Latin American Spanish

1. Import into Anki

Getting your deck into Anki takes about a minute. Your download link is in the receipt email from Lemon Squeezy, the payment service we use. It usually arrives within a few minutes.

Deck files are large, 130 MB or more depending on the deck, so use Wi-Fi when you download on a phone or tablet.

Another way: import the deck on a computer first, then sync it to your phone with a free AnkiWeb account. Your phone still needs the Anki app: AnkiDroid on Android or AnkiMobile on iPhone and iPad. The first sync can take a while because of the audio, so wait for it to finish.

Latin American Spanish by Eidetic appears in your deck list with five sub-decks: Survival Spanish (A1), Daily Life (A2), Fluency (B1), Advanced (B2) and Pattern Drills. Everything, audio included, arrives in the one file.

2. Recommended settings

Anki's defaults work, but these adjustments will give you better results with this deck:

• New cards per day: 10-15. That pace leaves room for the Pattern Drills as the weeks go on.
• Maximum reviews per day: 200. The default of 200 is fine. If your daily reviews regularly exceed 150, reduce new cards for a few days.
• Learning steps: 1m 10m. Anki's default. Leave it.

To change these: click the gear icon next to the deck name, then "Options."

3. How the three card types work

Look at ahorita, which can mean 'right now' or 'in a bit', depending on context. A Recognition card shows the Spanish and wants the meaning. A Production card shows the meaning and wants the Spanish. A Cloze card shows a sentence with ahorita missing.

The deck holds 1,824 entries, which become 5,472 cards, plus 85 Pattern Drill cards in their own sub-deck. The drills cover stem-changing verbs, the subjunctive, reflexive verbs, diminutives, voseo and a set of pronunciation drills. Every entry has a pronunciation guide and an example sentence, about 40% carry a cultural note, and many carry a dialect variants note.

Feeling overwhelmed? Suspend the Production cards for the first week. Focus on Recognition and Cloze. Add Production back once your daily reviews feel manageable. To suspend: select cards in the browser, right-click, "Toggle Suspend."

4. Where to start

The 47 themes are numbered by level: 1.1 to 1.15 in Survival Spanish (A1), 2.1 to 2.15 in Daily Life (A2), 3.1 to 3.12 in Fluency (B1) and 4.1 to 4.5 in Advanced (B2). Each entry carries a theme tag, for example theme:1.3_Street_Food_&_Fondas. The base is Mexican Spanish. The plural 'you' is ustedes throughout, as across Latin America, so there is no vosotros here.

• Starting from zero. Begin with Survival Spanish (A1): First Conversations, Street Food & Fondas, Getting Around, At the Market and Essential Mexican Expressions. Spanish and English share a lot of vocabulary, so many cards will look familiar before you have studied them.
• Restarting after school Spanish. Test yourself in Daily Life (A2) and suspend what you already know. What a classroom leaves out is the spoken side. ¿Mande?, meaning 'pardon?' in Mexico, and ahorita are the kind of entries to look for. Fluency (B1) also has a theme called False Friends & Tricky Words.
• Spanish at home or at work in the US. More than 41 million people in the US speak Spanish at home, and most trace their roots to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. Open Family & Relationships, My Home, At Work and At the Doctor first, all in Daily Life (A2).
• Heading beyond Mexico. Colombian and Argentine forms are flagged in the dialect variants notes, so what you hear from a coworker or on Netflix starts to make sense. Regional Variations is theme 4.3, in Advanced (B2).

What is inside Latin American Spanish

1,824 entries, 5,472 cards, and 85 Pattern Drills. Every entry has audio, a pronunciation guide and an example sentence.

• Four level sub-decks. Survival Spanish (A1) holds about 1,620 cards, Daily Life (A2) about 1,850, Fluency (B1) about 1,440 and Advanced (B2) 570. The A1 to B2 levels are our own estimate of when a learner needs each word, not an official CEFR placement.
• Pattern Drills. 85 cards in a sub-deck of their own.
• Two voices. A male voice and a female voice, both in a Mexican accent.
• Dialect variant notes. Colombian and Argentine forms, where usage splits from the Mexican base.

One Mexican entry, field by field

The entry for chido shows what a slang word carries with it.

• Spanish and pronunciation. chido and CHEE-doh, an adjective.
• English. 'Cool, awesome, nice.'
• Example sentence. 'Está muy chido tu carro nuevo.' means 'Your new car is really cool.'
• Dialect variants. Colombia: bacano or chévere. Argentina: copado or piola.

Two more Mexican entries

An elastic word for now, and a snack.

• ahorita. 'Right now / in a bit / soon / later (context-dependent).' The cultural note calls it the most famously ambiguous word in Mexican Spanish. A variants note says that in Colombia it means 'right now' more literally, and that in Argentina ahora is standard.
• antojito. 'Mexican snack, street food item', in Fluency (B1). The sentence is 'Vamos a comer unos antojitos al mercado.' The note says the word literally means 'little craving'.

The Mexican base

Latin American Spanish is not one accent. The deck teaches a clear Mexican base and marks the places where other countries differ.

• Ustedes, not vosotros. One word covers every plural 'you', formal or friendly: 'ustedes hablan'.
• C and Z sound like S. In Latin America ciudad is said see-oo-DAD. The th sound of Spain is not used.
• Slang changes by country. 'Cool' is chido in Mexico, chévere in Colombia and copado in Argentina. A variant note helps when you meet one.
• One word to avoid. Coger means 'to take' in Spain, but it is vulgar in Mexico, Argentina, Chile and much of the Caribbean. Use agarrar or tomar.

Beyond the Mexican base

Beyond Mexico, each country has habits of its own. These are the ones our guide lists, and the variant notes point to them.

• Vos. In Argentina, Uruguay and much of Central America, vos replaces tú in casual speech: 'vos tenés' instead of 'tú tienes'. The Pattern Drills include voseo cards.
• A different ll. In Argentina and Uruguay, ll and y sound like the sh in show. Calle is said KA-sheh and yo is said sho.
• The recent past. Latin America usually reaches for the simple past: 'desayuné tarde'. Spain prefers 'he desayunado tarde'.
• Money and friends. Money is lana or varo in Mexico and plata in Colombia. Argentina says guita or plata. A casual friend is wey or compa in Mexico and parce in Colombia.

Common questions

Short answers from our guide comparing Castilian and Latin American Spanish.

• Do I need to learn vosotros? Not here. Vosotros is the informal 'you all' used across most of Spain. Latin America uses ustedes for every plural 'you', which is what this deck teaches.
• Which Spanish is more useful in the United States? Latin American Spanish, by a wide margin. More than 41 million people in the US speak Spanish at home, and most trace their roots to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
• Will someone from Spain understand me? Almost completely. The gap is closer to British against American English than to two separate languages.
• Can I switch to Spain's Spanish later? Easily. You adjust your accent, swap a handful of words and add vosotros. It is nothing like starting a new language.

Setting a Latin American pace

Study 10 to 15 new cards a day and you meet 3 to 5 new words, since each word makes three cards. Survival Spanish (A1) holds about 1,620 cards, which is roughly 110 to 160 days of new cards. Plan by sub-deck, not by the whole deck, and give the 85 Pattern Drills their own short session once the first themes feel comfortable.

Practice and reading, Mexican base

All of this is free to use.

• Free browser preview. A set of 20 Latin American Spanish cards you can study in the browser, audio included.
• Can You Order from This Mexican Street Food Menu? A 10-question quiz on taqueria menus and ordering customs.
• Castilian vs Latin American Spanish. The differences in accent, grammar and vocabulary.
• Learn Spanish. Our three Spanish decks side by side.

The "Again" button is your friend

When Anki shows you a card and you don't know the answer, hit Again. Not "Hard." Not "Good." Again.

Spaced repetition works best when you're honest about what you don't know. Cards you mark "Again" come back sooner. Cards you know well space out further. The algorithm adjusts to you. Trust it.

Audio on every word

Every word card has professional audio. On desktop, audio plays automatically when the card appears. On mobile, tap the speaker icon.

Every entry has audio in two voices, one male and one female, both in a Mexican accent, for the word and the sentence. The phonetic pronunciation guide sits beside it, so you can check what your ear caught. Listen first, then read the guide.

Lifetime updates

Your purchase includes free updates for the life of the product. When we add new cards, fix audio, or improve translations, you can re-download the latest version from Lemon Squeezy at no extra cost.

When we release a new version, it appears on your original Lemon Squeezy download link; download it again to get it.

Need help?

Reply to any Eidetic email or reach out at hello@eidetic.cards. We read everything and respond fast.