Context:

Ben and Marina talk about their wedding anniversary and holiday plans, and help you learn more Spanish with the new ‘Analysis’ section at the end.

Useful Vocab:

Estar listo – To be ready
Ser listo – To be clever
Preparados, listos, ya – Ready, steady, go.
Abanico (m.) – Fan
Abanicarse – To fan
El que me tocó a mi – The one that was handed out to me
Te toca a ti – It’s your turn
Raparse – Informal way to say I’ve had a hair cut – usually used when it’s really short.
Nos vamos dentro de muy poco de vacaciones – We are going on holiday very soon.
Dentro de un mes – In a months time
Dentro de nada – In a very short while
Dar a luz – To give birth
Esperamos estar en Francia cuando llegue el bebé - We hope to be in France when the baby arrives.

Useful Links:

Get The Super Simple Spanish Subjunctive Rule Book

Get Notes in Spanish Gold (New Audio With Similar Special Analysis)

False Friends: Don’t get your marmalades mixed up!

To celebrate the public launch of Notes in Spanish Gold (our best audio ever!) we’ve got another great free report for you, with a huge list of over 50 crucial Spanish false friend pairs.

You can download the report below, but do read this classic Spanish-confusion-nightmare tale first:

Why are False Friends important? Some of you may have heard this story before, but it’s worth repeating as a bit of a warning!

NIS listener Courtney sent us this great confession recently, about a somewhat embarrassing experience during the very first day with her host-family in Spain:

“Nunca lo olvidaré: Yo desayunaba con mi nueva “familia” española el primer día que yo llegué a su apartamento en Salamanca. Yo comía un pan dulce con una mermelada bien sabrosa. Les dije a mis “padres”: “¡Ay, que rico! Me encantan estos preservativos….”

At which point the whole family fell about laughing! Courtney, trying to be nice about their preservative jam, had just told them how much she loved their condoms!

The word she was looking for was “mermelada”, of course!

The special false friends report we’re giving away here to celebrate the launch of Notes in Spanish Gold this Monday, has a list of over 50 of these tricky false friend pairs, to make sure you never make an error like that one!

Download it here now:

Download: Notes in Spanish Falsos Amigos Special Report PDF

Important Extra News:

1. If you haven’t got our Spanish Subjunctive 21 page report yet (that basically demystifies it forever!), then get it here right now.

2. Did you see this weeks videos yet? If not, do check out the latest, ‘Our Big Vice’, with the brand-new analysis section in the second half (a winning concept taken straight from our new Gold audio). Watch it here.

2. Notes in Spanish Gold has previously only been for a handful of private members. This is our best work yet! We can’t wait until everyone gets a chance to find out…

Update: Notes in Spanish Gold is available now in our store!

Context: Ben and Marina confess to their biggest vice/addiction, and how it’s shrinking their house (but hopefully expanding their brains with lots of learning!)

New! Today’s video includes a special English analysis section at the end!

Vocab and phrases from the analysis section:

Tenemos un vicio - We have an addiction/vice
Tengo un vicio con el chocolate – I’m addicted to chocolate
La casa se nos está quedando pequeña – The house is getting small for us
Estos zapatos se le están quedando pequeños – These shoes are getting small for him
Tengo muchos de crianza – I’ve got lots [of books] about bringing up kids
Si tuviéramos una casa mas grande compraríamos más libros aún – If we had a bigger house we’d buy even more books
Seguiremos llevándolos al retiro según los vayamos leyendo – We’ll keep taking them to the Retiro as we finish reading them

Have You Got The Amazing Subjunctive Report Mentioned In The Video Yet?

We hope so, it’s our best ever! Make sure you get it here if you haven’t!

And watch out for the launch of Notes in Spanish Gold – It’s our best audio yet, and includes key English analysis like this with every real Spanish conversation!

UPDATE!: Notes in Spanish Gold is available now in our 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!

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]

	Download the Special Emociones PDF Includes Audio transcript and huge vocab list!

In today’s special audio, we tell the story about how Ben discovered an intriguing list of Spanish emotions pinned above Marina’s desk.

It turned out to be a powerful exercise she was trying out to pinpoint different emotional states!

When I saw the list, I knew it would have huge value for our Notes in Spanish listeners, so we decided to talk about its origins, and more emotions, in a special audio that we have for you today. You can get both the audio and the accompanying transcript/emotions list, above.

Here’s the video all about big news in Spain, and OUR big news!

Context: Marina heads down to the local kiosko to pick up and discuss 3 of the most important newspapers in Spain. We talk about the ‘politics’ of each paper, and about our own primary news sources.

We want to send our warmest thanks to everyone who bought something from our store in our special ‘Ben’s Birthday/Get Back To Your Spanish’ week (Sept 1st to 7th).

We promised to send 10% of any revenue from that week to Unicef’s program to fight infant mortality:

Well, we took 10% as promised, threw in a bit extra from our own pockets to make a nice round number, and yesterday sent a fantastic total of 1,500 Euros to Unicef.

Thanks so much to everyone that was able to help. We hope this amount can make a significant difference to the lives of children in need.

Sois los mejores…

Saludos desde Madrid,

Ben y Marina

(We will continue to ensure that at least 5% of all annual profits from Notes in Spanish go to charitable causes connected to helping children and the environment).

Yes, we have a big problem in our life, maybe you can help us make a decision! Here’s the video, and if you find it tricky to understand everything, I’ve outlined a bit of context and a couple of bits of helpful vocab. below:

Context: Our house has got too small now we have baby Leo with us, plus we just aren’t sure we want to live in a big city anymore… we need to move fast!

Useful vocab:

Estoy un poco agobiado – I’m a bit stressed

Nuestra casa se nos ha quedado pequeña – Our house has got too small for us

Un sofa-cama – A sofabed

El salón es la habitación mas fresquita – The living room is the coolest room

Corre un poco de brisa – There is a bit of a breeze

Una ciudad un poco mas verde – A city which is a bit greener

A lo mejor alguien quiere alquilar este piso! – Maybe someone wants to rent our flat!

…And don’t forget that old classic (particularly loved by las chicas) to help you remember that ‘problemA’ is masculine:

“Los problemas son masculinos, ¡y las soluciones son femeninas!”

If you enjoyed the video and vocab, and like our real Spanish approach, check out more of our best Spanish learning materials in our store now!

- Ben y Marina

Update: The Birthday Sale is now over. Thanks so much to everyone that made the most of this opportunity to improve their Spanish, and help charity at the same time! We’ll be in touch very soon with details of how much we have raised for Unicef. Update 2: results here!

- Muchísimas gracias, Ben

UPDATE! The competition is over and the winners have been chosen, please do check out the videos here!