Nbidioma87

Hola Claudia! I'm a native English speaker from the US very seriously studying Spanish. Very nice to meet you! What part of Mexico are you from? I have a friend who just moved to Monterrey for work. She loves it there. Feel free to ask me anything you want about the English language. At times, I can be a grammar Nazi as well.

Hello! My name is Nina and I am living in Cincinnati. I have been studying Spanish for the past 8 months. I love anything that can help in my language fluency and comprehension. I'm very excited to be a part of this forum. I'm here to learn, find new resources and connect with other language learners!

I have found that more often than not, English idioms just do not translate into Spanish. I mean you could verbatim translate it, but native speakers will just look at you in a funny way. I have a perfect and also hilarious example. I traveled to Spain and was hanging out with a group of Spaniards and Americans at a bar in Barcelona. We were all speaking Spanish most of the night. I wanted to explain to them my urgency for learning Spanish. In English, we often say we have a figure under our behind. I translated that into Spanish and got a reaction of both shock and laughter. That is when I learned that English idioms just do not translate.

What I am interested in knowing is how country specific each idiom is. It seems that many things said in Spain are not neccessarily used in Latin America. What are some more country-specific ones? Are there idioms just used in say Chile or just used in Honduras? I'm also interested in the origins of the idioms. Is there a place where I could find that information?

I finished the entire Duolingo course for Spanish. It took me about six months. They try to keep you using it by making your levels for past units go down if you have not practiced them in a while. This can be good because as we all know, if you do not use the language you are learning, you'll forget it. I am very impressed with how comprehensive Duolingo is, especially for a free app. However nothing beats actually speaking the language with people. I feel that Duolingo should only be used in addition to speaking with others.