It's one thing to learn to speak Spanish in a grammatically correct way. But to go beyond that, we'd like at some point not only to be "textbook correct" but also to sound unlike a foreigner to native speakers. This issue was raised recently in a letter to this site in response to a lesson on the verb caer:
I would like to know more about how to say things correctly, or more accurately, using the expression of my Mexican listeners. For example, for caer: "El avión cayó en el océano. The plane fell into the ocean." I would not say the airplane "fell" into the ocean, I would say it crashed into the ocean. So should I use chocar? What is the common way to express that idea? And how can I learn those common expressions that do not translate exactly?
How would you answer that question? You can see my answer in my article on finding out which words a native speaker might use. Please share yours in our newest Readers Respond feature on learning what native speakers say. Thanks!
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