Adverbs aren't essential to Spanish sentences — but it would be awfully hard to convey relevant information without them. This introductory lesson covers the different types of adverbs and how ... Read More

In earlier lessons, we've looked at the poner and tener families of verbs — groups of verbs that have the same endings and are conjugated alike, but have different meanings ... Read More

One of the phrases you may have learned early on if taking a class in conversational Spanish was hasta luego, a phrase that can be translated literally as "until later" ... Read More

Look up the verb "to take" in an English-Spanish dictionary, and you'll see plenty of Spanish verbs you can use. How do you know which one is right? One way ... Read More

It's no coincidence that both the Spanish verb tocar and the English verb "touch," which have similar meanings, both start with the same letters. After all, they are both derived ... Read More

One temptation that many beginning Spanish students have is to look up a word in a Spanish-English dictionary and think that the main translation listed there is the one they ... Read More

Today, believers and their friends throughout the world celebrate two miracles — for Christians, the mortal birth of the Baby-God, and for Jews, beginning tonight, the miracle of the burning ... Read More

There are countless phrases we use everyday that aren't essential to getting our message across, but they they are useful in putting a context to our remarks. Among them are ... Read More

Qué and cuál, interrogative pronouns that mean "what" or "which," often express the same concept. But they usually aren't interchangeable, and in most case the structure of a sentence will ... Read More

Univision, the largest Spanish-language TV network in the United States, will be included in the influential Nielsen ratings for the first time starting the day after Christmas, the network and ... Read More

How well do you know the words of the Christmas season? Find out by taking this self-scoring test. ¡Buena suerte! Take the test...

We often think of adjectives as words that describe nouns. However, there is one class of adjectives that don't describe nouns at all. Instead, they are used to point to ... Read More

When is a nothing a something? When it's a negative pronoun. The newest entry in our extensive grammar glossary describes negative pronouns such as nadie and "nobody," telling how they ... Read More

If you guessed that etymology has something to do with insects, you were thinking of entomology. To find out about entomology, please visit About's Animals and Wildlife site. To find ... Read More

In English, it is common to separate an auxilary verb from the main verb, as in the sentence "I have already finished the book," where "easily" separates "have" and "finished." ... Read More

There are at least three common ways in which the concept of "half" can be expressed in Spanish, partly depending on which part of speech is involved. Learn more...

The last two words in the headline above are what is known as a tag question, and they exist in Spanish too, ¿no? This in our grammar glossary explains what ... Read More

Most of the time, the preposition entre means basically the same as "between" or "among." But it also has some uses that may not seem particularly familiar. Learn more...

The subjunctive mood in Spanish is used after statements of doubt. Thus the subjunctive is used in "dudo que haga frío (I doubt it is cold, where haga is in ... Read More

You don't see the hyphen used a lot in Spanish, especially in casual writing. But they can come in handy for joining two adjectives or two nouns to form a ... Read More

If you can spell in English, you have a head start spelling in Spanish. But following the spelling patterns you know in English can have its hazards when you apply ... Read More

Por qué and porque have obvious similarities and are easy to confuse. Throw por que and porqué in the mix, and the situation becomes even more confusing. Here's a guide ... Read More

As is befitting a children's song, the Spanish translation of "Away in a Manger" has easier grammar and vocabulary than many of the other Christmas carols that we've analyzed in ... Read More

If I tell you that it's 30 degrees outside, is it hot or cold? The answer depends on whether I'm talking in Celsius (quite hot) or Fahrenheit (just below freezing) ... Read More

All sorts of nouns represent things that can be counted — houses, cars, Spanish lessons. But some nouns, even though they represent things, refer to things that exist as a ... Read More

Tener is one of those verbs that has many idiomatic uses, such as tener hambre (to be hungry) and tener prisa (to be in a hurry). So many uses does ... Read More

The English verb "taking" doesn't have the same meaning in a sentence such as "I'm taking the bus" as it does in "he's taking the book." So it shouldn't be ... Read More

If you're like most English speakers, you're using progressive verb forms quite often in your speech. But you should be avoiding the temptation to do the same in Spanish. Here's ... Read More

Usually, accent marks are placed over vowels to indicate which syllable of a word gets the most stress. But there are some accent marks that don't have anything to do ... Read More

If you're a Spanish teacher, have you looked at any of our annotated Christmas carols? This week, the Spanish version of "O Come All Ye Faithful" has become the third ... Read More

Questions in Spanish have some similarities to questions in English: They often use a different word order than other types of sentences, and they often begin with a special type ... Read More

If you aren't using an exact number to describe a quantity of something, you're probably using an adjective such as pocos or muchas. Learn how these adjectives are used in ... Read More

Knowing which prepositition to use after a given verb is sometimes as important as knowing the verb itself. The rules for which preposition to use aren't always self-evident. Hablar, to ... Read More

Spanish has seven types of perfect verbs (although one type is nearly obsolete and is found mostly in literature). But just because those verbs are perfect doesn't mean the others ... Read More

If you known your adjectives, you already know how to say someone is happy, sad or rich. In this lesson, you can learn how to say someone is happier, sadder ... Read More

Many times it makes more sense to refer to groups of people or things rather than the individual items of persons. To do that, we often use collective nouns. They're ... Read More

Quedar is one of those verbs that seems like it can mean just about anything, depending on how it is used. Although dictionaries often give the meaning as "to stay" ... Read More

The most common way of referring to decades in Spanish is using the form los años ochenta for the '80s and los años cincuenta for the '50s. But there are ... Read More

No, we aren't talking about those words avoided in polite society. This month's collection of words for our Word of the Day minilesson are all words that each have four ... Read More

Are you a fan of Spanish-language films? Or are you looking for a gift for someone who is? You can hardly go wrong with our list of the 10 most ... Read More