Archive

añejo (very old, mature)cariñoso (loving, affectionate)castaño (chestnut-colored)ceñido (tight-fitting)dañino (harmful)desaliñado (scruffy)estreñido (constipated)extraño (strange)What do all these adjectives have in common? They contain the letter Ñ. This peculiar letter carries a history full of curiosity, fascination and we are not surprised: it’s so singular; it only exists in the Spanish language!Many students who come to our Intensive […]

With a Little Help from My Friends: the dictionaries!If you are a Beatles fan, you will know that sometimes we need a little help from our friends. This time, we want to delve into the importance of buying a good dictionary when you start learning a new language. If you are an English speaker, and […]

Besides being a wonderful city in its own right (and of course being home to excellent Spanish schools such as Academia Contacto!), Madrid is often considered one of the best tourist destinations to learn Spanish. This due to the neutral Castilian Spanish spoken by its inhabitants.Located right in the centre of the country, from Madrid […]

A great method to memorise quickly Spanish words is to first write down those which you are unfamiliar with, whether that be during a conversation, during a class or when watching a TV show. The simple act of writing something down is proven to facilitate its memorise quickly Spanish. To further commit terms to memory using […]

Spanish phonetics , unlike other widely spoken languages such as English and French, it is pronounced exactly the way it is written. This comes with a few advantages for the learner. One of them being if you see a word written you already know how to pronounce it and another one being, if you hear […]

An exercise that is useful for improving listening comprehension in Spanish is to listen to an audio book or podcast whilst noting done the vocabulary and expressions used. A good place to start is content that they are already familiar with but that has been translated, for example Roald Dahl books for beginners or the […]