BOTTOM LINE: This
WordBrewery deck features (1)
real sentences from Spanish news articles (2) that
contain exclusively high-frequency words, (3) are paired with
professional audio recorded by Venezuelan voice actors, and (4) provide
three translations per sentence to help you understand the native text, including one human translation and two machine translations.
The sentences were written by native speakers, for native speakers in major Spanish-language publications.
WordBrewery's scraping and sentence scoring algorithms then found and selected these sentences for inclusion in our database of useful sentences because they
contain exclusively high-frequency words (plus proper nouns)--specifically, the
500 most common word families in Spanish. I exported them from a WordBrewery sentence list like the one displayed in the screenshot below, and added human translations, two machine translations (Google and Microsoft), and
native-speaker audioto each card.
A NOTE ON REVIEWS: Decks like this are not common. Creating them is an expensive, time-consuming process.
If you appreciate professional decks containing authentic text and native audio, please leave a constructive review. Reviews claiming that this deck's sentences contain "errors" are misleading and unfortunate. Because each of these sentences is pulled directly from a reputable Spanish-language newspaper, they almost certainly do not have errors. For one of the Spanish sentences to have an error, all of these must be true: (1) the error appeared in the original news article written by and for native Spanish speakers in a major publication; (2) the native-speaking voice actors recorded the erroneous sentence when they were instructed to delete any sentences they had any doubts about; (3) the human translators translated the erroneous sentence when they were instructed to delete any sentences they had doubts about; and (4) no one has previously discovered and reported the error by reporting the sentence with the thumbs-down icon on WordBrewery or
emailing me. In short, you can trust the sentences because they were written and screened by native speakers.
If there is a
technical problem (e.g. the wrong audio file attached to a sentence) or a translation problem, please
email me and I will update the deck as needed. (Note: For some reason, in the audio samples embedded on this page, the audio is not paired correctly with the cards. But that is not normally the case with deck itself.)
A NOTE ON TRANSLATIONS: I have provided 2-3 translations for each sentence as guidelines to help you understand the sentence; usually this includes one human translation as well as machine translations from Microsoft and Google. Translation is an imperfect science, and machine translation is particularly imperfect. Because this deck uses real, unmodified sentences, it is filled with idioms that are common in Spanish speech and writing but rarely encountered in materials written for learners. Idioms are particularly difficult to translate and usually have several plausible translations. So, here is my advice:
Do not think of translations as something you must memorize; instead, work to understand the original sentence, relying on the translations only as needed, and then memorize the original sentence. If you need additional help with a sentence,
email me or do what I usually do and
ask native speakers for help on Quora or Reddit.
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Original deck description:
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Master the 500 most important Spanish words—enough to understand about 75% of Spanish writing and conversations—in the context of 800+ sentences from
WordBrewery's database of real Spanish sentences from the news. These sentences:
- Have been carefully selected by WordBrewery's sentence-scoring algorithm because they contain exclusively the 500 most high-frequency words in Spanish (plus names);
- Are accurate, authentic sentences from Spanish-language news sites, written by native speakers and for native speakers;
- Provide translations into English by WordBrewery translators as well as Google and Microsoft machine translations;
- Have been professionally recorded by WordBrewery's native-speaker voice actors from Venezuela.
- Include many idioms and grammatical constructions not typically found in beginner materials, making these cards especially useful for review and accelerated learning.
Mastering these sentences will
give you an excellent foundation for continued Spanish studies and position you to excel in first-year college Spanish or AP Spanish courses. They will also prepare you to read
WordBrewery's intermediate, advanced, and master-level sentences, which can help you master as many as 30,000 of the most common Spanish words.
You can practice these sentences, discover thousands of others, create your own study lists manually or automatically, and export study lists for use in Anki at
WordBrewery. Be sure to also check out our
blog.
- If you find this deck valuable and want to see more
WordBrewery content in the future, please leave a positive review and help us spread the word about
WordBrewery.
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¡Buena suerte!
Example WordBrewery sentence before export to CSV:
Screenshot from a WordBrewery Spanish Course:
Thank you for trying the deck, and please
leave a constructive review and
email me with any problems or questions.