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Plain-English guides to the parts of Spanish that trip everyone up
These are the explanations we kept writing out for people: how many tenses Spanish really has and which 16 nemiria teaches, how to choose between the two past tenses, and why some Spanish sentences seem to run backwards. No jargon for its own sake, real example sentences, and an honest account of which bits are worth your time first.
Spanish verb tenses, explained simply
Why the answer to "how many are there?" is 14 in one book and 16 in another, which 16 nemiria teaches and why, one example of each, and the order worth learning them in.
Read the guidePreterite or Imperfect? The past tense choice, settled
Both translate into the same English. The difference is the job the sentence is doing, not how long ago it happened. With the sentence pairs that make it click.
Read the guideWhy "I like coffee" is back to front in Spanish
Me gusta el café does not say what you think it says. Once you see which word is the subject, gustar stops being an exception and starts being a pattern.
Read the guideWho writes these
nemiria is a Spanish verb trainer for iPhone and iPad, built in New Zealand. Every example sentence in these guides is taken from the app itself, where it has already been checked against the tables and the grammar rather than written fresh for an article.
If something here is unclear, or you think we have got something wrong, we would rather know: [email protected].