What people write and what people say
CEFR C1
“Si hubiera sabido…”: the past that did not happenThe unreal past: “si hubiera sabido, habría venido”, and the mixed conditions where one…“Por más que lo intente”, “a fin de que sepas”The conjunctions that always take the subjunctive —“para que”, “a fin de que”, “sin…What you can say to whomTelling apart what belongs in a message to a friend, in an email to a stranger and in a…“Por” and “para”, the hard halfThe pairs where both are possible and the meaning changes: “estar por” against “estar…“Ponerse”, “volverse”, “hacerse”, “quedarse”: four “become”Choosing among the four: “ponerse” for a passing state, “volverse” for a lasting change…“Me alegro DE que” but “pienso QUE”Deciding whether a verb or an expression needs “de” in front of “que”: “me acuerdo de…The rule, in three lines
Some things live only in writing —cuyo, the ser passive, the pretérito anterior, connectors like no obstante— and others only in speech: o sea, en plan, pues nada, and leaving sentences unfinished. Producing a written structure out loud is what makes a fluent learner sound stilted.
The usual slip. Writing as you speak, or —far more common in a learner— speaking as the textbook writes.
Why it catches you out. Your reading in Spanish is ahead of your speaking, so you absorb written structures and then produce them out loud. This unit works in the direction nobody teaches: what to LEAVE OUT when you talk.