Spanish

Spanish is what happened when Moors tried to learn Latin and said "screw it." Charles Lavergne (in John Cowan's Essentialist Explanations)

General Information

• Paul: The Spanish Language and What Makes it The Coolest (Langfocus on YouTube, 8 minutes, 20.02.2016).
  This video covers the history of Spanish, its varieties (European Spanish versus Latin American varieties), some aspects of vocabulary and grammar, and the “controversy” whether the language should be called Spanish or Castillan.
• L'atout des langues: Pourquoi apprendre l'espagnol: quels sont les avantages (YouTube, 6 minutes, 05.04.2017).

Learning Spanish Online

• How to Self-Study Spanish Online: a free course on Udemy.com.
• Spanish Obsessed: offers courses for beginning, intermediate and advanced learners. By Rob and Liz, from London and Colombia.
• Speaking Latino: offers courses in many varieties of Spanish (Argentina, Mexico, Spain, etc.).
• Learn Spanish: Basic Spanish for English Speakers by the Universitat Politècnica de Valencia is a self-paced course on edX.
• Spanish from Spain: YouTube channel with many videos organised in many handy playlists, for example, Consejos para aprender español, Entradas gramaticales, Ser y estar and El DELE.
• Español con Juan: YouTube channel with an associated blog — 1001 Reasons To Learn Spanish — by Juan Fernández, a native speaker of Spanish from the city of Granada. The goal of this channel and its related resources is to learn Spanish in a more playful way then by memorising vocabulary lists and grammar rules. The playlists include the following: Cómo aprender idiomas, Cómo hablar español, Historias para aprender español and Juegos para aprender español.
• Podcast — Español Automático (website) and YouTube channel Español Automático. The YouTube channel has playlists such as PRONUNCIACIÓN – Spanish Pronunciation, Bases de aprendizaje exitoso (Successful Learning basics) and Spanish Vocabulary Videos.
• Tu escuela de español is the YouTube channel that accompanies the website Tu escuela de español by Elena Prieto Pérez, a native speaker of Spanish from Spain. The website has a “premium” zone with additional resources. All videos are in Spanish.
• Hablamos español is the YouTube channel of Alberto A. Zalles, who teaches Spanish in Belgium. His channel has a number of playlists: Learn spanish (Begginers-A1), Spanish lessons - conversation (this videos are entirely in Spanish), Enriquecer vocabulario: adivinanzas.
• PRACTIQUEMOS by Catalina Moreno E. is a YouTube channel containing videos for the website PRACTIQUEMOS by Catalina Moreno Escobar, a native speaker of Spanish from Spain.
• AP® Spanish Language and Culture by St. Margaret’s Episcopal School in California. It is an intermediate course taught exclusively in Spanish.
• Instituto Cervantes: Aula Virtual de Español (AVE): online language courses.
• The Open University (UK): Spanish for Beginners. This is a program of six free online courses hosted on FutureLearn, a British MOOC platform. Each course lasts 4 weeks and requires roughly four hours of study per week. The program requires no prior knowledge of Spanish and helps learners reach level A1 in the CEFR.
• Corrección, estilo y variaciones de la lengua española by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona is a course on Coursera (starting 26 September 2016). It is aimed at native speakers or learners with a near-native level of Spanish.
• SpanishPod101.com: a site with free Spanish lessons. The site does not specify whether they focus on Latin American or European Spanish. See also Learn Spanish with SpanishPod101.com on YouTube.
• Rocket Languages: Learn Spanish Online. Rocket Languages is based in the United States and New Zealand. The “host” of Rocket Spanish is a native speaker of Latin American Spanish.
• The Spanish Dude and The Spanish Dude / GringoEspañol on YouTube. The YouTube channel has a few dozen videos about specific aspects of Spanish. The SpanishDude.com website has both free materials and a premium student login that gives access to several courses.
• Butterfly Spanish is a YouTube channels for people who want to learn basic Spanish. The description does not say which version is taught, but since one of the videos is about Cinco de Mayo, it is presumably Mexican Spanish.

Pronunciation

• #037: Lección de español: Los conectores en español - La técnica de shadowing - Spanish Course (Oscar — Unlimited Spanish on YouTube, 13 minutes, 12.06.2017). The part about shadowing starts nine and a half minutes into the video.
• Why is the 'b' and 'v' pronunciation inconsistent? Question on Spanish Language Stack Exchange. One of the answers points out that according to the Real Academia Española de la Lengua, There's no difference in the pronunciation of b and v in Spanish: both represent nowadays the bilabial voiced sound /b/.

Shadowing resources:

• News in Slow Spanish. This site requires a monthly subscription. You can get a taste of the speed of the videos by listening to the YouTube playlist News in Slow Spanish (Spain).
• Español Automático: website with podcasts in Spanish. The speech rate is significantly faster than in “News in Slow Spanish”. The podcasts can be downloaded. (There are also transcripts.) You can find the website's videos on the YouTube channel Español Automático.
• Nómadas: podcasts by RTVE.

Grammar

Grammar Books

• Batchelor, Ronald E.: A Student Grammar of Spanish. Cambridge University Press, 2006. (33O pages) A Student Grammar of Spanish is available on Archive.org.
  This is a concise introduction to the grammar of Spanish. The book covers both Iberian Spanish and the Spanish of the Americas; Mexican Spanish is taken as a model for Spanish America. The book has 30 units, some of which have two levels (basic and intermediate). Each unit contains exercises; a section with model answers can be found after the last unit. This makes the book suitable for self study.
• Kattan Ibarra, Juan; Howkins, Angela: Spanish Grammar in Context. Third edition. Routledge, 2014. (290 pages) ISBN 9780415723473.
  This book also contains exercises, with an answer key at the back of the book.
• Butt, John; Benjamin, Carmen; Moreira Rodríguez, Antonia: A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish. Sixth edition. Routledge, 2018. (608 pages) ISBN 9781138124011.
  From the publisher's book description: (…) The combination of reference grammar and manual of current usage is invaluable for learners at level B2–C2 of the Common European Framework for Languages, and Intermediate High–Advanced High on the ACTFL proficiency scales.
• Kattan-Ibarra, Juan; Pountain, Christopher: Modern Spanish Grammar: A Practical Guide. Second edition. Routledge, 2003. (472 pages) ISBN 9780415273046.
• Camacho, José: Introducción a la Sintaxis del Español. Cambridge University Press, 2018. (458 pages) ISBN 9781316642337.
• Zagona, Karen: The Syntax of Spanish. Cambridge Syntax Guides. Cambridge University Press, 2002. (300 pages) ISBN 9780521576840.
  Note that this book is aimed at students of linguistics, not at regular language learners.

Various Online Grammar Resources

• Spanish Grammar Lesson Index, The LEAF Project (no date). The LEAF project is an American project that operates from New York. Its resources are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
• La conjugación de verbos en Español: verb conjugation tables organised according to 101 verb models.
• The Spanish Dude: How to Practice Spanish Verb Conjugations (6 minutes, YouTube) and The Conjugation Strategy.
• KVerbos: a free and open source software program for practising Spanish verb conjugations. The program was originally developed for GNU/Linux computers, but a Windows installer is also available.
• Kelsey, Suzie: An Overview of Spanish Tenses: What They Mean and When to Use Them, Clozemaster Blog, 16.05.2019.

Past Tenses

• Pretérito Imperfecto or Indefinido – Spanish Tense Comparison, Lingolia (no date).
• Laura: Beginner Spanish Lesson 42 Comparing Pretérito Indefinido and Pretérito Imperfecto, Transparent Language: Spanish Language Blog, 06.11.2012.
• Aprender español: Diferencias entre el pretérito indefinido y el imperfecto (nivel básico) (Tu escuela de español on YouTube, 7 minutes, 30.06.2016).
• Imperfecto vs Indefinido (Español con Juan, 7 minutes, 10.08.2015).
• Indefinido o imperfecto: ¿tenía o tuve 18 años? (Español con Juan, 8 minutes, 15.01.2017).
• Imperfecto o Indefinido | Los pasados en español (nivel avanzado) (Español con Juan, 17 minutes, 08.10.2017).

Conditional

• Condicional simple en español (Hablamas español on YouTube, 13 minutes, 27.03.2018).

Vocabulary

• ¡Me cae mal! (Español con Juan, 9 minutes, 01.08.2016).

Dictionaries

• Diccionario de la lengua española: dictionary by the Real Academia Española (Royal Spanish Academy).
• Diccionario en línea PONS: online dictionary.
• Collins: English to Spanish Dictionary (and Spanish to English).
• Oxford University Press: English-Spanish, Spanish-English dictionary.
• SpanishDict (English to Spanish).

Oral Skills and Listening Comprehension

• WhyNotSpanish: Why is it so Hard to Understand Spanish Speakers || Tips to Improve your Listening Comprehension (YouTube, 10 minutes, 28.04.2017). Video by a native speaker of Spanish. Apparently, Spanish is the second-fastest language after Japanese.
• One Month Spanish: Conversational Spanish: 5-Steps to Improve Listening Comprehension In Spanish (YouTube, 5 minutes, 22.04.2016). Video by a native speaker of American English. Introduces a technique called the “dialogue deconstruction method”.
• Master of Memory: Practice Spanish listening the right way (constant Spanish improvement, video 1) (YouTube, 7 minutes, 06.10.2015). Video by a native speaker of American English. Explains that passive listening (e.g. watching a film with subtitles) is not enough. You need to listen to those things that you usually can't hear. You should take short chunks (1 minutes) of a video that is at your level (“limited vocabulary dialogues”) and first study the text to make sure that you understand it. Then listen to it while reading the text. Finally, listen to it without referring to the text. As a result, you willl understand everything in this chunk. After a while, you will be able to use real Spanish media content for this approach.

Proficiency Tests and Certificates

DELE

DELE stands for Diplomas de Español como Lengua Extranjera (Diplomas of Spanish as a Foreign Language). The certificates are issues by the Instituto Cervantes (Spain). There are language test and certificates for each of the six levels of the CEFR.

• Instituto Cervantes: Qué son los DELE: official website about DELE. The Instituto Cervantes also has many YouTube videos to help you prepare for the tests, for example: Examen DELE nivel A1 escolar - Johanna (8 minutes; example of an oral exam), Examen DELEnivel A2 - Adriana (11 minutes; example of an oral exam), Examen DELE nivel B1 - Lucas (15 minutes; example of an oral exam), Guía del curso de preparación para el examen DELE A2.
• Todoele: Spanish website with teaching resources.
• The website Spanish Parainmigrantes.info has a YouTube channel that contains a number of videos about the DELE tests for level A2: GUIA EXAMEN DELE A2 NACIONALIDAD ESPAÑOLA PRUEBA 1: comprensión de lectura (4 minutes), GUIA EXAMEN DELE A2 NACIONALIDAD ESPAÑOLA PRUEBA 2: comprensión auditiva (5 minutes), GUIA EXAMEN DELE A2 NACIONALIDAD ESPAÑOLA PRUEBA 3: expresión e interacción escritas (3 minutes), GUIA EXAMEN DELE A2 NACIONALIDAD ESPAÑOLA PRUEBA 4: expresión e interacción orales (3 minutes). The description below each video also describes the tasks of each part of the language test.
• DELE B1 Test Prep Vocabulary: learning resources on Memrise.
• DELE C1 Vocabulary: learning resources on Memrise.
• DELE C2 Vocabulary: learning resources on Memrise.
• DELE A1|Tarea 1|Presentación personal (Dale a la lengua on YouTube, 3 minutes, 10.01.2018): a native speaker of Arabic (born in Algeria) presents himself in Spanish.
• 13 expresiones que te van a hacer aprobar la prueba oral del dele a2 (Spanish from Spain on YouTube, 17 minutes, 14.05.2018).
• DELE A2 Tarea 1 monólgo La Alimentación - EL SACAPUNTAS (Ana María Pérez Fernández on YouTube, 7 minutes, 11.05.2018). Ana recommends the book Colección DELEando: Guía para la preparación de las pruebas DELE by Susana Benavente Ferrera.

CELU

CELU stands for Certificate of Use of Language in Spanish; it is a proficiency test for Argentinian Spanish.

Other Resources

• Spanish Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, teachers, and linguists wanting to discuss the finer points of the Spanish language.
  Since this site is not about learning Spanish, it has only a few questions about this topic:
  • Resources for learning Spanish.
  • Free online resources for beginner course.
  • How can I order food in Spanish, without the waiter switching to English?
• Benny's Top Resources for Learning Spanish.
• Dorros, Alex: Best Resources for Learning Spanish: 50+ Tips and Tools to Get Fluent Faster, Clozemaster Blog, 02.11.2019.
• Spanish in a Month - A Language Learning Documentary (YouTube, 30 minutes): documentary by Connor Grooms about how he reached level B1 in (conversational) Spanish in one month. Connor recommends resources such as Fluent in 3 Months by Benny Lewis, the mimic method, spaced repetition (using Anki) and Brian Kwong's Add1Challenge community.
  See also the YouTube video How to Learn Spanish Fast in 2018 (11 minutes) and the article How to Learn Spanish Fast in 2018 on the BaseLang website.
• Instituto Cervantes: Eseñanza de Español.
• Ecos: website of a German magazine for learning Spanish.
• Punto y Coma – Revista para aprender español: a Spanish magazine for learning Spanish. The magazine also has a YouTube channel with a few videos: puntoycomaELE.
• Vocable Espagnol: a French magazine for learning Spanish. The magazine has a YouTube channel with selected news items in Spanish: Actus en espagnol.
• Corpus del Español, created by Mark Davies, professor of linguistics at Brigham Young University.
• Stephanie: Talk Like a Diplomat From 1961: How I Use FSI Spanish, to be fluent, 07.02.2014.
• Dos Españoles por el Mundo: YouTube channel by Carolina y Rafa, who like to travel and make videos about the places they visit. Example Bruselas en un día - Dos Españoles por el Mundo.
• 10 películas españolas para aprender español (Español con Juan on YouTube, 18 minutes, 15.10.2017). Recommends the following films: Bienvenido Mister Marshall (1952, a comedy directed by Luis García Berlanga), Muerte de un ciclista (1955, social realist drama directed by Juan Antonio Bardem), Viridiana (1961, directed by Luis Buñuel), La gran familia (1962, a comedy directed by Fernando Palacios), El espíritu de la colmena (1973, directed by Víctor Erice), Los santos inocentes (1984, drama directed by Mario Camus), Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (1988, directed by Pedro Almodóvar), ¡Ay Carmela! (1990, directed by Carlos Saura), Los Otros (2001, horror film directed by Alejandro Amenábar) and Los lunes al sol (2002, drama film directed by Fernando León de Aranoa).
• How To Learn Spanish Easy While In Quarantine 😷!! (Speak Spanish Faster on YouTube, 13 minutes, 04.04.2020).
  These tips rely heavily on online video, including YouTube, and discuss what to look out for when finding teachers on italki.