You know in English we can say “sorry” for a lot of things.
… quite a lot of different situations where saying “sorry” in English will suffice”
Well in Spanish it’s not like that. There are 4 distinctive phrases which YOU MUST know and understand when it comes to expressing “sorry” or “excuse me”. The one size fits all (as it can in English) just won’t work.
What expression you use to say “sorry” or “excuse me” in Spanish very much depends upon the situation you find yourself in. That’s what this video is all about, watch it, absorb it and I promise it’ll make life easier the next time your in a Spanish speaking country.
This video may help you avoid some very embarrassing mistakes later on so pay close attention!
One of the first things we all learn in beginner level Spanish is how to say “I like it” or “I like doing something”. The handle is very easy… me gusta.
However if you apply “me gusta” when talking about people, you get a totally different meaning.
For example, in English we can say “I like you” very innocently to a friend, or it can also mean “I’m attracted to you” when you’re on a date.
Here’s the important part… In Spanish, me gusta is ALWAYS understood as “I’m attracted to you/him/her” when using “me gusta”.
You can see how easy it would be for someone just learning Spanish to think that O.K, in English we say “I like you” and that’s “me gusta” in Spanish… so therefore I’m going to tell my friend that I like them. Big, embarrassing mistake ahead!
I hope this video will save you from that mistake and give me tons of good karma in return for making it for you.
In English we can say “I love you” just as easily as “I love running” for example. In other words, you can use the exact same verb in both circumstances.
This is very different from Spanish however so it’s important to understand this in order to keep your Spanish sounding nice and natural!
In Spanish to say “I love you” is of course “Te amo”
However, to say “I love tennis” would NOT be “Amo tennis”, instead they use
Me encanta tennis
Me encanta is actually a very easy and useful handle to know because you can put any verb in front of it and bingo, you’ve just expressed perfectly that you like to love to do it
I love walking – me encanta caminar
I love talking – me encanta hablar
I love singing – me encanta cantar
…and so forth.
If you’ve already been through the lesson on how to express that You’ve Just Done Something in Spanish then please try taking the test video lesson below.
If you can go through it without mistake then you’ll know you’ve fully understood the concept of this very useful handle and how you can incorporate it into your everyday Spanish conversation.
If you’ve been though the short video on the Spanish Alphabet a few times and put in a few minutes practice you should be ready to take this little test below.
Repeat the test as many times as you need until you get all the answers perfectly correct from start to finish. And don’t forget to spell out other Spanish words aloud to.
If you’ve already been through this lesson on how to express was or were going to in Spanish and feel that you’ve fully understood how the handles work then you can watch the video below to test yourself…
Here’s a great little lesson in the “Essentials” series.
You’ll learn how to express things like
and so on…
It’s a very useful part of ordinary conversation which you’ll find yourself using over and over again in countless situations. That’s really the key to mastering a foreign language… learn the most used, the most useful content first that accounts for the majority of general conversation and only then go into the language in a deeper way.
If you can add one little thing a day to your Spanish such as what you’ll learn in this lesson then you’ll be doing very well, especially when it all starts to add up after a month or two.
Of course we all know that to say “Thank you” in Spanish is GRACIAS but there’s a lot more you can add to it.
Saying “gracias” all the time and for every situation becomes very generic, what we want is to instead be able to say thank you for specific things and circumstances. This will immediately lift your Spanish to a more refined level.
The handle is this
For example, you may want to express
“Thanks for inviting me”. That would be…
Can you see the handle at work? It’s always Gracias Por (never para) and then the full verb… the infinitive.
Other examples would be for things like
I’m sure you can imagine a great many situations in everyday conversation when expressing thank you in this way would be very useful.
Just watch the video for a full explanation of how to apply this.
The easiest way to start building up your Spanish vocabulary is to first learn all the words which are the most closely related between the two languages. Make’s sense doesn’t it? Yet so few Spanish language courses actually teach this.
Using this method you’ll soon discover that there’s actually a lot of common ground between English and Spanish… that the Spanish language is not completely foreign.
By using the points where the two languages meet, you can start your language learning from a familiar place, kind of like entering the pool at the shallow end.
This method of learning vocabulary is entirely intuitive. There’s no memorization or word lists to drill by rote. All you need to do is learn an easy rule for each category of English words and you’ll instantly be able to transform all of them into Spanish.
It’s the closest thing to “magic” in vocabulary learning you’ll come across!
Being able to say that you’ve “just done something” or that “something has just happened” is very useful for everyday spoken Spanish, for example you might want to say
I have just told him
She has just left
They have just finished
It has just arrived
We have just noticed
It also works for
I had just told him
She had just left
They had just finished
It had just arrived
We had just noticed
When you’re ‘in the moment’ and speaking in ordinary situations knowing how to express this for any verb is going to be a useful asset. It will make your Spanish flow more naturally.
Watch this on YouTube – Learn Spanish
Important: This tense is meant to express that something literally just happened so it’s expressing some action in the past.
The good news is that you can easily learn to express practically any verb in this way. You just need one simple formula…
Those are the 5 handles. Now all you need to do it put a verb after any one of them. For example…
The verb “to leave” is “salir”. So to say “I just left” would simply be “Acabo de salir”. With that in mind, let’s run through the full set of handles
Run down the handles a few times then close your eyes and recall them again in your mind.
They have just finished – Acaban de finir
Here we have the verb “finir” for “to finish”.
So to say “They have just finished” you simply take the handle for ‘they have just’ and add the verb on the end of it “Acaban de finir”.
Here’s another – to say “It has just arrived” we need to know two things
1. Acaba de (it has just)
2. The verb to arrive is “llegar”
It has just arrived – Acaba de llegar
Here are the verbs you should know before taking this test.
llamar – to call
Decidir – to decide
Finir – to finish
Pagar – to pay
llegar – to arrive
Salir – to leave
Preguntar – to ask
