The Spanish verbs estar and ser both translate into English as “to be.” So what’s an English-speaker to do? I’ve found that sometimes I get it right because my ear remembers a particular usage, sometimes I get it right because there are guiding principles, and sometimes I get it wrong.

A Mexican friend of mine told me that she thinks getting estar and ser right is the hardest thing for non-native speakers learning Spanish. She gave as an example an Italian friend of hers who spoke perfect Spanish EXCEPT for mistakes confusing these two verbs.  (Italian is extremely close to Spanish… I can get the drift of Italian movies just from my Spanish.) Continue reading →

Several readers have told me that they have used Visual Link Spanish, and that they liked it. So today I took a look at the website and program. In a nutshell, I was impressed. That link takes you to their site.

When the site loads, you’ll hear the voice of Dave Clark, who taught college-level Spanish. That led to his developing this program, as he explains in the brief video. Just underneath it is a red box offering free Spanish lessons. So of course I clicked on it.A new window opened, with the lesson you see part of below. (I made the image smaller to fit in my blog.)

The red outline draws your attention to the section being taught at the moment. Continue reading →

f you want to learn Spanish verbs, there is nifty piece of software to help you do it. I wish I had had this during the time I was living in Mexico and really working on my verbs but still stumbling over some of the more arcane verb constructions. This program looks really useful for people at all levels of learning Spanish!

The Verbarrator, for Windows and Mac, is the brainchild of Patrick Jackson, an American who lives in Colombia and devotes himself to helping other English-speakers learn to speak Spanish. He has another program, Learning Spanish LIke Crazy, which I have blogged about before and will review later.

Click on that link to go to his website, where you can download a free demo copy and try it for yourself! Continue reading →