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Learn Conversational Phrases in Spanish

Once beginners have learned the Spanish basics that make up the building blocks of speaking the language, it’s natural to transition to the longer phrases that are the backbone of conversations. Rosetta Stone’s bite-sized lessons are built in exactly this way, scaling naturally towards speaking confidently by always structuring vocabulary acquisition in context with real-world situations. To broaden your Spanish from beginner to intermediate language learning, it helps to focus on some tactics that can accelerate your understanding of Spanish.

1. START WITH SPANISH CONNECTORS

One of the best ways to bridge the gap between acquiring basic Spanish words and being able to speak in conversational phrases is to focus on how to use connectors. Similar to the way we use “and,” “but,” and “because” in English, Spanish connectors can help you take words you already know and put them together into a more complex idea. For example, if you know the word for “Saturday” (sábado) and “happy” (feliz) as well as the word for “today” (hoy) and the pronoun “he” (él), you only need a rudimentary understanding of the verb “to be” (estar) to create a more complicated sentence using the simple connector porque (because).

Él está feliz porque hoy es sábado. He is happy because today is Saturday.

2. PRACTICE SPANISH VOCABULARY WITH A PHRASEBOOK

Of course, the key to learning any language is practise. And that doesn’t mean compiling and memorising massive Spanish vocabulary lists. Instead, focus on speaking commonly used phrases in the context of conversations. Rosetta Stone makes this part of your language learning journey easy with a phrasebook that you can quickly reference to find the most common conversational phrases in Spanish.

3. SPEAK SPANISH DAILY

Whether it’s a few stolen minutes during breakfast or a half an hour you set aside at bedtime, setting a goal to speak Spanish daily can be one of the most successful strategies to accelerate language learning. Rosetta Stone’s bite-sized lessons make this easy, with ten-minute increments of learning that you can take with you in the mobile app or on your desktop. Your progress in the lessons syncs across all devices, so you’ll be able to pick up learning Spanish where you left off.

4. GET FEEDBACK ON YOUR SPANISH PRONUNCIATION

Learning Spanish words and phrases is an excellent place to start, but this alone won’t help you feel comfortable having conversations with locals. For that kind of confidence, you’ll need to learn phrases in context and practise your pronunciation consistently. Rosetta Stone embeds the patented speech recognition engine TruAccent into every lesson, so you have an opportunity to model the pronunciation and practise rolling r’s every day.

How to Advance Your Spanish Learning?

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Practising online a few minutes a day isn’t likely to make you fluent in Spanish. However, language learning is a journey, not a destination. To get the most out of yours, focus on advancing your learning one step at a time instead of striving towards an elusive end goal. Rosetta Stone can help with plenty of lessons and learning strategies for advanced Spanish language learners.

LEARN TO CONJUGATE SPANISH VERBS

If you’ve mastered some basic words and feel relatively comfortable with more than a handful of conversational phrases, it’s time to start conjugating Spanish verbs. In most languages, it’s easiest to start off with the most common regular verbs in present tense and then branch out into irregular verbs and other tenses.

For Spanish, that means learning a handful of verbs ending in -ir, -ar, and -er. Words like comer (to eat) or hablar (to talk) have straightforward conjugations. Unfortunately, some of the more commonly used Spanish verbs are irregular, meaning that they have nuanced rules for conjugation. Ser (to be) is an excellent example of one of the most widely used irregular Spanish verbs. When conjugated it can change from soy to eres, es, and somos. Irregular verbs like these can be memorised, but are also best learned through contextualised practise.

LEARN GENDER RULES FOR SPANISH

All nouns in Spanish have a gender that is either masculine or feminine. And with the help of a few simple rules, you can usually figure out which gender is associated with which noun. If it’s a person or a living creature, the gender assigned to the word should match the gender of the living thing. For instance, el gato is a male cat while la perra is a female dog, but you can also have la gata (female cat) and el perro (male dog). Mixed groups of people or living things are referred to with masculine gender. Certain endings of words for nouns can also determine the gender of the article. Nouns that end in –sión, –ción, –dad, –tud and –umbre are female while those ending in -ma are masculine. For the rest, you’ll have to learn as you go and continue to practise until you feel confident you’ve got the right pairing.

PRACTICE DEFINITE AND INDEFINITE ARTICLES IN SPANISH

The difference between definite and indefinite articles may seem confusing in Spanish, but it’s the same concept in English. Definite articles are things that are specific. For instance, in Spanish el gato is “the cat” versus un gato which is “a cat”. It’s important to learn and practise these kinds of rules, but you should also continue to build your vocabulary in context so that when you are engaged in a conversation, using the correct article will come naturally.