SS: Obsession, Greetings and Lo
SPANISH SUNDAYS w/ Rors
Learning: Thinking in Spanish
The moment you start seeing the world around you in Spanish, the faster you’ll develop fluency, I can’t stress this enough, it’s what got me to fluency in Portuguese in under a year without studying for a single minute.
It’s all about creating a healthy addiction to Spanish.
I had it for three months where everytime I stepped out of the house I was seeing how many things I could say in Spanish:
Árbol (tree), coche (car), la acera (pavement/sidewalk), cielo (sky)
Every time I was bored in a conversation I would try to translate every word the person was saying into Spanish. I would journal in Spanish, write every to-do list in Spanish, and consume Spanish content online. I treated my daily life as if I was living in Spain, total immersion thanks to technology.
This might sound extreme but it’s super fun because you feel yourself improving and with that improvement, your curiosity grows.
Then eventually you’ll get to a point where you start thinking in Spanish without realising it, that is when you know you’re well on the road to fluency.
Thinking directly in Spanish cuts down the translation lag, that pause where your brain translates from English to Spanish before you can speak. The smaller the lag, the smoother your conversations. And through building this curiousity and thinking in Spanish, this is achievable.
So start right now, what are you currently doing? Say that out loud in Spanish.
If you’re a busy intermediate learner and want a tailored plan to achieve conversational fluency click here.
Simpler: Sound More Native with Regional Greetings
One easy way to make a great first impression with locals is learn their specific regional greeting instead of ‘¿Cómo estás?’ . No matter how good your Spanish is I can guarantee you’ll get a smile at the very least or even a laugh. Here are some good ones:
🇪🇸 Spain → ¿Qué tal tío? (for guys) ¿Qué tal tía? (for girls)
Super common and v casual.
Don’t use with elderly, keep to ‘como estás’ in more formal settings.
🇦🇷 Argentina → Che, ¿qué onda?
¿Qué onda? = ‘what wave?’ literally but it’s just ‘how’s it going?’.
‘Che’ = ‘hey’ only in Argentina and Uruguay.
🇲🇽 Mexico → ¿Qué más? or ¿Qué onda?
¿Qué más? = ‘what else?’ literally, but used just like ‘what’s up?’.
’¿Qué más?’ confused me for about a month, so remember this when speaking to Mexicans.
🇨🇴 Colombia → ¿Qué más pues?
Love this one.
’Pues’ = ‘well’, but it’s just a filler word in this case
🇨🇱 Chile → ¿Cómo estai?
A twist on ¿Cómo estás?, with the Chilean -ai ending.
These guys are so hard to understand haha.
🇩🇴 Dominican Republic → ¿Qué lo qué?
Said literally all the time by Dominicans.
I had a Dominican in my school growing up and she would answer with ‘qué lo qué’ to everyone, no matter whether it was her mates, teachers or parents.
Hard: The ‘Lo’ for Emphasis
‘Lo’ is a word in Spanish that doesn’t translate very well to English but using it before an adjective or adverb adds emphasis, kind of like saying “how” or “thing” in English.
Lo bueno es que tenemos tiempo. → The good thing is that we have time.
No sabes lo cansado que estoy. → You don’t know how tired I am.
Lo rápido que corre ese chico… → How fast that boy runs…
V hard: Subjunctive nuance
This structure triggers the subjunctive if the second part is hypothetical or unknown:
No sabes lo difícil que sea. → You don’t know how difficult it may be.
Sea = uncertain, Es = certain
Why it’s useful: instead of stacking adverbs like muy, tan, tanto, you can use lo + adjective/adverb + que to sound more native.
Click here to work with me and gain access to my subjunctive series with 25+ videos giving you everything you need to know on the subjunctive from conjugations to the most difficult nuances and finally a series of quizzes.
