Spanisch
11 cards from across every topic, each citing a source. Tap one to open it in the feed.
- 'Actual' isn't 'aktuell' – but Spanish 'actual' is.
English 'actual' means real, not current. Spanish 'actual', like German 'aktuell', means current; 'actualmente' means …
- 'Estoy embarazada' does not mean 'I'm embarrassed'.
Spanish 'embarazada' means pregnant, not embarrassed. It's the classic false friend: translate 'I'm embarrassed' …
- About 4,000 Spanish words are actually Arabic.
Nearly 800 years of Muslim rule on the Iberian Peninsula (711 to 1492) left around 4,000 words in Spanish. A tell-tale …
- How to stress any Spanish word correctly – with two rules.
Rule 1: if the word ends in a vowel, n or s, stress the second-to-last syllable: ca-SA, ha-BLAN, LI-bros. Rule 2: if it …
- In Argentina nobody says 'tú'.
In Argentina, Uruguay and parts of Central America, 'you' is not 'tú' but 'vos', with its own verb forms: 'vos tenés' …
- L.A. is short for an entire Spanish dedication.
Los Angeles was founded in 1781 by Spanish settlers as 'El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles', 'The Town …
- Spain is just a tenth of the Spanish-speaking world.
Around 520 million people speak Spanish natively, more than English; only Mandarin has more. Spanish is official in 20 …
- Spaniards say 'God willing' every day – in Arabic.
Spanish 'ojalá' (hopefully) is a worn-down form of Arabic 'law šāʾ Allāh' or 'in šāʾ Allāh': 'if God wills'. It became …
- The Chevrolet Nova didn't flop because "no va" means "doesn't go".
The story is told in every marketing class and it's false. The Nova sold well in Mexico and across Central and South …
- Why Mexico is spelled with x but pronounced 'Meh-hee-ko'.
The name comes from Nahuatl 'Mēxihco', the land of the Mexica, the Aztecs. In 16th-century Spanish, 'x' stood for the …
- Why Spanish starts questions with '¿'.
The Real Academia Española recommended the inverted question mark at the start of sentences in 1754. The reason …