Spanish Lessons

Lessons

Beginner

· 18 lessons

Greetings & Formality

Spanish splits 'you' into tú (informal) and usted (formal) — a distinction English dropped centuries ago (English used to have thou/you, but thou died out). Start here before any other vocabulary, because it shapes every conversation you'll have.

Lesson 2A1

Alphabet & Pronunciation

Spanish spelling is far more consistent than English's — once you learn a handful of sound-to-letter rules, you can pronounce almost any word correctly on sight, unlike English, where the same letter combination can sound completely different from word to word.

Lesson 3A1

Numbers 1–10

Spanish numbers 1–10 are simple standalone words, just like English's one–ten — but unlike English, Spanish's uno changes form to match the gender of what it's counting.

Lesson 4A1

Family

Spanish nouns carry grammatical gender in a way English no longer does — but for family words, gender simply tracks the person's sex, so it lines up naturally with English he/she and matches your instincts closely.

Lesson 5A1

Articles & Gender

Every Spanish noun is either masculine or feminine, and the article in front of it — el, la, un, una — is your main clue. English dropped grammatical gender centuries ago (a table and a book are both just 'it'), so this is a genuinely new habit to build, not a mapping from anything English already does.

Lesson 6A1

Subject Pronouns & Two Verbs for 'To Be': ser vs. estar

Spanish splits the single idea of 'to be' into two separate verbs, ser and estar, chosen by whether you're describing something permanent or temporary — a distinction English's single verb 'to be' doesn't make at all, so treat this as a brand-new category to learn, not a mapping from an existing habit.

Lesson 7A1

Sentence Structure

Spanish keeps the same subject-verb-object skeleton English uses — genuinely good news — but then drops the subject pronoun far more freely than English ever does, since the verb ending alone already signals who's doing the action.

Lesson 8A1

Plural Nouns

Spanish pluralizes nouns by adding -s or -es depending on the ending — genuinely close to how English does it, so this is one of the more comfortable topics in the course.

Lesson 9A1

Numbers 11–100

Spanish numbers 11–15 are irregular standalone words, much like English's eleven and twelve — but Spanish keeps that irregular streak three numbers longer before becoming transparent, and its higher numbers actually build in the same order English does.

Lesson 10A1

Present Tense: Regular -AR Verbs

Spanish sorts every regular verb into one of three families by its infinitive ending — -ar, -er, or -ir — and each family conjugates on a single predictable pattern, unlike English verbs, which barely change at all across persons.

Lesson 11A1

Present Tense: Regular -ER and -IR Verbs

The other two regular verb families, -er and -ir, share almost the same ending pattern as -ar and as each other — only the nosotros and vosotros forms differ — so learning all three together is more efficient than treating them as unrelated, especially since English gives you no equivalent scaffolding to lean on.

Lesson 12A1

Question Words

Spanish question words all carry a written accent mark that doesn't change their pronunciation but flags a question — a spelling signal English has no equivalent for. The bigger structural win for English speakers: Spanish never needs a helper verb like English's 'do' after a question word.

Lesson 13A1

Negation

Spanish negates a sentence with a single word, no, placed right before the verb — simpler than English's 'do not' construction, since Spanish needs no helper verb at all.

Lesson 14A1

Adjective Agreement

Spanish adjectives change their ending to match the gender and number of the noun they describe — something English adjectives never do at all, since English adjectives are completely invariant regardless of what they modify.

Lesson 15A1

Possessive Adjectives

Spanish possessives — mi, tu, su, and the rest — mostly stay fixed regardless of gender, much like English's my/your/his/her never change either. The one exception, nuestro/nuestra, is the sole place Spanish asks for gender agreement English never asks for.

Lesson 16A1

Daily Routine & Telling Time

Spanish tells time with a feminine 'the' agreeing with hora ('hour') that's silently implied — es la una but son las dos — a quirk English's plain 'it's one o'clock' doesn't have at all, since English never changes 'it's' based on the hour.

Lesson 17A1

Food & Ordering

Ordering food in Spanish leans on the same politeness instinct English already has — softening 'I want' into 'I would like' — so this lesson mostly just gives you the Spanish words for a habit you already practice in English.

Lesson 18A1

Self-Introduction, Countries & Nationalities

Introducing yourself in Spanish pulls together several things from earlier lessons at once — ser for identity, gender-agreeing nationality words — and me llamo is a reflexive phrase ('I call myself') where English just uses a plain possessive, 'my name is'.