Let’s see today two adverbs of time. In the first place, we have “todavía”, which has a clear meaning. In the second place, we have “ya”, which is a little more complicated. TODAVÍA: It is translated as “still, yet”. It is an adverb of time which means “up to this moment”, so we talk about...Read More

Este es el primero de una serie de blogs donde vamos a ver los falsos cognados, popularmente conocidos como falsos amigos. Es un tema de alta relevancia, porque confundirlos puede generar verdaderos desastres a nivel de la comunicación. El ejemplo clásico es “embarazada” que significa “pregnant” y no “embarrassed”. Curiosamente, en español antiguo tenía ese...Read More

Cuando hablas una nueva lengua, puedes conocer el significado de cada palabra, pero no entender una expresión idiomática. Por ejemplo: “to turn a blind eye”, no tiene ningún sentido si es traducida literalmente, pero todos comprendemos qué quiere decir. Esta misma expresión en español es “hacer la vista gorda”. Si alguien comete un error y...Read More

For many professions, we have a specific ending. 1. In many cases, this ending is -ero/-era (example: panadero-panadera for baker, or carnicero-carnicera for butcher). When we talk about the shop, the ending is -ería (example: panadería for bakery, carnicería for butcher’s). Un relojero trabaja en una relojería. Relojero: watchmaker Un panadero trabaja en una panadería. Panadero:...Read More

We have a short but interesting blog today. Four different forms, all of them perfectly correct, provided that you know when to use one or the other. Actually, many native speakers are totally confused and commit mistakes all the time. It is very frequent to see videos on the YouTube made by people who say...Read More

The grammatical gender is a hard bone to chew for English speakers, for two main reasons. First, because we don’t have it in English, and second, because there is no logic to decide if a word is feminine or masculine. Actually, if you compare, for example, Spanish, English and German, you find this: English: the...Read More

Modal Verbs are a group of auxiliary verbs, i.e., can, should, must, which express conditions such as possibility, ability, necessity, obligation, and permission. They are usually followed by the main verb: I can do this. Puedo hacer esto. I must study for the exam. Debo estudiar para el examen. Here they are: In general, they...Read More

All the students have some problems when they start speaking and have to decide about “hay, es, está, tiene”. Let’s see one by one: Ø HAY: there is, there are. Notice that it is the same form in Spanish, for one or more than one item. Hay una mesa en la cocina. There is a...Read More

When something is small, we have two options: either we say something like “una casa pequeña” (a small house), or we add a suffix to the word. A suffix is a letter or a group of letters added at the end of words, which have a grammatical meaning. One example in English could be -less,...Read More

This is a neglected topic, because some people tend to think that it is intuitive, but it is not. In fact, some languages do not have articles, and in some others, we use them in a different way. Compare this: I am a teacher (with article). Soy profesora (no article). I like sushi (no article)....Read More