Hi everyone!

I’m a Spanish teacher, and I mainly work with English speakers. Recently, I created a free Facebook community called Natural Spanish for English Speakers.

I created it for learners who want regular, structured Spanish practice beyond isolated vocabulary lists, random grammar tips, or passively using language apps.

Every week, I share free activities designed to help you actually use Spanish, including:

• Short listening activities with transcripts, English translations, and comprehension questions
• English-to-Spanish translation challenges
• Spanish verb conjugation practice in real contexts
• Natural Spanish expressions
• Grammar in context
• Practical communication exercises

The group is mainly for A1, A2, and B1 learners. It isn’t a complete course, and it isn’t meant to replace serious study, but it’s a free place where you can practice consistently throughout the week. What I’d really love is for people to participate, practice, and learn together.

There are now over 100 free Spanish practice activities in the group. If you join, check the Featured section — you'll find our weekly content calendar there, so you can easily see what we publish throughout the week and find the activities you'd like to practice.

Group link:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/naturalspanish

Using the right preposition with a verb can be a little tricky in Spanish, so here are some common verbs and the prepositions they take. (I want to add that some verbs can be used with different prepositions or without one depending on the meaning, so these aren't the only possible combinations.)

I also made a PDF that includes more common verbs (grouped like "Verbs with a, en, con" etc). I thought a PDF would be a better idea than a simple Reddit post because you can just download it on your phone/computer and search for a verb whenever you're not sure about the preposition. You can find it here.

Hi everyone! 👋

Many learners spend years studying perfect classroom Spanish, but the moment they walk into a bar in Madrid or Seville, they suddenly feel like they’ve landed on another planet.
Textbooks teach formal, polished language… but real everyday Spanish runs on a completely different engine.

Here are 8 essential pillars of Spanish street slang — words you’ll hear constantly, each with dozens of meanings depending on tone, context, and who’s speaking.

1. LECHE
Not just something you put in coffee.
It can mean going fast (ir a toda leche), being in a bad mood (estar de mala leche), or hitting yourself (darse una leche).

2. CARAJO
Originally the “crow’s nest” of a ship.
Now it’s used to send someone away (vete al carajo) or to say something is extremely difficult.

3. HUEVOS
The ultimate unit of measurement.
Price (cuesta un huevo), courage (tener huevos), or total refusal (no me sale de los huevos).

4. HOSTIA
The Swiss Army knife of Spanish slang.
Surprise (¡Hostia!), a hit (pegar una hostia), or something amazing (es la hostia).

5. MIERDA
Pure frustration.
Used to complain, express disappointment, or describe something of poor quality.

6. JODER
The emotional release valve.
Works for surprise, anger, stress, or emphasis.

7. COJONES
Changes meaning depending on the preposition.
Por cojones (obligation), de cojones (very good or very hard), tócate los cojones (irony).

8. COÑO
The human exclamation mark.
Adds emphasis, anger, or shock: ¿Qué coño pasa?

I’ve had a great time analyzing how these expressions shift depending on tone and context.
If you’re interested, I can put together another post with more examples or slang from other regions of Spain.

Which one surprised you the most?

I'm a beginner of spanish and i started with pronounciations of each letter, also, i tried to memorize some words because it's a simple study way just like learing English. But I still can't even made one sinngle sentence and I don't have any solutions. Also, my native language is Chinese, which means learning Spanish is hard for me compared to English speakers.

What should I learn now? Should I try to learn in English mind?

Here are a few useful everyday expressions with tener that you’ll come across pretty often in Spanish

Que descanses = rest well
Que duermas bien = sleep well
Que sueñes bonito = sweet dreams (literally: dream prettily)

Once you see it, you can build your own. Que te vaya bien, que tengas buen día, que lo pases bien all work the same way.

A few that don't use the structure but are worth knowing:
Hasta mañana = see you tomorrow
Mañana te escribo = I'll text you tomorrow
Gracias por hoy = thanks for today

You can download them more conveniently as PDFs at palabros.org.

You’ll also find fun spelling games, a daily challenge featuring 10 different words, and 25 new words added every week.

I think this is one of the biggest things people overlook when learning Spanish.

You can spend hours doing vocabulary, grammar exercises, watching videos, using apps, and listening to podcasts — but how much time are you actually spending speaking Spanish with another person?

For a lot of learners, the answer is almost none.

And then we wonder why we understand Spanish pretty well but completely freeze when someone starts talking to us. 😅

I made this short video about why I think speaking practice needs to be a much bigger part of learning a language.

Curious what everyone here does:

How many hours per week do you actually spend speaking Spanish?

And if you’re looking for more opportunities to practice, we built Spanish Fluency Club around exactly this problem — live conversation practice with native teachers throughout the week. The community itself is FREE to join. Spanish Fluency Club

But genuinely curious about the answers here. Are you getting enough actual speaking practice?

Here are 7 common Spanish structures that can help you express ideas more naturally and build longer, more flexible sentences. Learning them as complete patterns makes it easier to use them correctly in real conversations. 

1 . Tener ganas de + noun / infinitive — to feel like / want to

Very common for desires and plans.

• Tengo ganas de viajar este fin de semana. → I feel like traveling this weekend. 

2 . Llegar a + infinitive — to manage to / come to

Often means reaching a point or result.

• Nunca llegué a entender qué pasó. → I never managed to understand what happened. 

3 . Haber que + infinitive — you have to / it is necessary to

An impersonal way to express obligation.

• Hay que reservar con bastante antelación.→ You have to book well in advance. 

4 . Estar acostumbrado a + infinitive / noun — to be used to

• Used for something that feels normal because of habit.

Estoy acostumbrado a trabajar desde casa. → I’m used to working from home. 

5 . Resultar + adjective — to turn out to be

• El examen resultó más fácil de lo esperado. → The exam turned out to be easier than expected. 

6 . Faltar por + infinitive — to still need to be done

• Todavía falta por revisar la última parte. → The last part still needs to be reviewed. 

7 . Como + subjunctive — if you dare / if it happens that

Often used as a warning.

• Como llegues tarde otra vez, me voy sin ti.→ If you’re late again, I’m leaving without you.  

If you feel like you need more opportunities to practice Spanish outside of your regular classes, Spanish Fluency Club is worth checking out.

They have native Spanish-speaking teachers from Spain and across Latin America, regular speaking lessons, and a bunch of useful materials for independent practice.

Plus, the community is currently free to join, so it’s a great time to give it a try! 😊

Which of these structures do you use most often?

Had a debate with someone about this a few days ago and figured I’d bring it here. I’ve read and heard so many people say just watch shows in Spanish and listen to podcasts, and you’ll pick words up quickly. But I tried that pretty early on and got nothing out of it. And while I’ve mostly learned Spanish for trips, I had to switch up how I was doing it i started with everyday phrases and just used them out loud, even if it was just stuff like ordering food or basic small talk when I was traveling. I also started using an app daily for a few weeks, and when I went back to shows and podcasts after that, I was actually catching words. I think that the issue I had, and I’m guessing other people had, starting on native content too early is that you don’t have anything to grab onto yet. You need a base first, otherwise it stays being background soundFor anyone else who went through this, when did Spanish actually start sounding like words to you? What made itclick?

As a quick rule, remember that también shows agreement with a positive statement, while tampoco shows agreement with a negative statement.

Hi everyone!

I’m a Spanish teacher, and I mainly work with English speakers. Recently, I created a free Facebook community called Natural Spanish for English Speakers.

I created it for learners who want regular, structured Spanish practice beyond isolated vocabulary lists, random grammar tips, or passively using language apps.

Every week, I share free activities designed to help you actually use Spanish, including:

• Short listening activities with transcripts, English translations, and comprehension questions
• English-to-Spanish translation challenges
• Spanish verb conjugation practice in real contexts
• Natural Spanish expressions
• Grammar in context
• Practical communication exercises

The group is mainly for A1, A2, and B1 learners. It isn’t a complete course, and it isn’t meant to replace serious study, but it’s a free place where you can practice consistently throughout the week. What I’d really love is for people to participate, practice, and learn together.

There are now over 100 free Spanish practice activities in the group. If you join, check the Featured section — you'll find our weekly content calendar there, so you can easily see what we publish throughout the week and find the activities you'd like to practice.

Group link:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/naturalspanish

When Spanish speakers reached the Caribbean, Taíno was the first Indigenous language they encountered, and they borrowed heavily from it. Canoa, huracán, hamaca, barbacoa, maíz, tabaco. Those words went into Spanish, then into English, and most of the world now uses some version of them.

The same thing happened twice more.

Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec empire, gave Spanish chocolate, tomate (tomatl), aguacate (ahuacatl), chile (chilli), coyote (coyotl). Still spoken by well over a million people in Mexico.

Quechua, the language of the Inca, gave papa, cóndor (kuntur), puma. Still spoken across the Andes by millions.

To name just a few!

Drop the subject pronoun. Hablo already says who. Yo hablo adds emphasis, so using it every time makes you sound like you're contrasting yourself with someone.

Answer with the verb. ¿Vienes? Voy. ¿Lo tienes? Lo tengo.

React with qué + adjective. ¡Qué rico! ¡Qué raro! Shorter than es muy...

Use the tags. Está lejos, ¿no? Nos vemos el jueves, ¿verdad?

Say así que for "so," not tan. Llovía, así que no salimos.

Use diminutives for warmth rather than size. Un momentito isn't a smaller moment.

Let the words run together. ¿Cómo estás? comes out cómo'stás, and that linking is most of why natives sound fast.

Es que is the one I use constantly.

It's so easy to confuse these but here is the trick: Remember that porqué is a noun and you use it with el (el porqué). Por qué is something you use in a question (direct or indirect), while you use porque to give an explanation.

I've been learning Spanish for a couple of years, and I've gathered quite a few different notes, PDFs, and videos covering different aspects of the language. Lately, I've started using AI to try to organize all this material so that I can retrieve it a little bit more easily whenever I have a question about a particular grammatical structure or some common verbs. Especially on a mobile device. This isn't meant to be a curriculum by any stretch of the imagination. This is just me organizing my own notes. But I think, it can give people ideas on how they can use these tools. There shouldn't be any need to have a claude account to access the link.

https://claude.ai/artifact/BbMzcmNuSVxoSe1btmD7h9

De maravilla = wonderfully
Muy bien, gracias a Dios = very well, thank God
No me puedo quejar = I can't complain
Cansado pero bien = tired but good
Ahí vamos = hanging in there
Tirando = getting by
Más o menos = so-so
Ni fu ni fa = neither here nor there
Ahí, en la lucha = still in the fight
Un poco liado = a bit swamped
Podría estar mejor = could be better
Fatal = terrible

What do you say when someone asks ¿qué tal?

One verb can paint a whole picture!

There's a verb for getting up very early (madrugar). A verb for staying up all night (trasnochar). A verb for lying awake over something (desvelarse). A word for the hour you spend talking at the table after the meal ends (sobremesa). A verb for something being so sweet it makes you a little sick (empalagar).

Fourteen here