Welcome to Vol. 77 of the Spanish Online Newsletter! Part of the Spanish Learning Blog - your weekly lessons with mp3 files, as well as links to Spanish travel spots and more. Thanks to all who voted in the ipod poll - the results were quite interesting! As of today, the results indicate that approximately 66% of the voters have ipods, almost all are interested in audio downloads, and less than half the voters said they'd prefer mp3 downloads, while more than half prefer the podcast format. Muy bien - I'll continue to produce both :) I don't have the new podcast online yet, but it should be up by tomorrow evening - so please check the website or iTunes a bit later.

This week's podcast should be fun, as we take a look at the song La Bamba, and what grammar pointers it can help us learn or remember. A couple of other points I'd like to make before we get started, and the first for anybody interested in finding a penpal to correspond in Spanish with - please check out our Penpal Finder. We have 26 ads listed - and surely those of you in search of a penpal can find at least 1 or 2 people to write to! Also, remember, don't place an ad until you've answered at least 1 ad that's already there.

Final note is about our new advertising opportunities. As we're expanding our free offerings, this takes a lot of time and energy! In order to help pay for the current growth we're experiencing (over 12,000 people have listened to the podcasts) - I've decided to allow a small amount of ads for Spanish related items. Don't worry we'll try to keep them as user friendly as possible, and you won't see any blinking images and pop ups from us! You can see our rate card online at http://www.instaspanish.com/ads - or shoot us an email, ads [at] instaspanish.com. One final note if you hit "reply" on one of your newsletters, that email goes into an automated system that subscribes and unsubscribes people. If you want to write to me personally, you can write to me by clicking here. We are always happy to hear suggestions and feedback about the newsletter and podcast - and look forward to hearing from you.

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La Bamba Audio and Grammar Spanish Lesson

Entire La Bamba Podcast - includes La Bamba mp3

Click to hear streaming song file (free Real Player required)

Click to download full La Bamba song mp3
(already included in the podcast mp3 above)

This following lesson was taken from my program Musical Spanish - and you can find a more detailed lesson with the full lyrics, activity, listening test, etc by clicking here. As you can see, this lesson includes quite a few grammar pointers - accent marks, masculine and feminine, plural, and the future tense. So please make sure to bookmark that webpage and go through the entire lesson if you haven't already, as the La Bamba Spanish Lesson is one of our most popular features on the website. One element not covered in that lesson that I'm going to cover here today is how the word NO is used in Spanish, in place of the English word NOT (remember that words like don't and won't are shortened forms of do not and will not!)

yo no soy marinero

While this may seem really simple to anybody who is an intermediate Spanish student, for beginners who are native English speakers - the above sentence can help them to remember how to use equivalent to the English word NOT. Literally, the sentence "yo no soy marinero" would be translated "I no am sailor", but of course the real Spanish meaning is "I am not a sailor". You may have heard a Spanish speaker using "NO" instead of not - "I no want to go" "I no understand" - etc. Don't make the same mistake when you begin speaking Spanish! Just remember that the NO goes before the verb.

Let's look at some other example using verbs from the song La Bamba

Yo no bailo los lunes
I don't dance on Mondays

El no necesita traer nada a la fiesta
He does not need to bring anything to the party

Yo no iré a la iglesia el domingo porque no voy a estar
I won't go to church this Sunday because I'm not going to be here

Worksheet/Activity: La Bamba Fill in the Blanks

Quiz: La Bamba Grammar

Hangman: La Bamba Spanish Lesson

Go to Spanish Online Learning Menu

Spanish Artist of the Week

I've decided to begin featuring Spanish speaking artists here, as entertainment is a fun way to practice your language skills. As I'm obviously quite partial to music, we'll start with the Colombian sensation Juanes, the multiple grammy winning artist. His cumbia rock style music took the Latin pop scene by storm a few years back, and he's now got 2 more albums under his belt, in my opinion each one better than the last. His song "La Camisa Negra" has been at the top of my iPod playlist for weeks now!

To hear some of Juanes' stuff - (assuming you don't have the free iTunes...) - you can try here - although the selection is a bit limited.

Spanish Learning Product of the Week:

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