Make Music Your Teacher

Learn Spanish as Amanda (Universidad de Oviedo, Spain) and David (Fluentin6months.com) bring you an engaging list of corollaries of Murphy's Law. Funny and educational. Contains some adult language (PG13-ish, not that adult).

Awhile ago my friends Amanda and Ruti sent me entirely separate emails with the same question: how to close emails in English in an appropriate but friendly way. This screencast resulted from those emails. If you have three-and-a-half minutes, stick around and watch it!

This screencast explains how the vowels of Spanish are pronounced. Like the English alphabet, the Spanish alphabet -- el abecedario español -- has 5 vowels and more than 20 consonants. Vowels are crucial to correct pronunciation. They are the letters that can be voiced or sung. Consonants are the letters that accompany the vowels, as the name “consonant” implies. Vowels are the roadway of speech; consonants are the curb. Vowels are the electricity and consonants, the switches.

For several reasons, listening to songs while following the lyrics is a great way to learn language. First, songs are short and easy to repeat. Therefore, it is fairly easy to go back and replay a line you missed. Second, song lyrics are conversational. In many ways lyrics mimic speech. Often, though, lyrics are sung more slowly and more clearly than spoken language. For these reasons and others, songs are a great learning tool.

In this screencast, David and his friend talk about four words that mean "to expire" in Spanish, all depending on the context. Check it out. It's fun. And it's only 3 minutes!