Foreign languages

Learn Spanish on your own

Spanish is read almost exactly as it is written, so the first weeks go fast for an English speaker. The real work starts with verbs — a single verb has dozens of forms, and they are what separates people stuck at tourist level from people who speak in full sentences. Below is the order of topics and how to check yourself.

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Why Spanish is an easy start#

The reading rules fit on a couple of pages: a letter almost always stands for the same sound, stress follows simple rules, and when a word breaks them a mark goes over the vowel — canción, árbol. After English spelling, this is a relief: once you know the rules you can read any word aloud correctly.

The difficulties for an English ear are mostly in the vowels and a few consonants. Spanish has five pure vowels that never glide or shrink, so "no" is a short, clean no, not the English "noh-oo", and unstressed vowels are not reduced to "uh". Then there are the tapped r and the rolled rr (pero "but" vs perro "dog"), the soft d between vowels (cada sounds closer to "catha"), the unaspirated p, t, k, and the ñ. In Spain c before e/i and z sound like the "th" in "think".

Pick a variety early. Spanish from Spain and Latin American Spanish differ in pronunciation, some vocabulary and the plural "you" (vosotros is hardly used in the Americas). Speakers understand each other easily, but your textbook, audio and series are better taken from one region.

The heart of the language is the verb#

English verbs barely change: I speak, you speak, he speaks. Spanish verbs change for every person. They fall into three groups by the infinitive ending: -ar, -er, -ir. Within a group the endings are predictable: hablo, hablas, habla, hablamos… The subject pronoun is usually dropped because the ending already shows who is speaking. Hence the main advice: learn a verb as a whole set of forms, not as one form.

An order that works well for self-learners:

  1. The present tense of regular verbs, then the most frequent irregular ones — ser, estar, tener, ir, hacer, poder, querer.
  2. The near future with ir a + infinitive: voy a comer, "I'm going to eat". It works exactly like the English "going to" and lets you talk about plans right away.
  3. Two past tenses: the preterite for finished actions (ayer comí, "I ate yesterday") and the imperfect for background and habits (de niño comía, "as a child I used to eat"). A rough English guide: if "used to" or "was …-ing" fits, it is usually the imperfect.
  4. The present perfect (he comido), the future and the conditional.
  5. The subjunctive. It follows expressions of wish, doubt and emotion: quiero que vengas, "I want you to come". English has almost lost this mood, so it feels foreign; it is the longest topic, and it is normal for it to take months.

Ser and estar#

Both translate as "to be", and this is the first trap. Ser describes what something is — origin, profession, character: soy de Canadá. Estar describes state and location: estoy cansado, Madrid está en España. The same adjective changes meaning with a different verb: es aburrido "he is boring", está aburrido "he is bored". Keep a table of such pairs in your notes and add to it as you read.

How much time to plan for#

Spanish is one of the fastest languages for English speakers — it shares the Latin part of English vocabulary, and thousands of words are near-identical (información, posible, natural). Still, a benchmark is only a benchmark. At an hour a day, most people reach a solid A2 in four to six months: everyday dialogues, simple texts, talking about the past. After that, growth comes from the volume of reading and listening.

Notes: conjugation tables and a mistakes notebook#

One card per irregular verb with all the tenses you have covered so far. Write nouns with their article: el problema, la mano — gender in Spanish cannot always be guessed from the ending. A separate page for false friends: embarazada means "pregnant", not "embarrassed"; constipado means "having a cold"; actualmente means "currently", not "actually". New words go into a spaced repetition deck as phrases, as described in how to memorize vocabulary.

Checking yourself#

Take the level scale from DELE, the Instituto Cervantes exam from A1 to C2. Sample papers show what each level demands. Once a week translate ten sentences from English into Spanish using the tenses you have covered and check them against the textbook key; once a month retell an episode of a series aloud on a recording.

Step-by-step plan

  1. Week 1 — reading and stressReading and stress rules, pure vowels, r and rr, choosing a variety of Spanish.
  2. Month 1 — the present tenseThe three verb groups, frequent irregular verbs, ir a + infinitive, ser and estar.
  3. Months 2–4 — the past tensesPreterite vs imperfect, the present perfect; a recorded story about your past every week.
  4. Months 5–6 — subjunctive and volumeThe subjunctive after wishes and doubt, reading and series from one region, a DELE sample paper.

Start learning this in your own space

The plan goes into your repository: tick off stages, keep notes — the change history shows how far you have come.

Start the plan

Check yourself

1."I am from Canada": Yo ___ de Canadá.

2."She is tired today": Ella ___ cansada hoy.

3.Which article does the word problema take?

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