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Now vs Right Now
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. Despite what your Spanish teachers might have told you, ahora is more like "in the near future, sometime today," so if you tell your colleagues or kids to do something ahora, they might not actually do it for several hours.
When you mean "now" as in "very soon," you can add the diminutive –ito and say ahorita, which native speakers typically use to mean within an hour or so.
What about if you really do want to say "right now"? In that case, the term you want is ahora mismo; literally, “same now.”
This is one of those cultural differences that can be bewildering until you understand what’s going on. So now that you know the difference between these terms, you can start using them ahora mismo. 🙂
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