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Mistakes and Difficulties

Spanish mistakes and difficultiesSpanish Mistakes and Difficulties

Errores, equivocaciones, malentendidos, confusiones

Improve your Spanish by looking out for and learning how to avoid some common Spanish mistakes.

Mistakes and Difficulties

Accidental Reflexive

Spanish accidental reflexiveThe reflexive construction, used mainly with pronominal verbs, can also be used passively to describe accidental and unplanned occurrences. This is called la voz media in Spanish.

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  B2 - Upper-Intermediate Spanish 

Adjectives

Adjective Position

Spanish adjective positionSpanish adjectives may be found before or after the nouns they modify, depending on various factors. Generally speaking, descriptive adjectives follow nouns, while limiting adjectives precede nouns.

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  B1 - Intermediate Spanish • word order 

Adverbs

Ahora

Ahora

You probably learned that the Spanish equivalent for “now” is ahora. While this is a very important word, it’s not necessarily the right one when you want something to be done right now.

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  A2 - Low-Intermediate Spanish 

Learn Spanish

Avoiding Transference Errors

Spanish transference errorsA transference error is a certain type of mistake, common to foreign language learners, which can be particularly difficult to stop making. The hardest part is becoming aware of the error; once you’ve done that, it’s just a matter of figuring out the correction and practicing your way to perfection.

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Grammar Lessons

Capitalization

Spanish capitalizationThe use of capital letters (las mayúsculas) is far less common in Spanish than in English. Take a look at this summary of words that are capitalized in English but not in Spanish.

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  B1 - Intermediate Spanish 

Mistakes and Difficulties

Diphthongs + Hiatus

Spanish diphthongsWhen a Spanish word has two vowels side by side, various pronunciation issues come into play: syllable division, diphthongs, and hiatus.

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  B1 - Intermediate Spanish 

Mistakes and Difficulties

Double Pronoun Order

Spanish double pronoun word orderA Spanish sentence can have both a direct object and an indirect object pronoun. These “double object pronouns” cannot be separated, and the indirect pronoun always precedes the direct pronoun.

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  B1 - Intermediate Spanish • word order 

Mistakes and Difficulties

Enlace / Encadenamiento

EncadenamientoEnlace or encadenamiento is the phenomenon in Spanish whereby each word seems to run into the next, as if there are no boundaries between them.

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  B2 - Upper-Intermediate Spanish 

Mistakes and Difficulties

Está vs Hay Quiz: La Habana

HavanaSpanish quizTest yourself on the difference between está and hay in this fill-in-the-blanks exercise:

   La Habana

Note: You must be logged into your Progress with Lawless Spanish account to take this test. If you don’t have one, sign up – it’s free!

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Mistakes and Difficulties

Falsos amigos

Spanish falsos amigos

One of the great things about learning Spanish is that many words have the same roots in the Romance languages and English. However, there are also a great many falsos amigos, or false friends, which look similar but are in fact very different.

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