’m a big fan of your website and podcasts. They definitely helped me make the leap and move to Madrid. I’ve been here for a year and am having a great time.

Some real Spanish for you that you might like to share with the other users. This morning, I left home at 7.30 and it was freezing cold. I saw my “portera” on the way out of my building and she said to me “¡Vaya mañana!”

I think this use of “vaya” is very common in Spain and can be translated as “What a morning!” in English. I don’t know if you’ve written about this already, if not it could be interesting. All the best, E.”

That is a great use of Vaya, we love it! You could also use ‘Vaya mañana’ (What a morning!) if it was pouring with rain, or incredibly hot, or just if you’d had a hard start to the day!

Vaya is also often used in response to bad news, to mean ‘oh dear’:

Enrique: Me han despedido – I’ve been fired
Ben: Vaya, lo siento mucho – Oh dear, I’m really sorry

Here is another typical use of Vaya, in this wonderful and common expression:

Vaya tela – What a nightmare

For example:

Vaya tela que tienes con tu trabajo, además de tener un jefe inaguantable te han asignado el cliente más complicado – What a nightmare you?ve got at work. As well as having an unbearable boss, they’ve given you the most difficult client!

Fill your life with more Real Spanish now! Listen to our Real Spanish Conversations and pick up one of the Real Spanish learning products in our store!

We wanted to share one or our favourite expressions, and other related vocab, from one of the episodes in our Gold Two program:

Hoy me he levantado con el pie izquierdo – I got up on the wrong side of the bed / in a really funny mood today.

You can also say the following two phrases, to mean the same thing:

Hoy me he levantado del revés – I got up in a really strange mood today
Hoy me he levantado un poco torcido – I got up in a funny mood today

“Torcido” literally means crooked, or bent, for example:

Ese marco está torcido – That frame is not straight (on the wall).

Tengo la columna torcida – My spine / back is a bit bent.

Here in Spain it is commonly used in other phrases to say that things haven’t gone quite right:

Después de hablar con mi jefe se me ha torcido el día – After speaking to my boss my day has gone completely wrong.

Se me ha torcido el viaje con la huelga de pilotos – My trip has gone out of the window due to the pilot’s strike.

Gold Season Two is full of real-life, organic Spanish like this, for upper intermediate and advanced learners.

¡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/

Junio 2, 2010

Find out how to talk to this lot in today’s downloads!

UNO: Super-Useful PDF’s!

¡Hola! We’ve been going through our personal archives this week, and have found a couple of great pdf’s that we realise we may not have given to everyone yet. Please download these now and add them to your collection if you haven’t got them yet!

Download 1: 11 Cool People Phrases in Spanish PDF
Real Street Spanish from Spain, to fit in with (or be rude about) the locals!

Download 2: Conversation Starters PDF
How NOT To Sound Like A Total Tourist In Spain!!

To download these special reports, click on the links above or right-click on the links, and select “save link/target as” to save the pdf’s to your desktop.

DOS: NIS Charities Update

Every year Notes in Spanish gives away up to 5% of profits from our Store to charity. We’ve recently updated our contributions, and want to thank YOU very much for helping us help these great causes. With your help, we’ve recently added donations for:

- 720 euros to Fapas to plant 120 more trees in Asturias (this is our second tree-planting donation, see a video about the first Fapas ‘NIS Forest’ here).
- 400 Euros to Maitreya Fonds, which supports charitable projects in Vietnam.
- 510 dollars to Care and Share, which sets up schools for orphans in India, amongst other projects.

We have contacts working with all of these charities, so we know they are trustworthy and doing great work!

TRES: Coming Soon!

Keep an eye on your email next week for new Notes in Spanish Videos, plus the best free gift we’ve ever given away… ever! All to celebrate the upcoming launch of a very, very special Notes in Spanish pack on June 14th. More news about that, and more great free Spanish learning content next week!

If you haven’t signed up for our newsletter list yet, make sure you do so now via the form at the top of the right-hand column of this page! That way you’ll get all the cool free stuff first!

¡Hola! We’ve got a great new free Spanish report for you, all about uses of the verb ‘Dar’.

In fact, we’ve come up with a total of 34 excellent ‘Dar’ phrases and expressions that are commonly used by Spanish speakers every day, and will help you to sound more Spanish than ever!

Download the special report here:

34 Uses of Dar! PDF

Let us know what you think! – Ben y Marina

P.S. We give stuff like this away to our newsletter subscribers all the time, make sure you are signed up via the form on the right >>>

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.

[Download MP3]

In today’s special audio, part of our mission to help you have your best Spanish learning year ever, Ben and Marina look at useful Spanish vocabulary and phrases connected with going to the doctor and describing illness and symptoms.

Many thanks to Sarah for helping out with this great list! If you have any useful phrases to add, please do so in the comments!

Here’s the list of phrases we discuss in the audio:

encontrarse bien – to feel well
no encontrarse muy bien – to feel unwell
encontrarse fatal – to feel terrible
encontrarse fenomenal – to feel great

estar malo – to be ill
ser malo – to be a bad person

estar enfermo – to be ill (temporary)
ser enfermo / ser un enfermo – to be permanently ill, or mentally ill

estar pachucho/a – to be ill (slang from Spain)

estar ñoño/a – to be in a funny mood/clingy when kids are ill (slang from Spain)

“No estoy muy católico/a” – I’m feeling rotten (slang from Spain)

me duele la cabeza – I’ve got a headache
me duele la garganta – I’ve got a sore throat
me duele la espalda – I’ve got backache

tengo gripe – I’ve got the flu
tengo fiebre – I’ve got a fever
tengo una tos muy fea – I’ve got a horrible cough

Get hours more great Spanish in our free Spanish audio, and accompanying worksheets.