Welcome... and Congratulations! You know Spanish!

Congratulations! You know Spanish! is intended for the American English speaking audience. If you speak American English and watch some popular entertainment venues, such as TV and Movies, you may be lead to believe that you can add an "o" to the end of all of your words and TA-DA you're speaking Spanish.

Well, this is not true. Not at all. You will simply sound "stupid"... which is, by the way, what I classify as a "level 3" Spanish word. If you were to add an o to the end, getting "stupido," you would not be using correct Spanish, but a Spanish-speaking person would likely understand you, as the Spanish word for "Stupid" is actually "estupido."

So, in this blog, you will find "Level 1" words - words that are the same for English and Spanish - either when written or when spoken, "Level 2" words - words that are very similar to the word (as in, add -o to the end), so that you would likely recognize it in English or Spanish, "Level 3" words... words that are not-as-close, but which I will provide a brief explanation that will help point out why it really does make sense, and finally, "Level 4" words, which are not close AT ALL to the word, but that there is still some explanation that I can provide to help you make the connection.

To let you sift through these words easily, I will be tagging them with the level they belong to. Look at the Level 1's first... this is the Spanish you know - even if you don't know any Spanish. Then, Look at the Level 2's and Level 3's... once you see where they're coming from, the vocabulary will be easier to remember. Hopefully, when you start looking at the Level 4's you'll be better prepared for catching on to the Spanish vocabulary via the explanations.

...Which brings me to a good point: This is not "how to speak Spanish." I don't touch on sentence structure or syntax. This is vocabulary only. It's great to have a vocabulary, but if you actually want to put it to good use and try to communicate with someone, you'll need to learn to speak the language via another method, as well.

Finally, a lot of the words I'm getting for this and part of the inspiration for writing this blog in the first place comes from using Learn10.com, a language website that will send you 10 vocabulary words per day in the language you want to learn. If you like learning new languages and expanding your vocabulary across many languages, you should check them out.