Gerald's Spanish Language Blog June 2007 Archive

The most common unit of currency in Spanish-speaking countries is the peso, followed by the dólar estadounidense. How many other currencies can you name? See the currency list...

Learning the basics of counting in Spanish is matter of learning perhaps a couple dozen words and how to combine them. But the numbers of Spanish have their quirks. For ... Read More

Spanish is a language rich in suffixes. Take a simple word such as mundo (world), for example. With suffixes it can become mundanal (having to do with the human world), ... Read More

In its literal sense, andar means "to walk." But if you always understand it literally, andar often won't make sense. It is often much more vague in meaning, sometimes even ... Read More

I recently received an e-mail from a teacher asking how to explain the a in a sentence such as "¿Quieres aprender a jugar baloncesto?" What is it doing there? No, it's ... Read More

Name a unit of time, and if it's in common use you'll find it on this reference list of Spanish terms. Learn more...

Both pero and sino are usually translated to English as "but." But that doesn't mean they are interchangeable. Read more...

If Spanish is a new language for you, or if you learned the language years ago and need to brush up, be sure to check out our collection of lessons ... Read More

East is east and west is west, but in Spanish it's slightly more complicated. Spanish has two words for each of those directions, and a few adjective forms that don't ... Read More

When most people think of present participles in Spanish (if they think about them at all!), they usually think of verb forms ending in -ando or -endo. They are the ... Read More

Atrás and detrás can be easily confused: Similar in sound, both conveying the idea of "behind," the adverbs are sometimes (especially in Latin America) interchangeable. But they also have distinct ... Read More

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 ... Read More

One of the basic rules of Spanish grammar is that nouns must agree in number and gender with the adjectives that accompany them. If you're new to learning Spanish, this ... Read More

Not everything we say is used to convey information directly. Often, we use phrases to introduce what we're about to say, to help give the language a natural flow. This ... Read More

Some people learning Spanish seem to do fine until they have to start learning the verb form known as the subjunctive mood. This introduction to the subjunctive mood explains how ... Read More

Learning words as they are used in real life is one of the best ways to build your vocabulary. And that's the way our popular Word of the Day feature ... Read More

Like many other verbs, dejar has a basic meaning — in this case, to leave something somewhere — that has broadened over the centuries to be used under a wide ... Read More