Good Morning! Here are four great ways to start your week with a huge boost to your Spanish!

1. Watch Our First Ever Videoblog – on our Facebook page

Five Years ago we made our first ever video blog – see how nervous we were! I’ve posted it to the Notes in Spanish Facebook page, if you are a Facebook user, please ‘like’ the page, then you’ll know when we post more goodies there from time to time.

(If you are a non-facebook person, then you can watch the video on youtube too!)

2. Listen to one of our Q and A’s!

Can you answer these questions?

Q — ¿Qué significa “tener una chinita en el zapato”?

Q — What does the expression “aquí hay gato encerrado” mean and when do you use it?

Q — How do we move on from thinking in our own language first and translating in our head before speaking, to being able to listen, decipher and answer in Spanish smoothly?

We answer all these questions and more in a great Q and A audio we made just over a year ago, before we launched our Gold Two series. It’s a very enjoyable way to spend 25 minutes! Listen/download it here now.

3. Dar x 34!

Nos encanta daros cosas interesantes! – We love giving you interesting things!

…like our “34 Uses of Dar!” Special Report – have you got it yet, do you know them all?

4. Keep Listening to our Audio!

Without doubt, the very best thing you can do for your Spanish is to keep listening to our real Spanish conversations!

Have a great Spanish learning week and please feel free to share these Spanish learning resources with your friends!

Saludos desde Madrid,

Ben y Marina

Here’s a montage that someone on youtube put together of a very typical Spansih Christmas carol… Lyrics and notes below…

About the Carol: For a long time I thought this Christmas carol, or villancico as they are called in Spanish, was, well, a little hortera – tacky. But then I started to like it, and now it’s just a great part of Spanish Christmas! Here below are the lyrics (with key vocab translations in brackets) if you are interested. One key word is of course ‘Belén’ – which as well as being a common girls name, also means Bethlehem (as in this carol), or Nativity Scene.

The Lyrics: Campanas Sobre Campanas

Campana sobre campana, [campana = Bell]
y sobre campana una,
asómate a la ventana, [asomarse = look out/lean out... of the window]
verás al Niño en la cuna. [cuna = babies cot/crib]

Belén, campanas de Belén,
que los ángeles tocan
¿qué nueva me traéis?

Recogido tu rebaño [rebaño = flock]
¿a dónde vas pastorcillo? [pastorcillo = little shephard]
Voy a llevar al portal
requesón, manteca y vino. [requesón = cottage cheese/curd, manteca = lard/butter]

Belén, campanas de Belén,
que los ángeles tocan
¿qué nueva me traéis?

Campana sobre campana,
y sobre campana dos,
asómate a esa ventana,
porque está naciendo Dios.

Belén, campanas de Belén,
que los ángeles tocan
¿qué nueva me traéis?

Campana sobre campana,
y sobre campana tres,
en una Cruz a esta hora,
el Niño va a padecer. [padecer = suffer]

Belén, campanas de Belén,
que los ángeles tocan
¿qué nueva me traéis?

¡Feliz Navidad!

Ben y Marina

As Marina and I are preparing for Christmas here in Madrid, we want to take a moment to wish all the Notes in Spanish listeners a very very ¡Feliz Navidad!

If you would like to know more about Christmas in Spain, and learn some Spanish Christmas vocab and phrases, then we have special Christmas audio for every level:

Inspired Beginners 16 – ¡Feliz Navidad!

Intermediate 12 – Navidad

Advanced 86 – Feliz Navidad

Do take 10 minutes to listen to the audio for your level with the appropriate worksheet, and make this a very Spanish Christmas as well!

Best wishes from Spain,

Ben y Marina

[Note: When it appears, click the 'x' on the right of the ad at the bottom of the video to get rid of it (we didn't put it there!) and you can see the subtitles. The subtitles change to Portuguese after the song ends and she begins to speak Spanish.]

We think this is the most beautiful ‘Thank You’ song on the planet. Happy Thanksgiving – Feliz día de Acción de Gracias. Muchas Gracias por tu dedicación y por aprender español con nosotros.

Saludos desde Madrid,

Ben y Marina

I, Ben, recently sent out an email with a BIG error in the subject line, which started “Última día!”

Boy did I get some quick feedback on that! For example:

“Dear Ben and Marina,

You’ve really blown your credentials with the first word of this message.

Día, although ending in an ‘a’, is a masculine noun, so you should have written ‘Último‘. Alternatively, you could have written ‘Última hora!’ since hora is feminine.”

Yes, quite right, I should have written “último día” – it’s a humiliating mistake, but that’s what happens if I write emails at 7a.m. without getting Marina to check the Spanish (which she usually always does, don’t worry!)

So, I blew my credentials a little bit (but not Marina’s!), but there is a plus side to all this…

It’s OK to get caught out making mistakes in Spanish, as you learn MORE and never make the same mistake again!

You can be sure I’ll never make that one again! In my defence, ‘día’ is one of those tricky words that looks feminine (because of the ‘a’ on the end) but is actually masculine.

Others include:

El sofá
El tema
El clima

or the other way round…

La mano

It’s totally unfair of these words to trick us like this!

Keep improving your Real Spanish with our Spanish Audio Conversations and the fantastic supplementary materials in our Store.

Yesterday I (Ben) had to take our car for the annual Inspección Técnica de Vehículos (ITV – a bit like the British MOT), where they check the brakes, lights, chasis, seat belts etc are all road-worthy.

It’s a job I dread, mostly because it’s one of the last bastions of ‘really difficult real-life Spanish’ that I still feel very nervous about!

If I fail to get the Spanish instructions right as I take the car through the test, then maybe the car won’t get ‘passed’ at the end, and that means big car headaches just before we take it on holiday!

Things didn’t go well from the moment I arrived.

There were two queues, one for turismos de gasolina (petrol engines) and one for turismos de diesel (diesel vehicles) – and I only discovered I was in the wrong queue after I’d been lined up for an hour already in the 36ºC sun!

If I tried to jump over to the other lane for the right queue, I was going to get in big trouble with everyone in that queue – the Spanish really hate people that push in!

So I went to the pay desk and was told to find la chica de seguridad con el chaleco amarillo – the security girl with the yellow jacket.

She was nowhere to be seen. I fretted and sweated in the sun for 10 minutes until finally she appeared, and I explained my predicament.

“Mira yo aviso a todo el mundo cuando llegan,” – I tell everyone when they arrive – she said (not true! she was nowhere to be seen when I got there), “tendrás que hablar con alguien a ver si te dejan cambiarte,” you’ll have to speak so someone to see if they let you change lane.

A gap appeared in front of a car in the other lane as someone else moved forwards, and I asked the driver behind the gap if I could cross over and get in front of him.

No, he said, “te toca dar la vuelta y hacer la cola desde el principio otra vez,” – you’ll have to turn round and start the queue from the beginning again.

Which would mean losing the whole hour I’d been in the wrong queue! There were already about 20 new cars behind us in both lanes!

I tried a friendly looking woman in a Smart car a few cars back in the other lane, “perdona, es que me he equivocado de cola y tengo que cambiarme a este carril,” – Excuse me, I got the wrong queue and I have to change to this lane…”

“Vale,” – OK – she said, “¡Muy amable!” I replied, totally relieved! Whenever you want a favour in Spanish, it really pays to start with “Perdona, es que…”

Finally I got to the head of the queue, and the terrifying exam started!

It works like this: you sit in your car, and the ITV technician barks orders at you as he walks around the car checking everything works.

The vocabulary is highly test/car-specific, the noise in the warehouse is unbearable, and it’s almost impossible to hear what he’s saying!

As I said, I’m terrified that if I misunderstand his instructions, the car will fail and my 2 hour wait in line will have been for nothing!

Here are a few of the orders that came flying at me from all sides as the test progressed:

abre el capo – open the bonnet
luces de posición…. largas – dipped headlights, full beam
antinieblas – fog lights
pisa el freno – step on the brake
quita el freno de mano – release the handbrake
dale un poco de agua – squirt some water…
toca la bocina – sound the horn (I’d never heard the word ‘bocina‘ before, so had to take a guess at that one – lucky I got it right!)

It went on and on like this until finally he sent me on to stage two – even worse!

This involved listening to a guy who was underneath the car, giving me orders via a tiny, hissing loud speaker next to my drivers window:

Darle con el volante de un lado para otro – swing the steering wheel from one side to the other. Etc!

So how did we do?

At last I made it to the end of the test, and got the piece of paper with the crucial test results:

The Car: Resultado de la inspección: Favorable con defecto leve – escobillas defectuosas – The car passed the test, but with a minor infraction, worn out wiper blades…

Ben: Hecho polvo – totally worn out as well! … But I guess I passed the test too!

What’s the hardest ‘real life’ Spanish exam you’ve ever been through?

Related To This Post:

- Ben’s Anatomical Spanish Simultaneous Translation Nightmare!

- Make sure you’re ready for these real life Spanish situations! Keep listening to our real-life Spanish conversations and jump to the next level materials in our store!

¡Hola!

Our latest project, Notes in Spanish Gold 2, is open NOW!

Click here to get it right now!

You’ll be getting instant access to the 24 Notes in Spanish Gold 2 episodes, featuring great new real Spanish conversations and the new invaluable analysis section, PLUS the Q and A sessions, which give you closer access to us than ever before!

Saludos desde Madrid,

Ben y Marina

P.S. As we’ve been saying all week, this is probably the best work we’ve ever produced, and we are tremendously excited to open it up to everyone.

We think it’ll make a huge, inspiring difference to your Spanish.

Click here to get Gold 2 now!

The Spanish verb llevar has many different meanings – we’ve covered the most important for you (over 30 uses!) in this special report… but don’t worry, you don’t have to learn them all at once!

Download the PDF now with this link, and add it to your special Spanish learning collection:

	Totally Understanding Llevar! Become a llevar expert now!

Remember, you can get more of our best reports here.

We are constantly asked about how to translate the simple English verb ‘become’ into Spanish. And there is no simple answer!

The Spanish use other verbs, like ponerse, volverse, and many others, to do the same job.

We’ve put together a list of the top 23 ways ‘become’ is used in Spanish in this special report. Download the PDF here now:

	23 Ways to Translate “Become” in Spanish! PDF Dominate “Become” in Spanish from now on!

Remember, you can get more of our best reports here.

As well as our free Spanish learning audio and videos, we have produced a lot of great free reports over the years, packed full of valuable Spanish learning resources.

You can find them listed below. Feel free to download them and add them to your personal Spanish learning resources.

N.B. Sign up for our newsletter via the form top-right of this page, and you’ll get two more of our best ever reports too – our Super Simple Spanish Subjunctive Rule Book (the biggest, and best report we’ve ever made!) and Kick-Start Your Spanish, packed with ideas to improve your Spanish learning right now!

	11 Cool People Phrases in Spanish PDF The Spanish are gifted when it comes to describing their fellow human beings!

	Conversation Starters PDF 10 Ways NOT To Sound Like A Total Tourist In Spain…

	The Mighty Echar PDF Useful phrases with one of the most versatile verbs in Spanish, Echar

	The Most Amazing Spanish Learning Ideas Ever PDF – Put together with ideas from hundreds of Notes in Spanish listeners, this is a gold mine of ideas!

	10 Very Cool Spanish Verbs PDF – Some of these are pretty colloquial, but they’ll make you sound Super Spanish!

	Zero to Fluent in Spanish in 9 months PDF – The original steps Ben took to go from zero to pretty darn fluent in just 9 months!

	Spanish Wine Phrases Report PDF – We teamed up with our friends at Catavino to bring you both useful, and fun, wine phrases!

	False Friends Report PDF – How to avoid extreme embarrassment by not getting these mixed up!

	34 Uses of Dar PDF – 34 excellent ‘Dar’ phrases and expressions that are commonly used by Spanish speakers every day

	23 Ways to Translate “Become” in Spanish! PDF Dominate “Become” in Spanish from now on!

	Totally Understanding Llevar! PDF Become a llevar expert now!

Remember, if you’ve signed up for our newsletter you’ll get two more of our best ever reports too – our Super Simple Spanish Subjunctive Rule Book (the biggest, and best report we’ve ever made!) and Kick-Start Your Spanish, a real motivation booster full of ideas to improve your Spanish learning capabilities.

Just sign up for our newsletter via the form top-right of this page to make sure you get those two right now as well!