Spanish is a beautiful language, but as with learning any language, there are right ways and wrong ways, there are tricks that help and traps that inhibit; learning a few of these little language ‘hacks’ can make a big difference in your ability to grasp the language.

Numero Uno: Don’t translate word for word, you’ll trip up on prepositions.

A preposition is a word that links nouns, pronouns and phrases to other words in a sentence. In Spanish, you need to be a little careful of these, as they’re not used the same way as English. For example, the Spanish “en” can be used in the same way the English “in” “to” “by” and “about.”

Numero Dos: Beware the order of the sentence.

This ties into number one and translating word for word, as Spanish and English often have small differences in sentence structures. Let’s consider the very simple sentence “I’d like an Orange juice,” in Spanish this would be “Quiero un jugo de naranja,” back to English and that’s “I’d like a juice of orange.”

Numero Tres: Follow the right gender…Most of the time.

I don’t expect anybody to worry about this too early in your Spanish learning endeavor, but it does pay to be informed of their existence. As you probably know by now, there are masculine and feminine words in Spanish, what you might not know, is that there are some words that break this rule; An easy one is ‘día,’ yes it ends in an ‘a’ but it is masculine, therefore you say “el día” and not “la día.”

Numero Quatro: Beware of similar sounding English words.

There are a number of words that sound eerily similar in both Spanish and English. Now this of course does not mean they have the same meaning, even though some similarities like this exist, it is important to know the differences in words such as ‘carpet’ in English and ‘carpeta’ in Spanish — a ‘carpeta’ is a folder or briefcase.

Numero Cinco: The pros and cons of pronouns.

Now I know that you know what a pronoun is right? A pronoun is the subject of a sentence, just as the previous highlighted words are. In English we use them often, in Spanish however, they are often unnecessary. In Spanish the subject is often represented in the verb, for example, “I’m going to Germany” in Spanish is “yo voy a Alemania,” but because the word “voy” can only be used for ‘me,’ “yo” is redundant, meaning I can say the same thing with “voy a Alemania.”

Numero Seis: Think in Spanish.

This really goes without saying right? If you start to think in a given language, for one, you’re practicing, and sooner or later you will start doing it subconsciously, which is a great sign of progress.

I hope I’ve helped you in avoiding some of the bigger pitfalls in Spanish. I’m sure there are plenty of other helpful hints and tricks too, but sometimes you just need to get stuck in and figure it out for yourself, after all, the worst thing you can do is be afraid to try.

How is your Spanish learning going? Can you think of other mistakes or problems that people should know about?