Advanced Spanish Words, Phrases, Slang and Idioms

After finishing the top 5k Spanish decks, I found that it was missing quite a few words so I've been adding every word I come across while reading, watching YouTube and other media. Most of these words are C1 level with a usage level between 1 and 10 fpm (frequency per million) as they appear in the OpenSubtitles database which ranks words according to how often they are used in spoken language. I wrote a program that sums up the fpm of each word and all of its conjugations to get a more accurate measurement. (More details below)

My goal for this deck is to include all of the less common words you need for passive comprehension. That's why I keep a text document with thousands of candidate words as I encounter them in real life, but only include the words that either have a decent fpm or occur frequently enough to add anyway. For example: "césped" (9.4), "maleza" (2.0), and "rastrillo" (1.2) are in, but "podadora" (0.6) is out. However if a word has high score in Google Trends, a high Ngram ranking (book frequency) or if I keep hearing it repeatedly in real life, I might just add it anyway.

How to study: Sort the cards by FPM or use the category tags. Then start with the highest fpm cards and work down. I've included a Forward and Reverse version of each card, but if you want to get through these more quickly then just suspend every card:2 and study the Spanish->English cards only. This will build recognition memory which will help you understand most everything you read/hear.

Examples: The sentences you see in the Examples field are in their own deck here: Advanced Spanish Examples. I recommend suspending all examples to start with and then only un-suspending examples for cards you are having trouble with. Alternatively, you can just copy-paste the sentences into a text document and import them as cards using " ; " as the divider.

Suggestions and corrections are welcome, submissions of relevant copyright-free images even more so.
Post them in this forum thread or tag me with u/SurpriseDog9000 on reddit.

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Slang Words and Idioms divided up by region and checked against multiple sources such as Google Trends to ensure they are common enough to add.

Connecting 2 & 3 word phrases: “O sea, ya que, por lo tanto…” and dozens more.

False Friends marked with tag:FalseFriend - I also have words that are marked tag:UsuallyFalseFriend which means that the primary definition is different than in English, but they may share a less common definition.

64 categories to organize words by function in life and give you a hint as to what word you're looking at. This includes such fun decks as Aquatic, Fantasy, Food, Cooking, Travel, Numbers, and many more...

Example sentences on many cards (esp. verbs) in the format Spanish sentence = English translation.

FPM sort field (Frequency per Million) as determined by the word’s rank in the OpenSubtitles Project database. I wrote a custom program to rank each word and add up all its conjugations/derivations. For example: "Rugir" is only at 0.8 fpm, but if you add up: rugido at 1.5, ruge at 1.0, rugiendo at 0.5 and... 75 more conjugations, they all add up to 5.1, which makes this verb much more important to learn than it first appears. It also show when the most common form of a word is the adjective or preposition, so I will use those in my deck instead of a much more obscure verb form.

You can try out the program yourself from my Github page

Spell checking (on the Spanish words at least)

Duplicate checking with custom program.

3000+ words (and growing) This is a work in progress and I will be updating this deck with new words as I come across them. This is my personal deck and I study it everyday so I can understand more and more of what I watch, read and listen to.

2200+ notes with images (a few of those are repeats or just an emoji 🐒 ¯_(ツ)_/¯ ) - I’m working hard to add new images every chance I get. Unfortunately, finding a copyright-free image to use for every single card has proven to be a Herculean task. If you have any images you would like to add, post them in this forum thread or tag me with u/SurpriseDog9000 on reddit.

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Question and Answers:

Q: Why doesn't the deck include every word in the dictionary?

A: If a word is guessable in English, I didn't include it. The goal of this deck is passive comprehension. By learning the basic words and every word in this deck, you should be able to understand most words people say to you. That's why I didn't include words like "obviamente". The answer is obvious.

I also didn't rely strictly on the frequency table. Some words were excluded because, after consulting numerous sources like books, Google Trends and more, they didn't appear to be that common. If there's a word you've come across in real life that you'd like to see added to the deck, please leave a comment in the forum thread.

Q: Why did you include this rare word?

A: A few reasons: If a word is a FalseFriend, it's more important to learn, because it might confuse the meaning of a sentence. For example: El jornal at 0.3 fpm has nothing to do with a journal. Other words were included, because they are slang or maybe even because I came across them more often in real life, than the subtitle ranking would suggest.

Q: I am offended by a word in this deck!

A: Many words in real life are offensive, especially in the slang deck. I've tried to tag all of them with the "Vulgar" tag. I believe, it's important to learn every word an actual person might say to you to give you a chance at comprehension. If you don't like these words, then search tag:Vulgar and suspend them all.

Q: This word has 9 different dictionary definitions, but you only included 2!

A: I have only added the definitions of words that I see used in real life. Sometimes I will come back to a word and add additional definitions if I see more.

Q: This example sentence has awkward phrasing!

A: Most example sentences were generated with ChatGpt. Sentences preceded with a 🦙 were generated by llama.cpp using the best LLM that would still fit in RAM on my home computer (It was a slow process). Please leave a comment if you find something that needs to be fixed. Sentences marked with HP: are quoted from one of the first 10 Harry Potter books.

Q: Why don’t all cards have sentences?

A: I generated sentences for the cards that needed them most, paying special attention to verbs that require several example sentences to be fully understood, while many simple 1:1 nouns don't need them: (La Gaviota = Seagull, nothing more needed). Updating thousands of cards takes a long time and this is a work in progress. More example sentences will be coming.

Q: Why don’t all cards have images?

A: Most of the cards in the source deck have images from when I was making this deck for personal use before deciding to share. Unfortunately, most of these images are random thumbnails grabbed from image search and I don’t know how to deal with tracking down the copyright for thousands of individual images. If you want to help, feel free to send me links to open source images and the cards you think they could be associated with.

Q: Should I leave a review?

A: Yes. This will help the deck move up the rankings and reach more people.