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The demonstrative adjectives are used for pointing out things. They are equivalent to saying “this, these, that, and those” in English. Like all Spanish adjectives, they must agree with the nouns that they modify in both gender and number.   This & These   Singular Plural Masculine este país (this country) estos países (these countries)…

In this lesson we’re going to look at how to conjugate present tense of regular Spanish verbs. Like in English, the basic form of a Spanish verb is the infinitive. “To be,” “to rest,” “to speak,” and “to work” are examples of English infinitives. Spanish infinitives consist of two parts: the root and the infinitive…

Today we’re going to offer a guide to the pronunciation of Spanish vowels, diphthongs (two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable), and consonants. Each sound will includes an approximate English equivalent and an example in Spanish. Make sure you check the end of the guide for some important notes on regional differences and…

The previous lesson covered the rules for gendering French nouns and some of the notable exceptions to those rules. However, some French nouns can take either gender. These nouns have different meanings depending on whether they are preceded by a masculine or a feminine article. What makes dual gender nouns confusing for non-native French speakers…

French is a much more gendered language than English. Which nouns are masculine and which are feminine can often seem arbitrary and random to non-native speakers. However, the language does contain some fairly consistent rules for determining whether a particular noun is considered masculine or feminine.   A few things to keep in mind: First,…

Like English, Spanish has both indefinite and definite articles. The singular forms of the indefinite articles are equivalent to “a” or “an” in English. The plural forms are equivalent to the English word “some.” The definite articles (both singular and plural) are equivalent to the English definite article “the.”   Indefinite Articles Singular Masculine                                         un…

Spanish is a more gendered language than English. All nouns must take either a masculine or a feminine gender. As in English, nouns also indicate number (singular or plural). Spanish adjectives also take genders and numbers. The gender and number of an adjective must agree with the noun that it modifies.   Gender of Spanish…

Spanish subject pronouns are a used a bit differently than their English counterparts are. In English, personal subject pronouns are necessary to indicate who or what is the subject of the sentence. In Spanish, the verb form alone often contains sufficient information to indicate who the subject of the sentence is. Because of this, it…

Next up is a vocabulary quiz for our Portuguese language learners. Match the Portuguese words on the left with their English equivalents on the right. As always, be wary of false friends. Check the answer key at the bottom of the quiz to see how well you did. [twocol_one] data êxito varanda fábrica atualmente gripe…

We’re going to finish out our look at false friends between English and the various Romance languages with some commonly-confused Brazilian Portuguese and English words. False friends are words in different languages that look similar but carry different connotations or entirely different meanings. Like the Spanish-English partial cognates we looked at in a previous lesson,…