Spanish from scratch!
Have you decided to learn Spanish just for fun, or do you like how it sounds, or can you not live without Spanish TV series? Or maybe you do dancing: salsa, bachata - and your teacher speaks Spanish and you can’t find common ground with them? Or are you crazy about Spanish music? Or ‘macho’? There can be many reasons. But where to start?
Don’t worry, Lingust knows where to start learning Spanish. Specifically for absolute beginners, the popular self-study guide by has been adapted. The course consists of 60 lessons + a phonetics lesson. The main goal is to master the basic rules of pronunciation and grammar, preparing you for independent reading of Spanish literature. The texts of the lessons start from the most elementary ones and end with excerpts from the works of famous Spanish writers. To consolidate the material, special exercises are provided with input forms for your answers, along with keys to view the answers given in the Spanish language course. To view an answer, you need to hover your mouse over the key: 
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It is recommended to study the lessons in the following order (click)
- Read the text to yourself, striving for a general understanding. While reading, you should use the dictionary and the explanations for texts and words.
- Read the text aloud, paying attention to pronunciation and stress.
- Carefully read the grammar explanations for the given lesson.
- Read the text once again. While reading, memorize the words and sentence structures, constantly returning to the corresponding place in the text. This method yields more positive results than mechanical memorization of individual words without context.
- Do the exercises.
- Check your mastery of the lesson and the correctness of the exercises using the key. Remember that you should only refer to the key after you have completed the exercises on your own.
You need to study systematically and regularly, with short breaks. Mastering each lesson, from the first to the sixth, should not take more than one hour; subsequent lessons require more time, but their mastery should not exceed 2—3 hours.
The arrangement of the material and the way it is distributed in individual lessons make it possible to successfully master the basics of the Spanish language.
Go to the → list of lessons ← (Click)
Reasons to learn Spanish
- One of the most spoken languages in the world. Spanish is spoken by about 500 million people in more than 20 countries – from Spain and Mexico to Argentina and Colombia. It is the second language in the world by the number of native speakers after Chinese.
- Simple pronunciation. Spanish words are pronounced almost exactly as they are written, and the sounds are very clear. This makes learning much easier compared to, for example, French or English.
- Rich literature and culture. Cervantes, Gabriel García Márquez, Borges, Pablo Neruda – Spanish-language literature has given the world many masterpieces. Knowing the language allows you to read them in the original.
- Growing importance in business. The Latin American economy is actively developing, and the Hispanic population in the US exceeds 60 million people. Knowing Spanish is a serious advantage in the labor market.
- Language of travel. Spain, Mexico, Cuba, Peru, Argentina, Costa Rica – dozens of countries with unique cultures where Spanish will open up a completely different level of communication for you.
- Music, movies, and TV series. From reggaeton and flamenco to “Money Heist” (La Casa de Papel) and Almodóvar’s films – the Spanish language is heard everywhere in global pop culture.
- Official UN language. Spanish is one of the 6 official languages of the United Nations.
Interesting facts about the Spanish language
- Spanish is the only language in which interrogative and exclamatory sentences begin with inverted marks: ¿ and ¡. This helps the reader understand the intonation of the sentence in advance.
- The letter ñ is a unique symbol of the Spanish language. It is so important to Spaniards that when the EU proposed removing it from computer keyboards in 1991, Spain filed an official protest.
- Mexico is the largest Spanish-speaking country in the world by population (about 130 million people), not Spain (about 47 million).
- Spanish and Portuguese are so similar that native speakers of these languages can understand each other at a basic level without special training.
- In the Spanish language, the Royal Academy (Real Academia Española) has regulated language norms since 1713 – almost 80 years earlier than the equivalent Académie française.
Start learning Spanish right now
Spanish is one of the easiest languages for English speakers: clear pronunciation, logical grammar, and a huge number of words familiar from English. The 60 lessons of our course will take you from the alphabet to reading Spanish literature in the original. Everything is free, everything is online – start with the first lesson.
Go to the → list of lessons ← (Click)