YOU STILL CAN'T SPEAK SPANISH

Indexed: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]Lots of people say Spanish is easy. It is easy.

[00:00:06]>> If you want to take your Spanish from chump to champ, this is the right video for you, cuz we're covering everything from grammar to profanity, so we can make sure we never end up like that guy.

[00:00:15]Spanish is definitely a lot more predictably fanatic than English ever will be. My god, it only has five vowels. A, a, e, o, or oo. Where have you been all my life? But the consonants are a tad bit more complicated than you've been led to believe. First, let's start simple. Baka baka. In Spanish, B andV are the same sound, which you've probably already heard about, but those two are a part of a group of letters that change based on where they are in a word. At the start of a phrase or after certain consonants, they're hard. bes but between vowels they relax a and I do mean if it's between any two vowels for whatever reason Spanish speakers often tell me that there is no difference remember to always wear your tinfoil hat around native speakers of any language because they have the habit of thinking things are simpler than they really are but the truth is out there now how about we look at some diagraphs cha like in English this is the letter nya but it used to be written as double N. The reason why there's a squiggly line there is because that's where the second N went. It makes a N sound like Ny. And this is its direct counterpart.

[00:01:23]It used to be called El and that's how it was read. But nowadays to the absolute majority of Spanish speakers, it's merged with Y poo poo. In Argentina and Uruguay, and get used to them being the exception to everything, the sounds not only merged but changed initially to, but nowadays it's sh at least to portenos.

[00:01:46]But that's not where the regional differences end. The most recognizable trait of peninsula Spanish is the way Castellians pronounce these two letters.

[00:01:54]Sapato is this really annoying myth I keep hearing that a 14th century Spanish king had a lisp and everyone had to copy him so he didn't feel bad. That is absolutely wrong. In old Spanish, when these two letters were in front of an a or an e, they made a and t sound. Over time, they merged into just a th sound and eventually they flattened out into a th. Do bear in mind though that this is an Iberian exclusive. In Latin America, all three of these letters are pronounced as s varies, but generally it's a h or a h sound depending on where you are. That's after they're making fun of the d. What normally makes the g sound and the h sound also makes a h sound like if it's followed by e or e.

[00:02:36]If you want to write G or G, you're going to have to put an U between the two and not pronounce it. Unless you see this letter, in which case you do pronounce it like in penguino.

[00:02:47]>> Same goes for these two. It's a key, not queni. What did you think this was?

[00:02:51]Italian.

[00:02:55]The first one sounds tragically romantic. The second one, don't say that to your girlfriend. That's because the Spanish letter R makes two different sounds depending on where it is in a word and they're not interchangeable.

[00:03:06]And finally, the most difficult, dare I say impossible phonetic particularity for my English speaking friends to follow. H isn't pronounced. Stop saying hablo, please.

[00:03:23]I literally don't understand chill, you know.

[00:03:29]I think it would be an understatement to say that Spanish verbs are difficult because they're a lot more than difficult. However, I'm going to break it down and make it easy because that's just the kind of guy I am. Verbs represent actions. But in Spanish, they also tell you who did it and when it happened. Spanish likes to avoid pronouns as much as possible, which makes the majority of these verbs incredibly predictable. And the ones that aren't predictable are going to be some of the first words you learn anyway. I don't think I need to explain what function present and future fulfill. But the past is where things get a little bit more complicated.

[00:04:03]Is for actions that happened in the past and finished. While its counterpart is utilized for actions that were ongoing in the past, happening habitually. The conditional is used to say what would happen if a specific set of conditions were met. And it also happens to turn to radical demands into polite requests.

[00:04:22]All of those verbs we just covered are grouped together under the indicative mood or the verbs we use to talk about facts. There are two more. Starting with the imperative, which is used to impotently bark commands at people who don't care and are not going to follow them.

[00:04:38]Whoops, I got a little emotional. Which actually segus into our next point, the subjunctive. If a sentence contains any doubt, emotion, abstract desire, or uncertainty, you are no longer stating an objective fact. So, Spanish forces you to change the verb in order to signal that. It's split into tenses like the ones we already explained earlier, but the future isn't really used anymore outside of writing. Oh, this conjugation might look a bit excessive, but it's actually genius. Multiple words inefficient. One word, super efficient.

[00:05:09]How awesome is that, right? Oh, no. No.

[00:05:13]Well, we can take this opportunity to explain that reflexive verbs are used to describe actions performed on oneself.

[00:05:19]The lines I cross to teach you. Spanish nouns come in two genders. Feminine like handcuffs and masculine like elendario.

[00:05:30]The ending of the word usually tells you which gender it is. To make a word and its respective article plural. All you have to do is add s at the end. Oh, that's beautiful. For the record, adjectives come after the noun and must match it in gender and pluralization. If you want to terrorize native speakers of Spanish, tell them things like blancoon.

[00:05:53]It sounds horrible. Here's another public service announcement. English has a lot of words that sound like Spanish words but don't mean the same thing at all. I have heard multiple real people say, "You just implied you're a man in a permanent state of pregnancy."

[00:06:11]Pronouns are another part of the Spanish system that is partially fractured by region. The second person pronouns do and botto are strictly informal. If you want to address your boss or a group of bosses, you must use the formal and you also need to address the person with third person verbs. Ooh, but if you're in Latin America, good news, you can forget about boss. It has been entirely absorbed by which now pulls double duty for both formal and informal groups.

[00:06:38]There's one final exception, and guess who it applies to? In Argentina and Uruguay, the traditional pronoun to has been completely replaced by the pronoun boss. Normally, this would just be a short footnote, but it actually has its own conjugation pattern. It's botto minus the final e. Before we move on to the coveted profanity section, one last thing. In English, pronouns have different forms based on what function they fulfill in a sentence. Spanish has this, too. You normally drop these.

[00:07:03]These you use for whoever is affected by the verb. These you use when you give something to someone. And you use these with prepositions.

[00:07:11]Disrespect is a universal concept. So don't call your Mexican friend a Castellian swear word hoping he doesn't understand. Of course he knows what you said. It's his native language. He just wouldn't phrase it that way.

[00:07:23]There are some universal curse words. So we're going to start by power scaling them. Like your basic scalogical exclamation, the related verb, and their natural origin point. It's all Otterier stuff. It's weak. Then you cross into a slightly more powerful tier because it's personal and it's descriptive. You're bad. you're dumb or you're a goat, but that one varies by region. It's fine in Mexico and it's a terrible idea in Spain. Finally, if you really want your power level to skyrocket to drop this phrase, I better know how to fight though because you just said that that guy's mother belongs to the oldest profession in the world. And news flash, well, it probably doesn't.

[00:07:57]That whole list I gave you is nothing compared to the regional expressions.

[00:08:03]Colombia, for instance, completely bypasses the power scale and goes directly for calling you, oh my god, badly born. Yes, that's an exclamation.

[00:08:13]Yes, it's also an STI. Hey, uh, do you remember the forbidden phrase from earlier that I told you to never say?

[00:08:18]What if we fused it into one word?

[00:08:22]This verb, which means to copulate, and its many derivatives carry a special status in Mexican cursing culture. As a matter of fact, it's so pervasive that a noble laurate wrote about its philosophical implications. And I know that was a sentence you did not expect to hear. If you'd like to be even more authentically Mexican in your swearing, remember to add this adjective. And if you're brave, direct everything at the other person's mother.

[00:08:46]Oh, no, no, no. I was kidding.

[00:08:49]Argentinians like to use what I can only describe as the most unintentionally hilarious insults you'll be hearing today. The shell of the Barrett. your mother's shell. It implies exactly what you think it does. Bel is used to insult someone's intelligence, but we're going to have to have a quick gander at its etmology to really understand the meaning. Bel means ball, but the suffix implies that it is attached to a person and massive. Its literal definition would be one who is rendered slow by their massive set.

[00:09:20]Spain has a few iconic expressions, but one in particular demands to be addressed. Spaniards have the strange habit of saying I defecate on blank with blank being any number of things. That wouldn't be a problem if its most frequent targets weren't the communion host, the Virgin Mary, the god himself.

[00:09:39]Thank you for liking, commenting, and subscribing if you've done so. I've been your host, Plasterine Hart.