A few rules

Words in Spanish I just find neat

do you like my cursive? :3

Duolingo is using "novia" for girlfriend, fiance, and bride. Is this correct spanish? In english these are certainly different states in a relationship, is there no distinction in spanish?

In the phrase "make the world a better place," could someone help me understand why Google wants to translate this to "hacer del mundo un lugar mejor" I don't understand the "hacer de" here.

How would you phrase it, in a sentence like "she wants to make the world a better place"?

My Tia Bene just passed and I need a Spanish language song for the video commemoration. Something not too religious if possible. A little upbeat rather than slow would be great. She liked ranchero music. Any help would be so so appreciated.

A menudo en las canciones españolas oigo adjetivos como nuevo después del sustantivo. Entiendo que tiene un significado diferente,¿pero este orden libre se aplica a varios o muy pocos adjetivos? Espero que este mensaje tenga sentido pero lo siento si hice errores cuando lo escribí.

Tried googling and various dictionaries but couldn't find anything. Also confused about why it's spelled differently twice. I'm curious if this is an actual word or a mistake

I hope this post is okay in this sub, please redirect me to another sub for this kind of post if necessary.

My mom and dad were both born in the Dominican Republic and therefore speak Spanish; for some reason, they did not teach me as a kid, and I grew up as a no sabo. After dropping out of school in my late teens/early 20s, in the past couple of years I went back to school and decided to major in world languages with a concentration in Spanish; I'm currently intermediate, but I'm supposed to graduate next year, and I feel like I'm not where I need to be. My school does a study abroad program in Spain (or something similar to that; I know you can go for like 2 months in the Summer where you take some classes but mainly go on excursions), but that option is just too expensive for me, and also I don't like the idea of being SO far away from home. My professor recently told me that she was able to send a student to Puerto Rico as an exchange student to do a semester there, and her Spanish improved significantly when she got back. It's way cheaper, and I think just more accessible in general. Once she sends me the information, I am going to do it, but I'm honestly very scared. I consider myself an anxious person, and being outside of my bubble makes me really nervous. I'm really close to my parents, and the idea of being away from them for so long makes me really sad, though I know this is something I absolutely have to do to progress. I haven't even been sent the information for this, and I'm already nervous and scared as hell. The idea of being somewhere where I don't have the support I am used to makes me want to cry, to be honest. I was just wondering if anyone could share their experiences if they studied abroad and how it worked out for you, to kind of ease my mind a bit.

¿alguien me podría explicar la diferencia entre los verbos ningunear, despreciar y menospreciar? Me estoy volviendo loca 🤣

So with the peterite form of a sentence would be like Mandó una carta (he/she sent the letter) and Mando una carta (I send a letter)

I can tell the difference with writing but when spoke aloud its difficult to tell which tense it is, how did yall get your mind to be able to know the difference without being confused?

I speak Spanish, and it is honestly so frustrating. You see a word, your brain immediately thinks you know it because it looks exactly like Spanish, and then it turns out to mean something totally different. The struggle is real

I'm learning Spanish from English, and came across the phrase "ya está saliendo el sol", meaning that the sun is already rising or coming up. In English, we talk about "sunrise", the sun "coming up", etc. and I know that in Spanish, saliendo is a form of "salir", meaning to leave or exit.

I have done several internet searches, and can't find an explanation. Can anyone tell me how this is understood in Spanish? Is the sun "exiting" from the horizon, or leaving the horizon, or something like that? I know it's such a newbie question, but knowing how something is thought about in Spanish makes it so much easier for me to remember it.

Thank you!

hello everyone. i am an elementary/intermediate spanish speaker, and my friend and i were chatting and i said "como que" as in "what do you mean"/"like how?" she said she'd never heard that phrase so i'm here to clear the air. is that actual slang or am i tweaking

In English, when an object resembles a colour, we just add an -ish to it. For example, a reddish car, a yellowish shirt... But in Spanish it's not that straightforward. So I decided to collect the most important ones in a single post:

1. rojizo

- El cielo al atardecer tenía un tono rojizo muy bonito. - The sky at sunset had a very pretty reddish tone.

2. anaranjado

- Su camisa tenía sutiles rayas anaranjadas a lo largo de la tela. - His shirt had subtle orangish stripes running down the fabric.

3. amarillento

- Las hojas de los árboles ya se están poniendo amarillentas. - The leaves on the trees are already turning yellowish.

4. verdoso

- El agua de la piscina tenía un color verdoso por las algas. - The pool water had a greenish colour because of the algae.

5. azulado

- Sus ojos tenían un brillo azulado bajo la luz de la luna. - Her eyes had a bluish glow under the moonlight.

6. violáceo vs amoratado

- Las orquídeas tienen flores de un tono violáceo. - The orchids have flowers of a purplish tone.

- Se golpeó el dedo con la puerta y se le puso amoratado. - He hit his finger on the door and it turned purplish (bruised).

We also need to contrast:

7. blancuzco vs blanquecino

- La pared vieja tenía un color blancuzco. - The old wall had a dirty, whitish colour. (blancuzco – negative tone)

- El ave tenía unas plumas blanquecinas en el pecho. - The bird had whitish feathers on its chest. (blanquecino – neutral)

And some other honourable mentions: grisáceo (greyish), negruzco (blackish), amarronado (brownish), rosáceo (pinkish).

Extra: In-between tones

- El atardecer era naranja tirando a rojo. - The sunset was orange leaning towards red.

- Sus ojos eran grises tirando a azul. - His eyes were gray leaning towards blue.

I know there are many more, but I had to stop somewhere. :D Do you find this kind of posts useful? Should I keep them coming?

Buenas.

Estaba jugando a Assassin’s Creed y me topé con una palabra nueva que nunca había oído. La busqué en el diccionario y pregunté a ChatGPT, pero nunca me pudo decir qué significa.

¿Podéis ayudarme?

¡Gracias! :)

My much older male coworker has started calling me "lolita," as a nickname, and I don't understand what that nickname means since I am not Spanish speaking nor am I Mexican. I was just wondering what it means, whether or not it's a term or endearment for women or something entirely different.

It's an old song my grandpa used to listen to a lot when I was younger and everyone I've asked said they don't remember what it was. I didn't know a lot of Spanish at the time so I don't really remember the lyrics but I remember the intro 'cause it made me sad. It starts with the sound of a heart monitor and maybe an oxygen machine and it's a little boy talking to his dad. I think he tells his dad either don't be sad or don't cry but I know he tells his dad he loves him and then the heart monitor flatlines and the music starts and that's literally all I remember about it. I just kinda assumed it's in the father's perspective because that's who the kid was talking to. I'm sorry but that's really all I remember, if anyone knows this song from just this that'd be awesome. Thank you.

Hey all,

What does it mean when someone calls you “pappas” specifically a girl I’m guessing it’s some sort of slang , just not quite sure what it means

Thank you !

I’m a graphic designer and this is one of those oddly specific language questions that has been bothering me for a while.

In English, designers will casually say a typeface has “personality” or “character.” Not literally, obviously. We mean that the type itself communicates something before you’ve even processed the words. A font can feel serious, friendly, institutional, playful, cheap, old-fashioned, etc.

I’ve been learning Spanish for years and I keep noticing that when I try to express the same idea, I instinctively reach for personalidad or carácter. Grammatically that seems straightforward, but I’m not convinced a native speaker would actually describe typography that way.

I’ve looked through Spanish-language design articles and seen words like sobrio, elegante, expresivo, geométrico, cálido, and so on, but those describe the individual qualities. I’m wondering specifically about the broader concept of a typeface having a recognizable “personality.”

Would “una tipografía con mucha personalidad” sound completely natural to you? What about “con carácter”? And is there any difference in how you’d understand those two?

I’m especially curious whether usage varies by country. I’m not trying to find a perfect one-to-one English equivalent, just trying to understand how native speakers would actually talk about this concept.

I've been watching tv shows with Spanish subtitles to help learn, and I've noticed something weird. On HBO, usually when the characters are talking to someone using 2nd person singular you, the verbs in Spanish are conjugated in 2nd person plural. I'd have thought this was just bad translation work, but I'm watching HBO's most popular TV-show in one of the world's most spoken languages, and this is recurring so I'd have assumed that they would quality control their subtitles. That makes me doubt myself. Are there contexts where you are supposed use 2nd person plural when addressing a singular person?

i have just started spanish in college and i was wondering if anyone’s willing to look over my assignment and possibly give me some pointers if it’s incorrect.

“Write a short descriptive paragraph about someone you know well provide information about where the person is from where he is right now the characteristics of his personality and how he is feeling right now.”
i wrote “Mi amigo, Brennan, es de New Orleans. Está en New Orleans. Es cariñoso, creative y gracioso. está sueño.”

is this good?

Does anyone have any experience of spanish language immersion courses / classes in Spain? I’m really keen to take part in one of these to help improve my spanish (early B2) but unsure what the best options are. Camino and Don Quijote are coming up. Anyone have experience of these or others? Many thanks

i have just started spanish in college and i was wondering if anyone’s willing to look over my assignment and possibly give me some pointers if it’s incorrect.

“Write a short descriptive paragraph about someone you know well provide information about where the person is from where he is right now the characteristics of his personality and how he is feeling right now.”
i wrote “Mi amigo, Brennan, es de New Orleans. Está en New Orleans. Es cariñoso, creative y gracioso. está sueño.”

is this good? i’m getting slightly confused with ser and estar as well as not using the subject pronoun.

Most people talk about the subjunctive, ser vs estar, por vs para, past tenses and all the usual difficult parts of Spanish, and yes I went through phases where I found those hard, but I feel like prepositions barely get mentioned. Prepositions which follow verbs to be specific.

The further I get into Spanish, the more I notice how much they matter if you want to sound natural rather than just understandable. You can know the right verb, use the right tense, and have perfectly decent vocabulary, but if you use the wrong preposition the sentence can still sound slightly off even if it still is understandable.

I keep running into things like depender de, acceder a, insistir en, soñar con, carecer de, contribuir a, derivar en, saldarse con, and so on. I read it, no problem I understand, but when I want to produce it I have to stop and think, wait, was this one de, a, en or con? And in the interest of speed, I sometimes just pick the first one that enters my brain.

Yes, I know what you will say, and yes I do try to memorize the verb and the preposition together as one unit instead of learning the verb on its own now. So not just depender, but depender de. But I really wish someone had told me to do that when I first started learning Spanish lol, because now it feels like I’m going back and attaching prepositions to verbs I already learned years ago.

I guess this is basically the same hell English learners go through when they hit phrasal verbs.

Another thing that makes Spanish prepositions frustrating is that a lot of the time there doesn’t seem to be much of a rule behind them either. It’s just the preposition Spanish happens to use with that word, and you have to memorize it. It's like every new verb I learn, I have to check and see if a preposition HAS to follows it.

At a lower level I don’t think I noticed this much because I was mostly concerned with making myself understood. Now doing lots of DELE exam prep, I’m starting to notice how much these little combinations affect whether something sounds natural or obviously translated from another language.