I stumbled across a nice feature on the Instituto Cervantes site the other day: The Museo de Horrores, a collection of errors commonly made by native speakers and students of Spanish. It's worth checking out, even if just to pat yourself on the back for all the mistakes you DON'T often make!

"To learn Spanish well, it is wise to choose an accredited center and, if possible, a center in a Spanish-speaking country, in order to pick up the everyday language".

Back in March of 2004, our director of studies, Caridad Santana, spent some time talking with the director of the Real Academia Española about Spanglish,  the future of the Spanish language, and what advice he would offer to students looking for a Spanish language school and teachers entrusted with the teaching of the language of Cervantes:

"Para aprender bien español conviene elegir un centro acreditado y, si es posible, en un país hispanohablante para poder captar bien los usos de la calle".

Entrevista a Víctor García de la Concha, director de la Real Academia Española y premio Príncipe de Asturias 2000.
Salamanca, marzo de 2004

Caridad Santana, directora de estudios, don Quijote
 

P: Dados los tiempos que corren en España en cuanto a políticas lingüísticas se refiere, ¿español o castellano?

Click on "more" to see a larger image. Happy Holidays from Salamanca!   more »

Is your New Year's Resolution to learn Spanish? Bounce up a level? Pass the DELE? Survive an interview in Spanish? Our teachers have put together a few tips on how to make sure that's one 2007 resolution you keep...   more »

The Education Guardian recently published a thought-provoking article about languages and jobs:    more »

Got a minute? How about a quick online game of hangman in Spanish?

La "BBC en español" ha publicado un interesante artículo sobre el uso de "spanglish":    more »

In October the Instituto Cervantes released a  new 900 page volume titled “The Encyclopedia of Spanish in the world” (El enciclopedia del español en el mundo).

Published in honor of the 15th anniversary of the Instituto Cervantes, Spain’s official cultural ambassador (with 66 sites around the world – click here to find out if there is a IC in your country), the encylclopedia includes articles by 220 authors, including Carlos Fuentes and Antonio Muñoz Molina. Through 900 pages the authors analyze the presence of Spanish in the world in a number of fields: education, literature, science, technology and the internet. Among the book's intriguing conclusions is this: worldwide, 14 million people are currently learning the language of Cervantes in a school or private language school.

In which countries do most of the 14 million Spanish students live?

It's official! You can now officially use "internet", "rap" and "chat" in your Spanish conversations and homework. If your teacher complains, tell her or him to take it up with the academy - the Real Academia Española, the institution entrusted to determine what is and isn't a Spanish word.

Spanish words appearing for the first time in the RAE's new "Essential Dictionary" include:   more »