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!

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!

UPDATE: WINNERS ANNOUNCED!

Thanks to all who voted! The winners are, First place: Scott 34% (322 votes); Second Place: Ana 31% (293 votes); Third Place: Pippa 16% (149 votes). Congratulations! I’ll be contacting you today! (And well done to the runners up, who also had great videos!)

Original post…

Marina and I have picked the finalists in our Notes in Spanish Video Competition! It was a very very tough job to pick 5 from all the wonderful videos we recieved. We haven’t been able to reply personally to everyone that entered (or we’d be here all week!) but we want to thank you all again for taking the time to participate – we really enjoyed your videos!

Please take a minute to watch all 5 of the short finalist videos below, and then vote for the one you like most using the special poll under the last video. The voting ends this Thursday July 9th at midnight, and we’ll award prizes (top prize 150 dollar Amazon voucher and more goodies!) to those three lucky winners with the highest number of votes on Friday 10th.

Here are the videos!

Finalist Number 1! Ana: WINNER 2ND PLACE!

Finalist Number 2! Pippa: WINNER 3RD PLACE!

Finalist Number 3! Patrick:

Finalist Number 4! Kjersti:

Finalist Number 5! Scott: WINNER 1ST PLACE!

Here’s the poll. Wathced all the videos? VOTE NOW!!

Muchas gracias! Ben y Marina

Keep boosting your Spanish with our audio!!

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

Hola a todos!

We’ve been working away on something big we’re going to be announcing at the end of the week, plus we have 3 cool new videos to share with you.

We’ll be releasing them all this week, if you want to make sure you don’t miss them, watch the first here and follow the instructions on how to see the rest!

Don’t miss the first video!

Ben y Marina

General Info

Listening Suggestions

More Cool Stuff

The Notes in Spanish Intro: More Cool Stuff

Already checked out our listening suggestions? Here are some of the other things we think you’ll enjoy at Notes in Spanish:

More Great Study Tips in Our ‘Kick-Start Your Spanish’ Report

If you sign up for our Newsletter you’ll get our fantastic, free ‘Kick-Start Your Spanish’ report, 12 pages of ideas, resources and suggestions to help you surge ahead with your Spanish learning.

Our Forums

There is an unbelievable amount of information in the super-friendly Spanish section of our forums over at our sister site notesfromspain.com.

In particular, you can get just about any question answered in the Spanish Basics – Vocab and Grammar Q & A section. Come over, register, and say hi!

Inpsired Beginners – Not Just for Beginners

A lot of higher level students also love these shows, as they offer a great way of reviewing key grammar points.
Ser and Estar anyone?

Our Video Blogs

We occasionally make video blogs in Spanish, and we’ve been as far afield as Thailand! These are most suited to intermediate and advanced learners, though we list useful vocab with many of the videos so everyone benefits from them. We’ve posted videos by some of you guys too – Start viewing here!

The Real Spanish Phrase Book

As well as our main Spanish podcasts, we also produce other Spanish audio packs to broaden your knowledge of Real Spanish. Want ten cool ways to sound pissed off in Spanish? Want to know how to talk about the weather, food, and crazy people just like the locals do?

Then check out the Real Spanish Phrase Book and Audio Guide.

We’d love to hear your feedback!

These “Intro” pages are new here at Notes in Spanish. Once you’ve had a chance to check out our materials, we’d love it if you had a minute to let us know if they have been useful via the contact page later on. Thanks! – Ben

In our latest video we chat about the Feria del Libro (Book Fair) here in the center of Madrid. ¿Lees mucho hoy en dí­a?

Some vocab from today’s video:

Un monzón – Monsoon

He vuelto constipado – I’ve come back with a bad cold

Estreñido – Constipated

Casetas – In this case they are stands in the book fair, but this word can also be used for bars at the beach

Editoriales – Publishers

Me aburro – I get bored

Subscribe to these videos in iTunes

Like the Real Spanish we use in all our videos? Check out the Real Spanish Phrase Book and Audio Guide!

¡Hola! It’s time for another one of our L!VE video blogs, ideal for Intermediate to Advanced Spanish lovers, though the phrases taken from the video and listed below are great at every level.

(Subscribe to our videos in iTunes)

Cool ‘pelo’ phrases from today’s video.

Se me ha caí­do el pelo – I’m in trouble! I’ve done something bad!

Me he rapado – I’ve had a really short hair cut.

No me tomes el pelo – stop pulling my leg!

More ‘pelo’ phrases…

Por los pelos… – In the nick of time

For example: Justo ha empezado a llover. Hemos llegado a casa por los pelos – It’s just started to rain – we’ve got back home just in time!

Enjoy these phrases? Want more?

If you enjoy using real Spanish phrases to sound really Spanish, then you can find over 100 more just like these in our Real Spanish Phrase Book and Audio Guide: Check it out here!

We’ve decided that our main aim with our new Notes in Spanish L!VE videos is just to have a lot of fun! So here is the latest entry, ‘Truenos’, in which…. Ben es un exagerado, los ingleses saben más, y ¡la gente esta loca!

The top words from today’s video blog are:

Apart from the good old storm vocab (Rayos = Lightening, Trueno = Thunder), the top phrase pick has to be Marina’s comment to Ben:

‘Eres un exagerado!

… a cool Spanish phrase meaning, ‘you are completely over the top!’

If you enjoy these short videos, please sign up to get them automatically, just like our podcasts, via iTunes: Direct iTunes link.

Find more cool Spanish Phrases in our Real Spanish Phrase Book and Audio Guide!

A random start to our new ‘Notes in Spanish L!VE’ video blogging adventure, in which Ben, the Guiri Total, had to get a bit Spanish in mega department store Fnac to get his Euros back.

This is the start of a new videoblogging season here at Notes in Spanish: there will be lots of videos from lots of places coming your way! We hope to see yours too! Details of a new feed for those that want to subscribe in iTunes etc will follow shortly.

The top words from today’s video blog are:

Guiri – Foreign bloke, more info here.

Meterle caña – To give someone a hard time

Ponerse Chulo – To get tough about something, take no crap!

More Real Phrases in our Real Spanish Phrase Book and Audio Guide!