Topic:
All Spanish Quickies
The videos on this page are sorted with the oldest on top (the order I made them). To see them sorted with the newest on top, click here.
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Basic Spanish Pronunciation
Spanish pronunciation is pretty easy and straight forward. To be honest, if you can read English, you can basically already read Spanish. I don’t think it’s a wise use of your time to practice pronunciation much.
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The Infinitive & Conjugation
One of the main reasons I failed Spanish my first time through is I was lost from the beginning. On the first day, the teacher starting using words like “conjugation” and “infinitive”. I didn’t even know what those words meant in English. Woulda been nice of her to explain that, no?
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The Flashcard Strategy
Ahhh, The Flashcard Strategy… this one is near and dear to my heart. Anybody that knows my story knows I have a deep affection for making flashcards to memorize words. But you shouldn’t just throw the words on the cards and jump in randomly and haphazardly. Oh no.
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Subject Pronouns
Subject pronouns in Spanish are pretty easy and straightforward. The words are small and they work generally the way they do in English. But there are a couple common pitfalls for gringos like you and me. Formal/Informal, Latin America vs Spain. Don’t worry, though, that’s what we’re here to talk about today.
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Ser Vs. Estar
“To be or not to be? That is the question.” I know very few lines from Shakespeare. But it’s no surprise to me that one of the few I do know, contains the verb “to be” twice. You see, I consider “to be” to be the mother of all verbs. I’d bet a lot of money that “to be” is the most frequently used verb in English and in Spanish. Anytime you say “is” “am” “are” “was” or “were”, you’re actually saying a conjugated form of “to be”. But here’s the thing. In Spanish, they have two different “to be’s”.
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The Conjugation Strategy
In this video, I’m going to go over the exact strategy I used when I was first learning Spanish, to practice all the different conjugations of a verb.
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The Three Enemigos
In this lesson, I present “ser”, “estar” and “ir” together. Very few books present “ser” and “estar” together. I don’t know why. Probably because the people who make those books have no idea how our Gringo minds work.
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Pronunciation in Spain
Every Spanish-speaking country has a different accent. The trained ear (definitely not mine) can almost always tell you what country somebody is from just from their accent. Not me. But even I can tell when somebody comes from Spain. Except for perhaps Argentina, Spain’s accent is the most unique.
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The Sexualization of Nouns
In this lesson, I go over the whole masculine/feminine thing in Spanish. While not nearly as hard to “get” as all the verb conjugations, the sexuality of nouns still gives Spanish students a lot of trouble at the beginning. Or at least that’s how it was for me.
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Plural Forms of Nouns
Plural forms of nouns in Spanish are very much like plural forms of nouns in English. The sounds are almost exactly the same too. In this quick video, I give you two rules that have no exceptions and give you some examples of both rules–and how they compare to what we do in English.