Spanish in Ten

What is EdX? Long story short, EdX is an online website that hosts courses from colleges around the world. Any one can take these classes online for free. You won't get actual college credit for them, but you will get the knowledge, and they can be shown on your LinkedIn profile or gain you certificates. From the EdX website: Founded by Harvard University and MIT in 2012, edX is an online learning destination and MOOC provider, offering high-quality courses from the world’s best universities and institutions to learners everywhere. With more than 85 global partners, we are proud to count the world’s leading universities, nonprofits, and institutions as our members. EdX university members top the QS World University Rankings® with our founders receiving the top honors, and edX partner institutions ranking highly on the full list.  EdX Spanish Courses Courses change depending on the date, however if these courses are no longer available, search through the EdX...

For native English speakers, the notion that nouns have specific genders is confusing, however, there are plenty of languages around the world that use this practice. In general, the gender of Spanish nouns can be broke down to the masculine nouns end with -o, and the feminine nouns end with an -a.  The idea of gender in Spanish is a presence to be reckoned with. One of the neo-Latin languages, Spanish inherits the concept of M. gender (i.e. el=the) and F. gender (i.e. la=the) just like French, Italian, Romanian and Portuguese. One may understand M. and F. nouns in the context of humans (male and female) and some animals (again male and female). But that a mesa (table) in Spanish should be F. (=la mesa), like the Italian la tavola, and la table in French, while el cuchillo in Spanish, il coltello in Italian and le couteau in French (all three=knife) are M., defies rational explanation. Spanish torments us even more sharply with a F. form for big, butcher’s knife, la cuchill...

We all know that the fastest way to improve your language skills is to practice, practice, practice. A great option is to read a story that you're already familiar with, but in Spanish. This gives you a chance to use educated guesses and context clues to understand complex vocabulary and grammar patterns that you may not be familiar with. Feel free watch the video below to hear the audio, or read the story below. Keep in mind that since the text is translated, I couldn't find an audio and a text version that used the exact same translation throughout. So there are differences between  the video and the text below. Without further ado, here is the Tell-Tale Heart translated in to Spanish, El corazón delator.

You aren't likely to find these in Don Quixote, but they will be more useful.

Learning a new language doesn't have to be an expensive activity. There are plenty of free options to learn Spanish that you can use so long as you have a device that can reach the internet. Free online interactive websites There are a ton of free online websites that can help you learn Spanish (or any language). Don't believe me? Google "learn Spanish online free". Go ahead, I'll wait. See? There's a ton. Thankfully, I've already used...well way too many of them. Joining a new website is sometimes my way of procrastinating. The downside to a lot of free websites, is that a lot of the content is free, but there's also a lot that is only for "premium" users.  That being said, here my favorites include: DuoLingo  - Completely free-no content locked behind a pay wall. Busuu LiveMocha (I use to like LiveMocha more. It's recently been bought out by Rosetta Stone) Ask a librarian! Seriously, most libraries have a ton o...

Here are a five of the best Spotify lists to find music in Spanish (that doesn't sound like it should be played in a chain Tex-Mex restaurant). Viva Latino  - Updated weekly - hot current music Exitos Mexico  - Mexican hits - not everything on this list is Spanish language (it currently includes Missy Elliot and CeeLo Green) but it does show what is currently trending on Mexican Top 40 stations. Spain Top 50  - Chart toppers from Spain. Musica Folklorico  - Ok, so these are older, but they're still worth listening to. They'll give you a chance to listen to Spanish in a different accent, and tend to have a slower tempo, so they make for great listening practice. Calle 13  - I just really like Calle 13.  What's your preference when you listen to Hispanic music?

Here's a short movie (less than 15 minutes long) where Ivan is trying to celebrate his anniversary, but chaos seems to follow him. Lots of cringe worthy moments.