Tan and tanto are obviously related to each other, and they are both used in making what are known as comparisons of equality. However, they are not used the same way: Tan is used with adverbs and adjectives, while tanto (and its variations) is used with nouns.

Sometimes when you see a reflexive form of a verb in use, it may be hard to tell how its different in meaning from the standard form of the verb. The fact is that sometimes, as explained in our new lesson on the difference between caer and caerse, the change in meaning sometimes isn't much.

If you're playing a sports contest or buying a lottery ticket, one word you might want to be able to use afterward is ganar, as it's the most common Spanish verb for "to win." The same word is used to refer to earning money. One good way to remember this word is that it's related to the English verb "to gain," which makes it a cognate.

As a reader recently reminded me in an email, there a names for family relatives that exist in Spanish that we don't have in English.

Concuñado and concuñada had long been on our list — that's the husband of your wife's sister or the wife of your husband's brother. But I confess I was stumped to recall the word for the father-in-law or mother-in-law of one's child — only in the past few months have I had such a relative. As it turns out, that's another con- word — consuegro or consuegra.

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