Created July 2012


Montserrat near Barcelona (where the official languages are Spanish  and Catalan .) 


Echalar /Etxalar in Navarre (where the official languages are Basque and Spanish)


Fiesta de la Virgen Blanca in Vitoria-Gasteiz  in the Basque country (where official languages are Basque  and Spanish)


Concierto de Aranjuez  /  Aranjuez , (where Castilian Spanish  is spoken,)  lies on the Tagus 47km/ 29mi south of Madrid in the Community of Madrid  .


Damascening – Hair clasp from Toledo, Spain in Castile-La Mancha


View of Toledo (1596-1600) by El Greco


Casares , Málaga (where the official language is Spanish)
Listen here to traditional Arabic-Andalusian music /  National Geographic article on Andalusian classical music
Malagueña (song) Wiki article


Quito , Ecuador  (where the official language is Spanish)


Cuzco , Peru  (where the official languages are Spanish and Quechua)


Conjugating ‘ver’ / to see

I watched a film that I liked very much.  Vi una película que me gustó mucho.  Google Translator English-Spanish|

Vi una película que me gustó mucho.  I saw a film I liked very much.  Google Translator Spanish-English|

He visto dos peliculas buenas este semana.  I’ve seen two good films this week. 

Voy a ver dos películas extranjeras este fin de semana.  I will watch/ will be seeing two foreign films this weekend.

Voy a estar viendo dos películas extranjeras este fin de semana.   I shall be seeing two foreign films this weekend.

Veré muchos talentosos actores y actrices en su mejor momento en las películas dirigidas por grandes directores.  I shall see many talented actors and actresses at their best in films directed by great directors. 

Tuve que ver esta película, tarde o temprano.  I had to see this film, sooner or later. 

Nos estamos reuniendo para ver una película.  We are getting together to see a film.

Las personas se reunieron para ver una película de la semana pasada.  People got together to watch a film last week. 

Las personas se reúnen para ver una película cada semana.   People get together to watch a film every week.

As we all (probably) know, Google Translator is not perfect. However, it can be a good learning tool. In my case, I use Google to translate on-line articles or short stories in Spanish into French (which I have a good working knowledge of but need to maintain and improve upon) and also into English and compare the original text and the imperfect translations for comprehension. Wherever I find blatant errors or discrepancies, I look up the problem words in a dictionary. If I have the time to be more thorough, I might edit Google’s French translation, then run a grammar check using MS Word to identify my weak spots. 

“The keywords of the Oxford 3000™ have been carefully selected by a group of language experts and experienced teachers as the words which should receive priority in vocabulary study because of their importance and usefulness. The words which occur most frequently in English are included, based on the information in the British National Corpus and the Oxford Corpus Collection. (A corpus is an electronically-held collection of written or spoken texts, often consisting of hundreds of millions of words.) However, being frequent in the corpus alone is not enough for a word to qualify as a keyword: it may be that the word is used very frequently, but only in a narrowly defined area, such as newspapers or scientific articles. In order to avoid including these restricted words, we include as keywords only those words which are frequent across a range of different types of text. In other words, keywords are both frequent and used in a variety of contexts. In addition, the list includes some very important words which happen not to be used frequently, even though they are very familiar to most users of English. These include, for example, words for parts of the body, words used in travel, and words which are useful for explaining what you mean when you do not know the exact word for something. These words were identified by consulting a panel of over seventy experts in the fields of teaching and language study.”  Oxford 3000 Words    Maybe these words can be looked up in Spanish and learned? One foreseeable outcome is that this will yield anywhere from 10,000 to 14,000  Spanish words due to polysemy  (e.g. ‘abandon’ as a transitive verb =  abandonar, dejar, evacuar, renunciar a, anular) . 

Looking up one word at  a time in the Collins on-line English/SpanishlEnglish dictionary

WordReference.com’s free on-line Spanish-Spanish, Spanish-English, Spanish-French, English-Spanish dictionaries   – Two free English-Spanish dictionaries (Oxford, Espasa Calpe,) Spanish-Spanish (el Diccionario de la lengua española © 2005 Espasa Calpe,) Spanish synonyms and language forum; also English-French, English-Italian, English-German and English-Russian; each of these Oxford dictionaries has around 100,000 words and phrases with over 200,000 translations; other languages also available

Flash cards  (for creating and sharing)  Spanish vocabulary cards

Free Printable Flash Card Maker   

Wikipedia in Spanish

Instituto Cervantes

Spanish CLEP free practice test, free study guide

Spanish Proficiency Exercises- UT Austin

BBC Spanish

Daniel Tammet’s Learning Spanish link  Spanish proverbs and tongue twisters

Tower of Babelfish

¡ Y qué me cuentas!    Ramón Talavera Franco’s blog

Spanish Lexile  Analyzer   A person’s Lexile range is a suggested range of texts that a reader should be reading. The Lexile range for a reader is from 50L above his or her Lexile measure to 100L below. If a student attempts material above their Lexile range, the text may challenge the student and his or her ability to construct meaning from the reading experience may decrease. Likewise, material below a reader’s Lexile range will provide him or her with little comprehension challenge.  Example:  China, by Donoso, 1000L   (analysis based on the first paragraph of 220 words)

Lexile-to-Grade Correspondence 

Retablo de la literatura Chilena/ Universidad de Chile    Marta Brunet, Gabriel Mistral, Pablo Neruda, etc. 

El mundo del cuento. Short stories in Spanish link

La Frontera de Cristal by Carlos Fuentes

Biblioteca Digital Ciudad Seva – Cuentos Sobre 4300 cuentos de autores clásicos, nacidos en o antes del año 1930. Desde Esopo hasta Juan Manuel, desde Boccaccio hasta los clásicos del siglo XX.

In her collection “Short Stories by Latin American Women: The Magic and the Real,” editor and author Isabel Allende recommends short stories by Luisa Valenzuela , Elena Poniatowska , Clarice Lispector , Ana Lydia Vega  and Dora Alonso. English-Spanish Link suggests readings by Hermanos Quintero , Cervantes , Jesus Ferrero and Gabriel Garcia Marquez .

University of Texas-Tyler’s Secondary Spanish Resource page

National Geographic in Spanish

Free on-line Spanish lessons with Babbel.com

Manners in Spanish – from Andrew’s blog     (Just because a little bit of courtesy goes a long way… and I’m also perusing this blog looking for good websites for learning Spanish.)

Arabic influence on Spanish

Language Exchange- Wikipedia article

Anita  (2009) by Marcos Carnevale

Created July 2012
<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cd/Montserrat_des_de_Manresa.JPG/640px-Montserrat_des_de_Manresa.JPG" alt="" /> 
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montserrat_%28mountain%29">Montserrat</a> near <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona">Barcelona</a> (where the official languages are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_language">Spanish</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language">Catalan</a> .)
<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c2/Etxalar.jpg/640px-Etxalar.jpg" alt="" /> 
<a href="http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echalar">Echalar</a> /Etxalar in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navarre">Navarre</a> (where the official languages are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language">Basque</a> and Spanish)
<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ab/Celedon.jpg/471px-Celedon.jpg" alt="" /> 
Fiesta de la Virgen Blanca in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitoria-Gasteiz">Vitoria-Gasteiz</a> in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_Country_%28autonomous_community%29">Basque country</a> (where official languages are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language">Basque</a> and Spanish)
<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a4/Aranjuez_JardinParterre_FachadaOrientalPalacio.jpg/640px-Aranjuez_JardinParterre_FachadaOrientalPalacio.jpg" alt="" /> 
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concierto_de_Aranjuez">Concierto de Aranjuez</a> / <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aranjuez">Aranjuez</a> , (where <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castilian_Spanish">Castilian Spanish</a> is spoken,) lies on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagus">Tagus</a> 47km/ 29mi south of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid">Madrid</a> in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid_%28province%29">Community of Madrid</a> .
<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b8/Damascening.jpg/320px-Damascening.jpg" alt="" /> 
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascening">Damascening</a> &#8211; Hair clasp from Toledo, Spain in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castile%E2%80%93La_Mancha">Castile-La Mancha</a>
<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/El_Greco_-_View_of_Toledo_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/428px-El_Greco_-_View_of_Toledo_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" alt="" /> 
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_of_Toledo">View of Toledo</a> (1596-1600) by El Greco
<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Casares.JPG/450px-Casares.JPG" alt="" /> 
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casares,_M%C3%A1laga">Casares</a> , Málaga (where the official language is Spanish) 
Listen <a href="http://www.pandora.com/station/play/965153664854018801">here</a> to traditional Arabic-Andalusian music / National Geographic <a href="http://worldmusic.nationalgeographic.com/view/page.basic/genre/content.genre/andalusian_classical/en_US">article</a> on Andalusian classical music 
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malague%C3%B1a_%28song%29">Malagueña</a> (song) Wiki article
<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Quito_AvVenezuela_basilicadelvotonacional.JPG/640px-Quito_AvVenezuela_basilicadelvotonacional.JPG" alt="" /> 
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quito">Quito</a> , Ecuador (where the official language is Spanish)
<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/Plaza_de_Armas_de_Cuzco.jpg/640px-Plaza_de_Armas_de_Cuzco.jpg" alt="" /> 
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cusco">Cuzco</a> , Peru (where the official languages are Spanish and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quechua_languages">Quechua</a>)
<a href="http://www.123teachme.com/spanish_verb_conjugation/ver">Conjugating &#8216;ver&#8217; / to see</a>
I watched a film that I liked very much. Vi una película que me gustó mucho. <a href="http://translate.google.com/#en|es">Google Translator English-Spanish</a>|
Vi una película que me gustó mucho. I saw a film I liked very much. <a href="http://translate.google.com/#es|en">Google Translator Spanish-English</a>|
He visto dos peliculas buenas este semana. I&#8217;ve seen two good films this week.
Voy a ver dos películas extranjeras este fin de semana. I will watch/ will be seeing two foreign films this weekend.
Voy a estar viendo dos películas extranjeras este fin de semana. I shall be seeing two foreign films this weekend.
Veré muchos talentosos actores y actrices en su mejor momento en las películas dirigidas por grandes directores. I shall see many talented actors and actresses at their best in films directed by great directors.
Tuve que ver esta película, tarde o temprano. I had to see this film, sooner or later.
Nos estamos reuniendo para ver una película. We are getting together to see a film.
Las personas se reunieron para ver una película de la semana pasada. People got together to watch a film last week.
Las personas se reúnen para ver una película cada semana. People get together to watch a film every week.
As we all (probably) know, Google Translator is not perfect. However, it can be a good learning tool. In my case, I use Google to translate on-line articles or short stories in Spanish into French (which I have a good working knowledge of but need to maintain and improve upon) and also into English and compare the original text and the imperfect translations for comprehension. Wherever I find blatant errors or discrepancies, I look up the problem words in a dictionary. If I have the time to be more thorough, I might edit Google&#8217;s French translation, then run a grammar check using MS Word to identify my weak spots.
&#8220;The keywords of the Oxford 3000™ have been carefully selected by a group of language experts and experienced teachers as the words which should receive priority in vocabulary study because of their importance and usefulness. The words which occur most frequently in English are included, based on the information in the British National Corpus and the Oxford Corpus Collection. (A corpus is an electronically-held collection of written or spoken texts, often consisting of hundreds of millions of words.) However, being frequent in the corpus alone is not enough for a word to qualify as a keyword: it may be that the word is used very frequently, but only in a narrowly defined area, such as newspapers or scientific articles. In order to avoid including these restricted words, we include as keywords only those words which are frequent across a range of different types of text. In other words, keywords are both frequent and used in a variety of contexts. In addition, the list includes some very important words which happen not to be used frequently, even though they are very familiar to most users of English. These include, for example, words for parts of the body, words used in travel, and words which are useful for explaining what you mean when you do not know the exact word for something. These words were identified by consulting a panel of over seventy experts in the fields of teaching and language study.&#8221; <a href="http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/oxford3000/" title="in English">Oxford 3000 Words</a> Maybe these words can be looked up in Spanish and learned? One foreseeable outcome is that this will yield anywhere from 10,000 to 14,000 Spanish words due to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polysemy">polysemy</a> (e.g. &#8216;abandon&#8217; as a transitive verb = abandonar, dejar, evacuar, renunciar a, anular) .
Looking up one word at a time in the <a href="http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-spanish/english?showCookiePolicy=true">Collins on-line English/SpanishlEnglish dictionary</a>
WordReference.com&#8217;s free on-line <a href="http://www.wordreference.com/English_Spanish_Dictionary.asp">Spanish-Spanish, Spanish-English, Spanish-French, English-Spanish</a> dictionaries &#8211; Two free English-Spanish dictionaries (Oxford, Espasa Calpe,) Spanish-Spanish (el Diccionario de la lengua española © 2005 Espasa Calpe,) Spanish synonyms and language forum; also English-French, English-Italian, English-German and English-Russian; each of these Oxford dictionaries has around 100,000 words and phrases with over 200,000 translations; other languages also <a href="http://www.wordreference.com/">available</a>
<a href="http://www.studystack.com/">Flash cards</a> (for creating and sharing) <a href="http://www.studystack.com/Spanish">Spanish vocabulary cards</a>
<a href="http://www.kitzkikz.com/flashcards/">Free Printable Flash Card Maker</a>
<a href="http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Portada">Wikipedia in Spanish</a>
<a href="http://www.cervantes.es/default.htm">Instituto Cervantes</a>
<a href="http://www.spanishclep.com/why-clep-spanish/clep-spanish-practice-test/">Spanish CLEP free practice test, free study guide</a>
<a href="http://www.laits.utexas.edu/spe/siteindex.php">Spanish Proficiency Exercises- UT Austin</a>
<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/">BBC Spanish</a>
<a href="http://www.optimnem.co.uk/learning-spanish.php">Daniel Tammet&#8217;s Learning Spanish link</a> Spanish proverbs and tongue twisters
<a href="http://www.towerofbabelfish.com/Tower_of_Babelfish/Learn_Spanish.html">Tower of Babelfish</a>
<a href="http://yquemecuentas.blogspot.com/">¡ Y qué me cuentas!</a> Ramón Talavera Franco&#8217;s blog
<a href="https://lexile.com/analyzer/spanish/">Spanish Lexile Analyzer</a> A person&#8217;s Lexile range is a suggested range of texts that a reader should be reading. The Lexile range for a reader is from 50L above his or her Lexile measure to 100L below. If a student attempts material above their Lexile range, the text may challenge the student and his or her ability to construct meaning from the reading experience may decrease. Likewise, material below a reader&#8217;s Lexile range will provide him or her with little comprehension challenge. Example: <a href="http://www.ciudadseva.com/textos/cuentos/esp/donoso/china.htm">China, by Donoso, 1000L</a> (analysis based on the first paragraph of 220 words)
<a href="http://lexile.com/about-lexile/grade-equivalent/grade-equivalent-chart/">Lexile-to-Grade Correspondence</a>
<a href="http://www.retablo.uchile.cl/">Retablo de la literatura Chilena/ Universidad de Chile</a> Marta Brunet, Gabriel Mistral, Pablo Neruda, etc.
El mundo del cuento. Short stories in Spanish <a href="http://www.elcuento.com/index.php">link</a>
<a href="http://rom-phil.narod.ru/books/Fuentes1.pdf">La Frontera de Cristal by Carlos Fuentes</a>
<a href="http://www.ciudadseva.com/bibcuent.htm">Biblioteca Digital Ciudad Seva &#8211; Cuentos</a> Sobre 4300 cuentos de autores clásicos, nacidos en o antes del año 1930. Desde Esopo hasta Juan Manuel, desde Boccaccio hasta los clásicos del siglo XX.
In her collection &#8220;Short Stories by Latin American Women: The Magic and the Real,&#8221; editor and author <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabel_Allende">Isabel Allende</a> recommends short stories by <a href="http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/449/the-art-of-fiction-no-170-luisa-valenzuela">Luisa Valenzuela</a> , <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/20118986?seq=1">Elena Poniatowska</a> , <a href="http://www.brazzil.com/p44may97.htm">Clarice Lispector</a> , <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKhYEe-5er8">Ana Lydia Vega</a> and <a href="http://repeatingislands.com/2009/03/26/remembering-dora-alonso/">Dora Alonso</a>. English-Spanish Link suggests readings by <a href="http://www.los-poetas.com/k/alva.htm">Hermanos Quintero</a> , <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Cervantes">Cervantes</a> , <a href="http://encuentrosdigitales.rtve.es/2010/jesus_ferrero.html">Jesus Ferrero</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Garc%C3%ADa_M%C3%A1rquez">Gabriel Garcia Marquez</a> .
<a href="http://edci.uttyl.edu/web/res/span.html">University of Texas-Tyler&#8217;s Secondary Spanish Resource page</a>
<a href="http://www.ngenespanol.com/articulos/468801/terapias-ninos-autistas-autismo/">National Geographic in Spanish</a>
<a href="http://www.babbel.com/go/_learn_spanish?l2=SPA&amp;network=GoogleAdWordsSearch&amp;keyword=advanced%20spanish&amp;placement=&amp;campaignname=AS-ENGSPAremix&amp;gclid=CNuooOeftrECFUMCQAodBkcA9A&amp;locale=en">Free on-line Spanish lessons with Babbel.com</a>
<a href="http://howlearnspanish.com/2011/01/manners-in-spanish/">Manners in Spanish &#8211; from Andrew&#8217;s blog</a> (Just because a little bit of courtesy goes a long way&#8230; and I&#8217;m also perusing this blog looking for good websites for learning Spanish.)
<a href="http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Arabic_influence_on_Spanish">Arabic influence on Spanish</a>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_exchange">Language Exchange- Wikipedia article</a>
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1458527/">Anita</a> (2009) by Marcos Carnevale

Spanish Language Learning Resource

Spanish Language Learning Resource