Best products from r/Spanish

We found 61 comments on r/Spanish discussing the most recommended products. We ran sentiment analysis on each of these comments to determine how redditors feel about different products. We found 184 products and ranked them based on the amount of positive reactions they received. Here are the top 20.

11. El inventor de juegos (Serie Roja/ Red Serie) (Spanish Edition)

    Features:
  • DURABLE MATERIAL : It is made from robust seeming metal.Size :They are about 7 inches tall.Package included: 1 pair pink elephant bookend. Metal material is very durable and long-lasting. Paint on the surface can prevent it from rust.The surface of the blue coating is very good to control rust, so that the surface is more smooth.
  • FABULOUS DESIGN: designed by environmentally friendly spray paint and non-toxic pollution-free, feel smooth texture, anti-skid basedesign to strengthen the stability of the book. Hollow elephant image design. Classic,creative,fashionable and cute. Whether reading enthusiasts or students can meet your requirements of the book. It is also a pleasure to have them to accompany when you read on the desk.
  • HANDLE YOUR BOOKS: It is suitable for your books and makes your books clean and neat. The reinforced feet are strong enough to keep a whole row of books in place. You can use it to handle your books, dictionaries,cookbooks, reference books,small notebook, family albums ect.Decorate your study room and keeps your books organized and in a good view.These are cute and sturdy. The nonskid pads have a good grip and can hold tall books fine.
  • INDISPENSABLE GIFTS: IT is great gift for all kinds of people.You can give it to your school mates, teachers, friends and children. Cute elephant design are very popular for children. It can attract them to their desk.After you buy our product, you will get 30 days money refund and 3 months replacement if you meet any product problem.
  • GET RID OF MESS:Let you stay away from the mess of the pile of books, so that your desk to restore clean and tidy. Our bookends Made with sturdy metal with advanced technology, strong enough to hold up your books neatly and upright, and hard to bend without rust. Cute design is suitable for child,tennagers and adults. Perfect for huge books, your housing DVD's, video games, or CD's.
El inventor de juegos (Serie Roja/ Red Serie) (Spanish Edition)
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12. Natacha (Serie Naranja / Natacha) (Spanish Edition)

    Features:
  • DURABLE MATERIAL : It is made from robust seeming metal.Size :They are about 7 inches tall.Package included: 1 pair pink elephant bookend. Metal material is very durable and long-lasting. Paint on the surface can prevent it from rust.The surface of the blue coating is very good to control rust, so that the surface is more smooth.
  • FABULOUS DESIGN: designed by environmentally friendly spray paint and non-toxic pollution-free, feel smooth texture, anti-skid basedesign to strengthen the stability of the book. Hollow elephant image design. Classic,creative,fashionable and cute. Whether reading enthusiasts or students can meet your requirements of the book. It is also a pleasure to have them to accompany when you read on the desk.
  • HANDLE YOUR BOOKS: It is suitable for your books and makes your books clean and neat. The reinforced feet are strong enough to keep a whole row of books in place. You can use it to handle your books, dictionaries,cookbooks, reference books,small notebook, family albums ect.Decorate your study room and keeps your books organized and in a good view.These are cute and sturdy. The nonskid pads have a good grip and can hold tall books fine.
  • INDISPENSABLE GIFTS: IT is great gift for all kinds of people.You can give it to your school mates, teachers, friends and children. Cute elephant design are very popular for children. It can attract them to their desk.After you buy our product, you will get 30 days money refund and 3 months replacement if you meet any product problem.
  • GET RID OF MESS:Let you stay away from the mess of the pile of books, so that your desk to restore clean and tidy. Our bookends Made with sturdy metal with advanced technology, strong enough to hold up your books neatly and upright, and hard to bend without rust. Cute design is suitable for child,tennagers and adults. Perfect for huge books, your housing DVD's, video games, or CD's.
Natacha (Serie Naranja / Natacha) (Spanish Edition)
▼ Read Reddit mentions

Top comments mentioning products on r/Spanish:

u/HammerAndFudgsicle · 5 pointsr/Spanish

A couple posts I made on this:

-----

I know it may seem like I'm stating the obvious, but the most important resource is other people. You can study all the books you can find, buy workbooks, take quizzes, and ace all your tests, but unless you are speaking with people on at least a semi-regular basis, even if they're not native, or even a relative beginning like you, you're at best just gonna learn to put together robotic-sounding sentences, and at worst not gonna learn anything at all. Or even worse, get discouraged with your lack of progress, or just sheer boredom, and give up entirely! The important thing is that you're keeping your brain active in piecing together the language and its grammar. Yes, I know there is always that 1/1,000,000 case of some sort of linguistic savant that can skip the practice and just get it (my dad knew a guy like that), but if you're in this subreddit, that's not you.

If you haven't done this yet, instead of looking for courses or workbooks, put time aside to make this happen, so you're speaking for at least a few hours a week. Check meetup.com for events near you. Google search for language exchange websites and see who would be willing to trade you English practice for Spanish practice, maybe even over Skype. Make excuses to meet-up with your Spanish-speaking friends every now and then and try to work as much Spanish into hanging out as possible (I would recommend against meeting up for the explicit purpose of practicing, your friends will get impatient. Make it a part of something else.).

So assuming you've done the above (not like you would skip to this part and say "yeah I'll get around to it" or anything like that...), at least for me, I had a very small amount of resources that I used/still use. They just so happen to be extremely powerful and effective though. I got a to a conversational level after just my first two classes, cause I really took any opportunity available to practice outside of class. This type of book helped me get there much quicker:

https://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Spanish-Cognates-Thematically-Organized/dp/0844279625/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1492034729&sr=8-5&keywords=english+spanish+cognates

Mine wasn't this exact one, I couldn't tell you the name of the specific book cause it was quite a while ago (and if you keep it up, all of a sudden 12 years will pass by, and you can't believe it was that long ago since you started), but any decent English-Spanish Cognate book should do. It gives you a huge jump start by allowing you to transfer a large amount of English vocabulary into Spanish. It was tremendously helpful when I was a complete n00b.

Beyond that, I've only really used three resources, and it's all I seem to need 98% of the time. They are:

  1. Google Translate --A basic translator is a lot more effective than people realize, as the first thing that probably popped into your head is how bad the many of the translation are. The trick is to know what to put in it, and more importantly what not to, and based on what you put in, the likelihood that you got a good translation. First of all, do not put entire paragraphs, or blocks of text. It will come out ridiculous (take a paragraph from any book or article, translate it into Spanish, and then right back to English, for comedic effect). Second, even whole sentences are likely not gonna have a good result. The key is to put in about 1-3 words at a time (above 3 and you're usually asking for it), and then add a few words past your initial 1-3 to see how the translator morphs your entry, to give you an idea how it's treating not just the words, but the concepts behind them). If you're still having a lot of trouble finding it useful, look for some online tips and guides before tossing it aside.
  2. Wordreference.com --Really, really an incredible tool for learning a large variety of languages. An obvious issue you're going to have with the translator is words with multiple meanings. A typical translator is usually very poor at picking up the semantic meaning of a specific word in relation to the words around it, which will often lead to choosing the wrong meaning for that particular situation (for example, translating to English the word 'hacer'. It's not gonna easily tell if it's 'to do' or 'to make'). And that's why there's wordreference. Entire any one word, going from one language to another, and it will not only give you a translation and a definition for every possible meaning of the word, it will give you an example sentence! On top of that, if by chance the meaning you were looking for isn't there, it will automatically add relevant threads from its very active forum to the end of your search, so you can see what other people might say. I really don't need to say more, go ahead and take a look!
  3. Verbix.com --What if there was like, a language, right? And it had, like verbs, and you wanted to know like, how they conjugate? That's the gist here, choose one out of about 50 languages, and it will give you every possible conjugation for any word you enter in that language, on a single page! Nifty!

    That's about it. I've found these tools to be great, and rarely do I need much more.

    -----

    In short, learn the LANGUAGE for YOU and HAVE FUN, don’t learn it for people who are ultimately just hypothetical constructions in your head of the people you MIGHT meet, in hopes of getting a sense of how to avoid embarrassing yourself at all. Now you’re learning for them, and you’re not learning the words, phrases and meanings that are fun an interesting to you. Learn the language the way you want, however inefficient, because you know you’ll stick to it and are in no rush. Laugh with people, even though you know they’re actually laughing at you, cause now you’ve learned to brush things off like a boss. And most importantly use and ABUSE the syntax of the language as creatively as possible so you can try to eventually get close to having the feel of a native speaker (when you walk be a native speaker, think of just how many shitty puns they’ve made in their life, and then stop feeling bad). Do all this, and you are now PASSIONATE about learning it. Without getting here, you will ultimately end up on the reserved side, and one way or another be just translating from your language.

    And I haven’t even mentioned the best part of passion. The fact that it’s only the true way to be boss at the language is only secondary, the real benefit is that it completely removes any requirement of discipline in learning the language, cause if you really want to do something, you don’t need discipline to do it. The next thing you know, 5 years have gone by, you’re not that far from fluent, people tell you ‘man I wish I could learn a foreign language’ and you tell them ‘of course you can too’ as a means to not show that that statement made you feel really awesome. You also lived in a native country of that language for a year, cause, well of course you would! You’re passionate about it, and of course you made that fucking trip happen, how could you not? And you know all those awkward moments and times you embarrassed yourself in front of those new friends in that country, those awesome people you now know that you never expected to have in your life when you started this journey? They now think all that shit was cute, and use the nonsensical phrases you invented ironically in conversation with you. You didn’t even realize the reason they probably see it as cute is so they can embarrass you with it. You also didn’t realize that the only way this could happen consistently is that you’ve mastered the details of this language enough that you too recognize how awkward it is, in any context. Well now, aren’t you a boss? The best part is that people now even think you’re talented or a hard worker, or some other unlikely bullshit. You know better, you just had fun, and then five years went by, because when you started this, you were one of the few who was brave enough to truly put their balls out there, and when the cold wind of embarrassment came blowing, you simply sacked up.

    -----

    Also, I recently found a site called language-exchanges.org. You could probably find a native speaker to speak with on a regular basis there.
u/chocobarbieheads · 2 pointsr/Spanish

I'm not certain what kind of textbooks you can get a hold of in Ecuador, so how about online resources? There are a lot of websites that are very useful in providing you with a good general overview and start to Spanish grammar.

Check these out:
Studyspanish.com is quite good as a first grammar guide. Very concise, and not overwhelming.
Spanishdict.com is a really good online Spanish dictionary. They also have grammar videos/exercises, which I linked to you here.

In my opinion, don't worry much about perfecting grammar from the get-go. Read these grammar guides so you could get somewhat of an idea of how Spanish sentences are constructed, but don't be hard on yourself if you can't remember everything. As you read and immerse yourself more in the language, you'll slowly get a better idea of the grammatical structures in Spanish. Cliche, but it'll take time.

I highly recommend the Learning Spanish Like Crazy audiobook. Start it right after you get through the Study Spanish grammar guide. It teaches you practical Spanish that you can use right away in your everyday conversations. It's really really good! There's also volume 2 and volume 3 for when you complete the first volume.

As you're working through that, you could consider working on this verb workbook at the same time (I believe there are free downloads online), and also Duolingo for exercises in verbs, grammar, and vocab.

Afterwards, maybe check out Verbling for free Spanish classes online that you can join and for finding more conversation partners.

To practise listening, you can download podcasts from iTunes. I found Coffee Time Spanish to be a good one. There's also Extr@, which is a series aimed towards beginners. Turn on the subs and follow along. The acting is pretty ridiculous in the beginning, but it does give you some confidence when you find that you understand everything. The only thing with this is that they use Spanish from Spain, so the accent is different from those of South American countries.

You're not in school (at least as a student haha) so don't feel confined to textbooks and having to do everything the traditional classroom way! Language-learning should be a fun and enjoyable process, and there are a lot of different ways to do it. Also, conversing with native speakers is indeed currently your most valuable resource. Since you're there, take advantage! Talk to people in Spanish using whatever you know/learn that day. Every learner is a beginner at some point, so don't be afraid.

Looking forward to the intermediate-level-resources-seeking post. :) Good luck!

u/benjielwarro · 15 pointsr/Spanish

Some years ago, I wrote a screenplay for a short film about a cursed Aztec sword that was found by a Young man in modern times, and he fought against all kind of monsters and creatures from Mexican folklore and mythology.

This was never filmed, but we took a lot of conceptual pictures, and some friends made a few drawings, we even build a real black macuahuitl.

Using this old drawings (with the approval of the friends who drew it), I finished the prologue of the story, in storybook form. It’s a very short story, and I made it bilingual, so people who knows english or spanish are able to read it.

It has 16 pages with drawings, but the digital version will be free until tuesday, so, if someone wants to download it, I’ll add the links on Amazon Mexico and Amazon US (It's free in every marketplace).

Thank you for taking the time to read this, downloading it, and giving me your opinion.

Black Macuahuitl on Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JR4SCMF

Black Macuahuitl on Amazon MX: https://www.amazon.com.mx/dp/B07JR4SCMF

u/profeNY · 1 pointr/Spanish

That is a surprise. I've taught from Ven Conmigo and remember it as a normal textbook. The grammar explanations are in there but are hidden between flashy graphics, which is what many textbook writers do today for what I think are misguided reasons (they think textbooks that looks like music videos will appeal to young minds, and that grammar is best intuited/deduced rather than instructed). The trick is to consult the table of contents which will send you straight to the grammar bits.

You may profit from an grammar book to consult on the side, like The Ultimate Spanish Review and Practice which is available second hand for (literally) a penny plus postage.

u/PedroFPardo · 3 pointsr/Spanish

This one is a little bit more advanced

http://www.amazon.com/curioso-incidente-medianoche-Letras-Bolsillo/dp/8498383730

But I still thinking is a good reading for an adult. It's like is written by a child with Asperger so everything is extremely well explained and I think it's easy to understand. But the concept and the story is quite profound and interesting to keep an adult hooked. It's not a book for children.

You can find the original version in English as well
http://www.amazon.com/Curious-Incident-Dog-Night-Time/dp/1400032717/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

u/Woodcharles · 1 pointr/Spanish

I recommend studyspanish. They break everything down very simply and have a bunch of free tests so you can drill it for a short time.

Duolingo can be good for this too. It will get you using he/she/you/they etc more often than you would in a natural conversation at this stage.

Book-wise I really recommend this one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/English-Grammar-Students-Spanish-Guides/dp/0934034419/ref=sr_1_48?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1525882659&sr=1-48&keywords=spanish+grammar Which gives really clear explanations - it explains how the grammar rule works in English, and then in Spanish, so it doesn't seem quite so 'odd' or unfamiliar.

u/chas1116 · 1 pointr/Spanish

Hey Mikeybonobo,

Big apologies, for both the tardiness of my response and general innaccuracy of my initial reply. First off, I believe it's FSI (not FSL), which I'm sure didn't help you find things. It stands for Foreign Service Institute, and is the US State Department's language training center. A million years ago they developed a program to get diplomats and foreign service officers near-fluent in about 6 months. Apparently the still offer this and it's rather intense; 6 hours of classroom, plus afterhours work, and you get booted from the program if you don't pass their regular advancement tests. Anyway, the original audio used in in the program is knows as the FSI Spanish (their are two courses, basic and programmatic). I'm not sure of the fine distinctions between the two, but they are public domain and available here (https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/FSI/fsi-spanish-index.html).

In the 90s (I think), a commercial effort "updated" these audios and repackaged them, offering them to the public as the "Platiquemos" series. The audio quality is better and they are somewhat less outdated (though still laughably outdated).

I have listened to the first 30 sessions of the Platiquemos audios (about an hour each). I believe there are 54 sessions or so. I found them online for free, which I believe was probably not legal. They are available on Amazon, if for no other reason than to read about them: https://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Basic-Course-Platiquemos-Level/dp/1582141827.

It was these two reviews that originally turned me on to this method: http://www.tobefluent.com/2014/02/07/talk-like-a-diplomat-from-1961-how-i-use-fsi-spanish/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/Spanish/comments/3icoan/fsi_basic_spanish_questions_about_the_course_and/?st=iylf2ec7&sh=c59cd5bc.

In my experience they audio sessions are (1) painfully boring and (2) better time spent than anything else I've done to improve my Spanish, including talking with Peruvians (the audio sessions are comparable in quality only with tutoring, I would say). I follow the reviewer's recommendation: go on a walk and listen to them. It's too hard, at least for me, to listen and sit still in a chair.

FYI: I found the platiquemos courses available via torrent.

Hope that helped clarify things. Sorry for the confusion.

u/PabloEscribir · 1 pointr/Spanish

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1444137697/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527170727&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=a+new+reference+grammar+of+modern+spanish&dpPl=1&dpID=41bTv%2BMiftL&ref=plSrch

This is a dense heavy book, but I'd argue a must have. Advanced level means advanced workouts, so it's not going to hold your hand with exercises to fill out. But it's exhaustive in what it covers. I mainly just use it for reference, but you could try taking it a chapter/subject at a time.

I'd recommend writing/speaking lots of practice sentences for each topic to really internalize them. You could use a site like italki or the like to have a native speaker double check your examples.

u/Maggie_A · 1 pointr/Spanish

If you want a little starter book then go for this...

https://www.amazon.com/See-Say-Spanish-Word-Picture/dp/0451168372

This is her book for serious Spanish learners...

https://www.amazon.com/Madrigals-Magic-Key-Spanish-Creative/dp/0385410956

It's been in print since 1953 because it works.

>Committed to learning Castilian Spanish well in the next 4 years. I’d like to get into those little starter books recommended but I would love a weekly lesson type deal with vocab and stuff.

And you'll never learn Spanish well in 4 years by doing weekly lessons.

It has to be virtually every day.

I've been studying Spanish for over two years on my own and I just this summer learned how to conjugate virtually any verb in Spanish. (Regular verbs are easy to learn. You can put the rules for that on one page. It's all the irregularities that make it complicated.)

u/Dunskap · 1 pointr/Spanish

Practice Makes Perfect Spanish Verb Tenses

Practice Makes Perfect Spanish Pronouns and Prepositions

I've been using these and they've been so helpful. I like workbooks because I can write in them. Plus super cheap ($10)


u/lichlord · 3 pointsr/Spanish

As a preface, most of my media consumption comes from the southern cone...

Luis Pescetti is a great Argentine children's author. He reminds me a bit of Mr Roger's Neighborhood.
Natacha ¡Se vivió! (free) is one of my favorite stories. You can listen to it here too. Note that these stories are written with vos as the second person singular, not tú.

Pablo de Santis is another Argentine author with some great children's stories. They appear to be for a slightly more mature/older audience than Luis Pescetti's.

u/cg_roseen · 3 pointsr/Spanish

Don't have any PDF links for you, but I will say RE: Rosetta Stone...

You can get many of the same resources for free on Duolingo. But it depends what kind of Spanish`you want to learn. For example, if it's Iberian Spanish (Castellano, Spanish Spanish) then duolingo might not be such a safe bet because the Spanish on there is based mostly on the Latin American dialects.

If it's physical books you're into, this is my bible. I have found it so comprehensive and it fills in some gaps nicely. But perhaps also get this to give you a nice grounding in the grammar and syntax.

u/ApisEuropea · 1 pointr/Spanish

Here is our first year Uni grammar book, which reaches out to level B1. For full on conversations you would need about B2, which can take a year or two or several months in España itself. If you master that grammar you are well on your way though, the corrections are in the back.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/8484437264/ref=mp_s_a_1_fkmr2_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1472902178&sr=8-1-fkmr2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=grammatica+estudiante+espanol

If you can handle the base line being in French www.espagnolfacile.com is a great site to test specific elements. All users can make tests and theory parts with explanations and corrections, it's free.

Try to find vocab books that also fit into the levels (yours seem to be unbased at first glance), we used Vente 1 and 2 apart from direct tutoring but these might be too much of a class setting for you.

The common reference system isn't perfect, but it is properly worked out with competence ranks. If you are willing to read up on it, this is an extensive pdf on the matter. It is a method on the platter, conceived by some very bright minds and many years of pan-European research.

u/Rialspicy · 2 pointsr/Spanish

A great textbook for grammar is Spanish Grammar in Context https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spanish-Grammar-Context-Languages/dp/0415723477/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

They will give you a good chance of seeing the grammar points used in specific contexts. I would think of what you want to say in English, and then pick out different grammar points you can study so you can say it in Spanish.

u/DiskPidge · 2 pointsr/Spanish

1000 words is one thing, but at the very beginning, I always start a language with just the 100 most common verbs. You can verb your way through anything and point to nouns using "eso" and "cosa", and once you have that, everyday objects will be easy to remember as you interact with them and experience life in Spain.

https://www.spanishdict.com/guide/the-100-most-common-spanish-verbs

​

Start by learning the present simple conjugation and try to learn everything in context, and once you have that mastered go onto the next.

http://www.conjugation.org/

​

This series of books is very nice for grammar.

https://www.amazon.es/Gram%C3%A1tica-uso-del-espa%C3%B1ol-pr%C3%A1ctica/dp/8434893517

I know some people may disagree with me here, but I find the Duolingo course actually quite handy as a study guide - you don't even really need to use it, it just has a nice progression of vocabulary topics and grammar topics to study and you can just search for the topics and find resources that work for you.

u/BlissteredFeat · 5 pointsr/Spanish

A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish by John Butt and Carmen Benjamin is amazing. It has everything in it in excruciating detail. Well researched with examples from Spanish press and literature throughout the world. There is some slang in there, but not because they want you to learn slang; it's simply incidental to how grammar constructions are used in the real world. I imagine the new fifth edition has even more documentation and clarity.

edit: clarity

u/ayaPapaya · 2 pointsr/Spanish

I really like Easy Spanish: Step by Step. There's a lot of great vocabulary and exercises (if you're into that), and short stories to read that if you're following along you should be able to comprehend entirely. Oh! and it's cheap!

u/AnonymousHermitCrab · 6 pointsr/Spanish

I asked Reddit a similar question a while ago. I had someone suggest this book to me: https://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Vocabulary-Bible-Memory-Learner-ebook/dp/B012DSZATW

​

I havent gotten the book myself yet because Im a broke college student, but there was a free trial thingy and it appears to have some good examples of this kinda thing in it.

​

I cant find the actual website, but I think the main example they used in the description was the relationship between the words "Correr" and "Courier."

u/erebea · 5 pointsr/Spanish

A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish Grammar

It isn't tailored to any exams, nor it is it a textbook, but it has EVERYTHING you could possibly need to know about Spanish grammar.

I also agree with /u/ImovedtoEurope's suggestion of Repase y Escriba. You can get the older versions for about $10 on Amazon.

u/citizen_lost · 2 pointsr/Spanish

I really like Gramática Básica del Estudiante de Español... https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/8484437264/

One of the few Spanish text books that I would recommend.

u/NotReallyASnake · 3 pointsr/Spanish

I have a ton of resources. I'm currently working through the book Easy Spanish Step by Step but I also have Complete Spanish Grammar. I'm also doing Pimsleur, Duolingo, and the language transfer course. It's been taking me a long time to get through each of these since my time is split between each.

I can't say any of these are tailored towards conversational practice though. Do you know any beginner books that are good for that?

u/Florbs · 3 pointsr/Spanish

How about El Curioso Incidente del Perro a Medianoche?

I know it was originally written in English but it has beginners (ish) vocabulary and the chapters are very short, which I personally prefer anyway :)

u/Johnnn05 · 6 pointsr/Spanish

I always liked this

As a reference guide I use this

u/gayriihtiyari · 1 pointr/Spanish

These have reallly helped me with grammar and reading.