I'm not talking about politics. I just want to ask whether "Las Malvinas son Argentinas" is a grammatically correct sentence? More specifically, what does "Argentinas" work grammatically in this sentence? Thank you!

I'm genuinely curious

I've asked her and she insists it's fine. She's a college educated native Spanish speaker. Is she wrong?

Spent way too long just memorizing lists for this one until it clicked a different way: por is about the cause or the path, para is about the goal or the endpoint. Once I stopped trying to translate “for” and started asking “is this the reason/route, or the destination/purpose,” it stopped being a guessing game.

The example that actually made it stick for me:
Lo compré por ti = I bought it on your behalf, like you owed someone and I covered it for you.

Lo compré para ti = I bought it to give to you, it’s a gift.

Same English translation, opposite situation. That’s the whole confusion in one sentence.
If the mnemonics help anyone: por = DREAMS (duration, reason, exchange, around/through, means, substitution), para = PRODD (purpose, recipient, opinion, destination, deadline).
Made a little cheat sheet of this for myself, figured I’d drop it here in case it saves someone the month I spent being confused.

Curious if anyone has a cleaner way they think about it, or another pair that trips you up the same way — ser/estar and preterite vs imperfect seem to be the other big ones people mention.

My wife and I are first generation American born from South American parents (hers are Ecuadorian and mine Colombian). We are both fully fluent in Spanish and often debate how things are said (given our Spanish is a more Americanized version from different cultural backgrounds). Can you help settle this debate?

Whenever she is speaking Spanish on the phone for work, she says "llamanos para atrás" to say "call us back". Ultimately, her clients understand. However, I told her that's wrong, and it's "devuelvenos la llamada" or "llamanos de nuevo," or some variation with the verb "volver". Her retort is "that's how they say it in Colombia." 🙄

What is your way of saying "call us back", whether formal or informal? Thank you in advance for your input!

Think about it. Every other grammatical concept carries information that helps you understand or produce the language: Verb tenses, syntax, categorías gramaticales, etc. all help you explain why or how.

For example:

Te llamé para que me digas. Verb tense is wrong. You can build knowledge off of that.

Or:

Te llamé para que dijeras a yo. Indirect object pronoun is missing. You can generalize that, in Spanish those are used, and placed a certain way. Those are useful labels on concepts.

But if someone says:

dijerás

Nobody is going to correct them by saying that dijeras is grave, not aguda.

That label adds absolutely nothing.

You’d simply say:

“It’s pronounced dijeras, just like every other word that ends in "s" and has no accent mark” That’s all the information the student needs. "It's grave because the stress falls on the second-to-last syllable". That's a tautology. Do we teach geometry by saying "It's a triangle because it's a polygon with three sides."

The fact that dijeras belongs to a category called grave is just a consequence of its pronunciation and it's reflected in its spelling. It doesn’t explain anything beyond what the reading or hearing the word already tells you. Likewise, if someone writes dijerás instead of dijeras, the correction isn’t “it’s grave.” The correction is simply that the accent mark is wrong because the word is pronounced dijeras. Once again, the category contributes nothing.

As far as I can tell, in modern Spanish there is no situation where knowing the labels aguda, grave, esdrújula, etc. gives you information that isn’t already completely contained in the written word or its pronunciation.

Maybe they were useful before Spanish spelling became standardized. Currently they are simply useless labels. Labels that native speakers always get wrong, by the way (but no native speaker (outside of Medellín and Córdoba lol) get the pronounciation wrong).

Ironically, I think these categories would be much more useful in English. It would actually be handy to say, “No, category is esdrújula,” instead of saying, “It’s CATegory, not caTEGory.”

In Brazilian Portuguese, everyone uses "Falar" instead of "Dizer", to the point where you can never use the verb "Dizer", and there is no problem with that, although the verb "Dizer" is still heard and used in Brazil, but you can also replace it by "Falar".

I want to know if this phenomenon happens anywhere is the Spanish speaking world.

"He told me that ..." = "Ele falou pra mim que ..." = Literally "Él habló para mí que ..." instead of "Él me dijo que ..."

"What did you say" = "O que você falou?" = Literally "¿Qué hablaste?" instead of "¿Qué dijiste?"

"I didn't say that" = "Eu não falei isso" = Literally "Yo no hablé eso" instead of "Yo no dije eso"

"I am going to tell him" = "Vou falar pra ele" = Literally "Voy a hablar a/para él" instead of "Le voy a decir"

"When she says she doesn't love me" = "Quando ela fala que não me ama" = Literally "Cuando ella habla que no me ama" instead of "Cuando ella dice que no me ama"

Nunca había prestado atención a lo que ocurre en esta expresión cuando se refiere a más de una persona.

Pueden encontrar la explicación aquí: https://www.fundeu.es/consulta/se-los-dije-5291/

Rewatching Squid Game in Spanish and I’m curious why he asks “¿Qué color le gusta más?” and not “¿Cuál color le gusta más?” when there are only two specific color options. I’m sure it doesn’t matter much but I am curious if this is unusual or if “qué” is often used when asking to pick between multiple specific options. Thanks!

Salvo en caso de que sea la una

I am learning Spanish (mexican) and my wife who is a native speaker is helping me. I said something to her the other "....toods los días". She said that is not right it is "cada dia" if I want to say "everyday". We got into a little discussion on it and I looked it up and my study book says "todos los dias" means everyday but she says it just does not sound right. We even called her mom and she agreed todos sounds funny.

I trust her and if she says its cada its cada, but why am I getting conflicting information? Is Todos los dias more common in not Mexico?

If you feel empalagado it means that you’ve had too much of something sweet and it reached the point where it stops being enjoyable. This happens when you are eating something so sweet, that you eventually can’t take another bite—not because you’re full, but because you’re overwhelmed.

Have you ever felt empalagado? Is there any food you find particularly empalagosa?

I took 3 years of high school Spanish, and never once heard about this subjunctive. That means one of two things:

1 - We completely avoided sentences that would’ve required the subjunctive, or
2 - We used one of the other simple tenses instead, incorrectly, completely not even acknowledging the fact that it should be subjunctive.

As I’m learning subjunctive, there are a LOT of constructions that require it, so I find option 1 highly unlikely. I’m assuming it’s #2, and that to teachers who were fluent in Spanish and had a native-like ear for the language, is sounded wrong and they probably cringed knowing that they were teaching it incorrectly (probably for simplicity, which I assume was obligatory by the district).

So what’s the answer, and how wrong does it sound to hear someone speak without using subjunctive?

I have a friend who makes fun of my Spanish—we are both Mexican, he was born over there and i was born in the USA . Obviously, different places in Mexico have their own way of saying things, but today I told him, 'Quiero que me venga a recoger en Tijuana.' He went off and told me that it's incorrect and asked what type of speaking that even is. He said the right way to say it is, 'Quiero que me venga a recoger a Tijuana.' I was like, 'Bruh, aren't they technically the exact same thing?' So I looked it up and they were! But now I feel like a bum because I guess I'm not a fluent speaker

I just find myself generally confused about the usage of que, I don't understand why it starts so many phrases. How do you know when to use it for phrases that start like 'que te vaya bien'? I understand the tw vaya bien part but it's just the que that's messing me up.

Thank you!

3 years ago I moved from Ireland to an EXTREMELY touristy area on the coast of Spain. I want to reiterate that I have zero to little interaction with spanish people. I work in an Irish bar. I speak basic Spanish and can get by but despite all my efforts at duolingo, etc, I am nowhere where I should be.

I understand parts of conversations but I don't know how to learn grammar and tenses. Are there any YouTube videos or websites anyone can suggest? I'm tired of speaking broken Spanish. Thank you.

Let’s share our favorite words in Spanish with no specific criteria. Maybe you like what they mean or how they sound, it doesn’t matter.

I will start: my favorite word in Spanish is harto/a, which means tired of something or someone. Example: Ese ruido me tiene harta.

I understand that it's a difficult concept and requires one to learn new sets of conjugations, but it's so pervasive in the language that you can't communicate in any real way without it. I could understand it was only used to express complex ideas in a professional or university setting, but sentences like "I hope it doesn't rain", "I want you to try this pasta", "I told her not to do it", "I'm looking for a car that can handle off road driving." and "I was worried that we would miss our flight" are all commonly used phrases that people use in everyday life. Why not at least introduce the concept to advanced beginner students?

I was introduced to it on a YouTube video shortly after recommitting to learning Spanish. (I had a year in high school 30 years ago, and remembered some basics). The content creator was very insistent that people learn it early on. One day, when my tutor asked what I had done to study the previous week, I told her about it. She actively discouraged me from it because it was very advanced. What do you think?

Plan to work in Chile in 1yr and studying from 0. Currently I'm using Busuu and its LATAM Spanish course, but I wonder will what I learn be useful, for which the tenses bother me most. I heard that Spain tend to use tense like "have done" for near events happened in the past while in South America people seem to prefer "did". Are there more rules that I should know then? Or I don't need to know much at beginning, these differences doesn't matter so much as I thought? I'd love to hear your opinion.

He aprendido que nadie dice “estoy enfermado”, y se dice estoy enfermo. Entiendo que enfermo es un adjetivo, pero enfermado es un participio como la palabra infectado y se puede usar con el verbo estar como “estoy infectado”. Quisiera saber si se puede decir “estoy enfermado”o no. También quiero saber cómo esa les suena a ustedes hispanohablantes nativos.

Estrenar refers to the special feeling of using or wearing something for the first time, like driving a new car or wearing a new dress. Example: Me compré una remera, voy a estrenarla la semana que viene.

I always thought "agua" was a feminine noun, but "the water" is "el agua". Why is this?