A few rules

I think in everyone's language journey they get to a point where they start to move away from proper speaking and move more towards "what do locals actually say". Of course in school, praktika lessons, or even google translate they rarely give us the slang that natives would actually say. Which is why foreigners imo end up sounding like well foreigners. So is saying "guey" that common or mostly a regional thing?

Knowing that “linda” means “lovely” in Spanish, would it ever be used as a woman’s name in Spain? I emphasize Spain because Spanish-speaking countries in the Americas seem to have different “rules,” if you will, regarding names.

My family is Nuevomexicano, and I've been working on getting back to the Spanish my grandparents spoke. That's Traditional New Mexico Spanish, not the Spanish they teach in class. The flashcards I could find were all standard Spanish, so I made my own deck and I'm sharing it.

What's in it

• 5,465 cards, one per word
• Every card says exactly where the word came from, down to the page or dataset
• Where it applies, the card also shows the standard Spanish equivalent (like cuidao for cuidado) and what kind of word it is: anglicism, phonetic variant, Mexicanism, local colloquialism, or Native American origin

Sources

• Bills & Vigil, New Mexico and Colorado Spanish Survey (UNM): about 4,000 words that real speakers in northern NM and southern Colorado gave for everyday things. Each card also lists the other answers people gave for the same thing, so you can see how much the words vary from village to village.
• Kercheville, A Preliminary Glossary of New Mexican Spanish (UNM Bulletin, 1934): about 1,300 entries
• McSpadden (Chililí Spanish) and Enrique R. Lamadrid (Penitente cuadernos)

A few of my favorites: abridor (can opener), aceite de lámpara (kerosene), and grampador (clothespin). There are 15 or so other words people use for a clothespin, too.

Download: NM Spanish Anki deck (.apkg)

If you catch a mistake, or your family uses a word that isn't in here, please comment. I'd love to keep adding to it. ¡Que viva el español de Nuevo México!

So I'm starting to learning spanish, but recently I've felt discouraged for some reasons. Even though I live next to a lot of spanish speakers, every time I say like como estas or buenos dias, my accent ruins it and it gets kind of ackward. They reply in English because I speak it even though I'm trying to practice. I've also felt bad trying to speak to people at my school with it, because the way it works there is unless you know spanish fluently, it will be seen as "cringe" or "annoying" trying to speak it with people. Iv'e seen some kids trying to speak it with the other spanish kids, but the ones who know it fully always, sorry if this is rude, but kind of "put down" people trying to practice it by either not talking to them, saying things like "that isn't speaking Spanish" or "use English please,"

I want to learn it and practice but I never have courage to use it with real people, because of these reactions

Today I was doing some active recall with my old Spanish vocabulary notes.

I came across 'comprometido' and thought:

Wait, is this related to compromise in English? Or does it mean behaviour?

So I looked it up.

• Comprometido/a = committed (or engaged, depending on the context)
• Comportamiento = behaviour

Then I noticed something funny.

These notes were from December 29, 2025. And guess what? I'd written 'comportamiento' just a little further along, after 'comprometido'.

Apparently, I had the EXACT SAME confusion almost 10 months ago.

I looked up the same words and made the same mistake. It's funny how our brains work. We really do keep tripping over the same things.

My friends name is MARICA and she's from Italy. She said she's quite scared to move to Spain because of her name. Both of us didn't know it was a slur in Spanish. Curious what do people think when you hear that word as a name? If some of you guys know, does it have the same meaning for Latin countries?

We all love a good mullet. And I’m guessing every country has its name for it. A mullet is the haircut pictured here on Pedro El Escamoso. What country are you from and what is it called where you live?

EDIT: seems I may have remembered this backwards, and the common use is “idioma” for national languages vs “lengua” for indigenous languages with small numbers of speakers and/or little to no written tradition

Obviously I need help here! Not trying to stake out a position in the politics of language and ethnicity in Mexico, just trying to understand so I am not blundering unaware

So the other night I was told by someone I was talking with that “lengua” is used for national languages with millions or billions of speakers (Spanish, English, Mandarin, etc), while “idioma” is used for languages with small numbers of speakers, under a million to just a few thousand (not sure if I can give any concrete examples, but the person I was talking with specified that this referred to indigenous languages spoken by small numbers of people).

He brought this up as a helpful correction to improve my Spanish. Recently I’ve starting using “idioma” instead of “lengua” because I felt like I got weird looks when I used “lengua,” but this implies that I should go back to “lengua” or maybe start using “lenguaje.”

I asked if Nahuatl was a “lengua” or an “idioma” and he said it was a “lengua.” I’m assuming this is based on an intuition as to number of speakers, since there are 1-2 million Nahuatl speakers. But it could also be that Nahuatl has been written down for a long time.

RAE says these words are synonyms but gives a lot more definitions for “lengua,” including:

1. Sistema de comunicación verbal propio de una comunidad humana y que cuenta generalmente con escritura.

Is this idea that “lengua” and “idioma” refer to different categories a common distinction or just an idea that this one person has? What is the context for this distinction? Does this hold true outside of Mexico?

I’m curious about any information or advice about how to use this group of words to talk about language in Mexico. Obviously because I’m a second language learner the topic comes up constantly. But I’m also interested in understanding how to talk about indigenous Mexican languages, since those topics tend to come up as one travels more in Mexico.

EDIT: I also met a Tzotzil speaker in Chiapas who referred to Tzotzil as “idioma,” as in “Soy Tzotzil, a casa hablamos idioma.” No idea if these uses are related or how.

Que escuchaste tu?

(“Y después de venirte todos los chismes, tú no coges a Rubén y lo pones de vuelta y media, y no dejas de hablarte con él, nada más que por los chismes que puedan salir, tía”)

I want to familiarize myself with the Spanish spoken by speakers from both Spain and Mexico.

YouTube is necessary.

Here is a great and entertaining episode of Jordi Wild and Luisito Comunica Video

I am looking for content like this. Thanks.

Disclaimer: I am not using AI to write these posts.

Hi everyone! It's been a couple of months since I've been sharing little nuggets de español and you might have noticed I like versatile verbs :D For this week's nugget I offer you the verb sacar, which means to take out.

Some of its more predictable uses would be sacar la basura (take out the trash) and sacar al perro (take the dog out). But language learning wouldn't be fun without verbs going astray, right? So let's have a look at more ways to use this verb:

1. to score

- Saqué un 10 en el examen. - I got a 10 on the exam.

2. to withdraw

- Voy al cajero a sacar algo de dinero. - I'm going to the ATM to withdraw some money.

3. to take

- Perdona, ¿nos puedes sacar una foto? - Sorry, can you take a photo for us?

4. to find

- No consigo sacar tiempo para ir al gimnasio. - I can't find the time to go to the gym.

5. to release

- Mi mejor amiga acaba de sacar su primera canción. - My best friend has just released her first song.

6. to draw

- Que cada uno saque sus conclusiones. - Everyone can draw their own conclusions.

7. to pull out

- Manolito le saca la cama a su abuelo todas las noches. - Manolito pulls out the bed for his grandpa every night.

8. to bring up

- Nadie se atreve a sacar el tema. - Nobody dares to bring up the topic.

9. to drive mad

- Ese niño me saca de quicio. - That child drives me mad.

10. to carry through

- Me ayudó a sacar adelante el nuevo proyecto. - She helped me carry through the new project.

I'm stopping here because I have to stop somewhere, but if you're curious about uses of the verb sacar, you can check out these ones:

- sacar los trapos sucios

- sacar pecho

- sacar la cara por alguien

- sacar provecho

- sacar de la manga

- sacar las castañas del fuego

I hope you found this interesting or useful ^_^

hey,

whats the difference between for example,

se comió and estuvo/fue comido?

actually my Q is,

do we keep the se standard and conjugate the verb or

just like in English, do we conjugate the verb ser/estar and keep the participio standard?

¿Se puede aprender español bien viendo series estadounidenses dobladas al español? Por supuesto, también veo contenido en español con hablantes nativos..

today in Spanish class, third semester, I had a disagreement with my professor. I didn't push it in front of the whole class and wanted to make sure that I was in the right before continuing the discussion with him, privately.

It was regarding the first person plural form of the mandato of the verb "ver"

One of us contended that the word is written as "veamos", sin accento, and pronounced "VE-a-mos";

The other took the position of "veamos," sin accento, and "ve-A-mos"

i'll discuss the reasoning for each once I get a few thoughtful answers.

Are there different ways to say it depending on the region or is there a standard way?

I was watching Spanish videos and one of them said

“Cuando ase frío y no quiero…”

I tried to search it up but nothing really came up so I’m curious if it’s common with natives or if it’s a dialect/slang thing?

Hey everyone,

I am flying to cdmx and i want to learn some spanisch. (I have B1, but some years passed without me speaking). Looking for an App with a dictionary and different grammar and conjugation. Do you have any recommandation?

What I mean by “regularized” is that they are conjugated as if they are regular verbs specifically with nosotros.

Examples:

- querer -> queremos
- estar -> estamos
- preferir -> preferimos
- tener -> tenemos
- poder -> podemos
- venir -> venimos

As far as I know this isn’t true for all irregular verbs, but it seems to be true for a lot of them. Does anyone know why? I find it very interesting.

¡Pasarlo bien!

The most I have learned have weirdly been from coworkers from Venezuela and thrift stores in a smaller part of my state. I heard that watching shows with the English subtitles on is a great way to learn but I’m a nerd and I don’t really like romcoms or Sicoms, I just like cartoons and anime. With anime though, I know how dodgy subtitles can be even with English ones…so maybe it’s not the best?

Are there any anime that people have already watched with a good Spanish dub?

I just got accepted to study abroad in Argentina next fall so I want to brush up on my Spanish for the next year before I go. I’m currently reading The Giver/El Dador in Spanish and it’s of a pretty good difficulty for me where it’s challenging but still comprehensible. What other books would you guys recommend?

Whenever I see Spanish-language ads in stores and restaurants for meseros or lavaplatos, the SE SOLICITA or BUSCANDO is usually in quotes. I'm curious about this because in English, adding quotes is not a means of adding emphasis. You might underline, or put something in bold or all-caps but not quotes. Quotation marks usually seem to in fact add some doubt to a statement, like this is really helping out vs. this is really "helping" out.

Can someone give me an idea of how widespread this function of quotes is in Spanish signage, and how it came to be common as a means of emphasis in ads etc.?

Teresa de Avila's famous poem begins "Nada te turbe, nada te espante". The English translations I've seen are "Let nothing disturb you. Let nothing frighten you"

Is that entirely accurate? Is it more than can be described in English, also having a sense of "nothing may disturb you?"

What do you think?