5 Common Mistakes That English Speakers Make Speaking Spanish - Stop Doing These Things NOW!

In this video I discuss five of the most common mistakes that native English speakers make when speaking Spanish. These mistakes are often difficult for us to overcome because of how the English speaker's mind works. With that said, a conscious effort to avoid these things will greatly improve your Spanish speaking abilities. As always I hope this helps!

En este video discuto cinco de los errores más comunes que cometen los hablantes nativos de inglés cuando hablan español. Estos errores a menudo son difíciles de superar para nosotros debido a cómo funciona la mente del hablante de inglés. Dicho esto, un esfuerzo consciente para evitar estas cosas mejorará en gran medida sus habilidades para hablar español. Como siempre espero que esto ayude!

[juancarlosfarfanguzman]

Es curioso cómo quienes hablamos castellano queremos hablar inglés, mientras que quienes hablan inglés quieren hablar castellano. Sigan adelante, amigos, la práctica constante es la mejor herramienta para lograr nuestros objetivos. 💪👏

[julienandross]

another common one that i make is overusing "a" in spanish in situations where its ungrammatical, as a result of having a 1-to-1 correlation in my head that says "a" translates to "to".

example: "es difícil a recordar" to mean "its difficult to remember" when really it should just be "es difícil recordar"

[AriAbroad]

Ben you have a gift! You explain everything perfectly for someone learning with a English native brain. Explained better than my Spanish immersion teacher in Costa Rica. I can’t wait to buy your book on this next check 🙌🏾

[johannwilder]

Regarding lo/la versus le...the way I remember it is that it's related to the roles of direct and indirect objects. Some verbs naturally lend themselves towards taking a DIRECT object, such as "lo veo" (I see him). In this case the you use lo/la because the object is directly receiving the action. It's just the nature of the verb, and it's the only way that makes sense. On the other hand, some verbs naturally take INDIRECT objects. An example, as you said, would be "le dije" (I told him). But what you're REALLY saying in this case, whether you realize it or not, is that "I told [something] TO him". Any time you use TO or FOR, the pronoun is an indirect object and uses le/les. In my opinion you don't really have to memorize which words use lo/la versus le/les if you grammatically think to yourself, "Is this object RECEIVING some other object/idea?" When you say '"le dije" the answer is yes, the person is RECEIVING something, namely a message or whatever you said. This would not be true, for example, with the word "ver", since a person that you see with your eyes is not receiving something from you--and because of this, they are a direct object and you would just say "lo veo".

[randomchatter]

Can you make a lot of videos of Spanish listening skills. Also I have been trying to listen to Spanish short stories in slow Spanish. For the life of me I can never recall all the verbs I learned when I am listening and speaking to someone. I figured out that I can self record myself speaking sentences with the context of verb I am learning. This was a game changer for me. I can speak but when I am spoken to I just can catch and put the words together in my head fast enough for the other speaker to just give and walk away. Can you do Spanish short stories in slow Spanish that focus verbs within the story?

[militantjah]

Muchísimas gracias compo siempre por todas estas información hermano🤛🏿

[Thorpeland]

I came back to this vid. It would be awesome if you did a series of short vids just talking about grammar gotcha's. These are extremely handy.

[RachaelLeeThornton]

Estimado Señor,
¡Ud. es un genio! ¡He enseñado el español por 30 años y me ha enseñado unas cosas! Y ahora permíteme explicar la razón para usar "le" para "decirle algo." "Le" significa "to it, to her, to him" en inglés. Es un objetivo indirecto. Los objetivos indirectos y los objetivos directos son iguales en cada forma en español sino que las personas tercera singulares y plurales. Por ejemplo (o.d.) me=me(i.o.), pero (o.d.) lo(s), la(s)=it, him, her, Ud(s)., them. Y (i.o.) le(s)= to it, to him, to her, to Ud(s)., to them.

En el ejemplo, "decirle", Ud.está diciendo "algo" a una persona. Está diciendo "to tell (something) to him or her or you-formal. El o.d. está entendido y no dicho. Se pudiera decir, "decir(se)la" que es decir "to tell it (to her)". Hay mas para explicar en la regla. Y la manera natural es la mejor para aprenderla, pero si, hay una regla.

Me encantaría tener su libro, y también usar lo en mis clases.Y también sus videos. Como se lo dije al principio, ¡Ud. es una maravilla!

[rip]

BRO! These mistake videos are absolutely golden! I really appreciate these. I am about a month into my studying and I already have caught myself making mistakes mentioned in these videos. One of the most useful types of videos for us beginners🙏

[franceshall]

perfecto...como siempre😍 el libro es fantastico

[torimartinez]

hi! our brains work the same so this was v helpful. thanks!

[no_L_in_sight]

As a German the 'actualmente' one is very interesting to me, because 'currently' translates to 'aktuell' in German. Could see myself still making that mistake, though, because I surround myself so much with English it kinda became my default language😂

[klc]

Gracias para todo, como siempre es muy util!

[niecy]

As always, this video has been super helpful!! Thank you again, Mike!!

[jimbo]

You are so good at explanation. Appreciated.

[quicktempa]

15:50 been years now and I still have to think a little bit harder to say that instead of the way we say it in English 😂

[deepdark]

I like your videos! If I may, I would like to offer a humble suggestion: I think it would be nice if you could add chapters/sections to your videos to make it easier to get around them! Sometimes I like to refer back to certain points that you've made but it can be challenging to locate them! Thanks!

[CharliesSpanishJourney]

Thanks again Mike I really recognize a lot of my mistakes in this video. I’ll definitely be trying to keep them in mind 🙌

[languagelearningdabbler]

This is tremendously helpful! Thanks 🤓 Edit: I just remembered a movie I watched in Spanish where someone was talking about the taste of lemonade and said “esta rica”. I didn’t I think much about it until you mentioned how to talk about the taste of things!

[josemariagonzalez]

¡Hola! Muy buen vídeo. Solo quería decir que en realidad sí hay una regla sobre el uso de "lo, la, le" con personas, pero incluso muchos hablantes nativos no la siguen. "Lo" y "la" se usan cuando funcionan como objeto directo. "¿Ves a Juan?" "Sí, lo veo". "¿Ves a Juana?" "No, no la veo". "Le" se usa cuando funciona como objeto indirecto. "Ya le dije eso (a Juan)". "Ya le dije eso (a Juana)". El problema es que muchos hablantes nativos, al menos en la región central de España, usan también "le" como objeto directo cuando la persona es masculina. "¿Ves a Juan?" "Sí, le veo", saltándose la regla general. Hay incluso otros hablantes en España (menos) que hacen lo contrario, usar "lo" o "la" cuando deberían usar "le". Esas formas inadecuadas de hablar son lo que en España se llaman "leísmo", "loísmo" y "laísmo", respectivamente. O sea, que incluso muchos nativos, al menos en España, lo hacen mal. ¡Así que no se preocupen demasiado, sobre todo si son principiantes!