Learn Spanish

NOTE: It is late July 2012, and I’m in the process of uploading some videos to this blog so hopefully within a few weeks, there will be more songs.

Throughout the years, my friends have been asking me to translate Spanish songs for them. I would typically email them a clip of a video with embedded subtitles so that they could listen and read the words being said in a song.

Just recently it occurred to me that I should post some of these videos on a blog so that others could benefit from this, as I also find it helpful to listen to music and read the lyrics when I’m learning a new language.

The problem with Spanish music is that every country has their own expressions, and many times even I don’t understand some of the lyrics as the expressions are specific to a country or even a region of a country.

I remember the first time I spoke to a Cuban person, and at some point we were talking about the school bus, and he asked me,

A que horas pasa la huahua?

La que?

La huahua, chico!

Huahua?

I had no choice but to simply ask my friend to tell me what the hell ‘la huahua’ meant, and then he said, ‘the bus, niño! Que no hablas Español?

Apparently not.

And that’s one word of probably dozens I have encountered which I have no clue what they mean.

This is why on this blog, I’ll try to put up ‘universal’ Spanish songs, or songs that are written in standard Spanish because there are some songs out there, which even I can’t make sense of some of the lyrics, and I’ve been speaking Spanish since birth.

Nonetheless, I’ll also try to post some Spanish that have some words which are probably only used in Central and South America.
One that comes to mind a very popular bachata of the late 90’s named, El Santo Cachón.

Also, I’ll try to put some songs by older artists who are now either dead or retired but their songs are very popular with Spanish Speakers.

And to start the blog, I’ll share my mom’s favorite singer, Rafael, or as my mom used to call him, “La Rafa” because of his melodramatic performances.

As a child, I didn’t particularly like his music, but once I got older and I listened to his music, I really enjoyed and appreciated Rafael’s songs. They tend to be a bit long, but here is a nice short one which also shows Rafael’s dramatic performance.