sobremesa
so-bre-ME-sa
The talk that keeps the table going after the food is gone
Literally over the table.
The meal ends and the sobremesa begins, and it can last longer than the lunch did.
Rushing it is the rude part, not staying.
The archive
Spanish
Second by native speakers
More native speakers than English, spelled almost exactly as it sounds, and split by two different words for you.
FamilyProto-Indo-European › Italic › Latin › Romance › Western Romance › Spanish
ScriptLatin
Speakers600M 486M native · 114M second
Weeks to a working level30 Thirty weeks rather than twenty-four, alongside French. Counted from English. It is the Foreign Service Institute's figure for someone starting from English and from nothing.
The first hundred words cover51.9% and the first thousand 76.7%
- Around 600 million speakers, and it has more native speakers than English does.
- Spelling and sound line up almost perfectly. Once you know the rules you can read any word aloud correctly, including ones you have never seen.
- Spain says vosotros for a group of friends; Latin America says ustedes for everyone. Most of the world's speakers never use the Spanish form.
- Questions and exclamations open with an upside-down mark, so you know the tone before you start reading.
- Argentina and much of Central America use vos instead of tú, with its own verb forms.
- It is official in twenty countries, which puts it behind only English and French for spread across borders.
- Word order is close enough to English that you can build sentences on day one: yo como manzanas maps onto I eat apples, word for word.
- Thousands of words are already in your head before you begin. Everything English took from Latin through French lines up: nación, familia, posible, importante.
- It sounds faster than it is. Every syllable gets roughly the same length, where English squeezes the unstressed ones, so the beat is flat and your ear hears it as speed.
- The rolled r tends to arrive all at once, months or years after you start trying, and usually while you are thinking about something else.
- The o and a rule for gender works most of the time and then does not: el mapa, la mano, el dÃa. The exceptions are a short list worth learning early.
- Labour studies in the United States keep finding a pay premium for Spanish and English bilinguals, largest in customer-facing health care and management. The gap is usually small and it keeps turning up.
- Spanish points at Chinese: esto me suena a chino. It may also be the source of gringo, from hablar en griego, to speak Greek, though that origin is argued over.
Five hundred million speakers across twenty countries, spelled exactly as spoken. The best effort-to-reach ratio in the Western world, and the door to a whole continent of literature. Twenty countries of literature, music and food, the second language of the United States, and the most useful travel skill money cannot quite buy.
Words with no translation
duende
DWEN-de
The dark magnetic power a performer has when something real breaks through
Flamenco owns this word.
It is not talent and not technique.
It is the moment the room goes quiet because something got out.
vergüenza ajena
ver-GWEN-sa a-HE-na
Embarrassment felt on behalf of someone else
vergüenza ajena
The feeling you get watching someone humiliate themselves.
English borrowed the German word for this because it never built its own.
estrenar
es-tre-NAR
To use or wear something for the very first time
One verb for the whole ceremony of the first time: new shoes, a new flat, a film premiere.
English says brand new and stops there.
friolero
fryo-LE-ro
A person who feels the cold much more than everyone else
An identity, not a complaint.
You are not cold, you are friolero, and everyone adjusts the plan accordingly.
empalagoso
em-pa-la-GO-so
So sweet it becomes unpleasant, of food or of people
The only word here that works equally well on a dessert and on a boyfriend.
querencia
keh-REN-thya
The place where you are most yourself, and from which you draw strength.
From the bullring: the spot in the arena where the bull feels safe and plants itself. In Spanish life, the place where you are most yourself, the corner of the world your strength comes from.
ganas
GA-nas
The wanting that actually gets you to do the thing
Not motivation, which is a word for meetings. Ganas is closer to appetite.
You can have them, lose them, or find you have none, and Spanish lets you say all three about anything: work, dinner, life.
Next to its neighbours
Where Spanish parts company with the languages closest to it, and what each one would cost you from here.
Spanish vs French → Spanish vs Portuguese → Spanish vs Portuguese (Brazil) →
Where to practise it
Reading about a language is not speaking it. These are the places I would go to find someone to speak Spanish with.
The Spanish Passepartout is not out yet
Five printed pages that carry you through the arrival. Leave your address and you hear about it first, and nothing else.
Leaving takes one click.
Stories in Spanish
Short stories written inside a measured vocabulary, with the word lists and nothing invented for a textbook.