SS: Training your Brain to Think Like a Local
Thinking in Spanish, Sound More Native with Regional Greetings, The “Lo” for Emphasis & The Spanish Classic: “En Plan…”
Spanish Sundays
📚 Study Tip – Train Your Brain to Think in Spanish
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. Long-term, the goal is to remove it completely, but that takes time.
Here are three simple ways to train it at any level:
(1) 🗣️ Narrate your day
Mix English and Spanish if you’re a beginner:
“Necesito coffee”, “This sandwich está muy rico” still counts. Over time, the English parts fade.
If you’re more advanced, go for full Spanish:
“Necesito un café”, “Este bocadillo está muy rico.”(2) ✍️ Journal in Spanish
Just a few lines a day is enough. Writing slows you down and forces your brain to form thoughts directly in Spanish, helping internalise natural phrasing.(3) 🏷️ Label your environment
Spot an object? Ask yourself: ¿Cómo se dice ‘lamp’? Look it up (I use WordReference — see last week’s tip). Then repeat it whenever you see it. That’s spaced repetition in action.
🧠 The takeaway: the smaller the translation lag, the faster you’ll express yourself and the better your conversations will flow. Don’t underestimate this skill!
📈 Beginner Tip – Sound More Native with Regional Greetings
If you’ve only been using ¿Cómo estás? or ¿Qué tal?, you’re missing out on a whole range of greetings that natives actually use day to day. These vary a lot by country, but they’re easy to pick up and will make you sound much more natural straight away.
Here are some good ones:
🇪🇸 Spain → ¿Qué tal?
Super common and casual. Works in almost any situation.🇦🇷 Argentina → ¿Qué onda?
Literally “what wave?”, but again, it’s just “how’s it going?”. Very Argentinian.🇲🇽 Mexico → ¿Qué más? or ¿Qué onda?
Literally “what else?”, but used just like “what’s up?”.🇨🇴 Colombia → ¿Qué más pues?
Same kind of vibe as: “how’s it going?”.🇨🇱 Chile → ¿Cómo estai?
A twist on ¿Cómo estás?, with the Chilean -ai ending.🇩🇴 Dominican Republic → ¿Qué lo qué?
Super common, basically: “What’s up?”🇨🇺 Cuba → ¿Qué bolá?
Used informally amongst friends
🧠 The takeaway: greetings are one of the best ways to make a good first impression with locals. Don’t get stuck on the basic, textbook versions; try mixing in one of these next time.
🚀 Advanced Tip – The “Lo” for Emphasis
This is one of those tricks that doesn’t always translate neatly to English:
Using lo 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…
Notice that in many cases, 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.
🌎 Around the Hispanic World – The Spanish Classic: “En Plan…”
If you travel to Spain, you’ll hear en plan all over the place. It's not in textbooks, but it’s everywhere in conversation.
It’s a filler phrase that often means “I mean”, “for example” or “in [this] way,” and it can be used to explain, soften, or continue a thought:
✅ En plan, no quiero decir que seas raro…
(I mean, I'm not saying you’re weird…)✅ A mí me gusta ver películas, pero no en plan Netflix, prefiero el cine tradicional
(I like to watch films, but not like Netflix, I prefer the old-school cinema.)✅ Vamos a quedar, en plan tranquilo esta noche.
(Let’s hang out in a chill way tonight.)
You’ll sound much more Spanish if you slip this into your speech, just like native speakers do reflexively.