Spanish language Q&A Forum

The article mentions a 'hot air ballon', it should be 'hot air balloon' with double 'o'.

All these verbs are present tense + present subjunctive. Can I use the same construction with the conditional, in those cases where we are “softening” a request?

Such as: “Yo prefería que regreses más pronto.” 

Or does that need a different structure? Thank you!

con muchas rocas  instead of muchos cubitos de hielo   ???

In the lesson on haber plus participio it has leídos not leído.

In this lesson, you have a note near the bottom saying literal translations from English to Spanish don't always work and to not say: "No puedo esperar a..." (I can't wait to...). I notice Shawn offered an option to say “no ver la hora de…”. But I haven’t found other standard or colloquial ways to say, in Spanish, “I can’t wait to…”. Can you help with that? Thanks!

On another course, an example conversation between novio and novia goes: “usted sabe que lo amo. Vayamos al cine, hay una película nueva que quiero que veamos. Me muero por que usted la vea”. It was partly my frustration that there was no explanation of the use of usted here that led me to look for another course. Can anyone here explain this to me? Is this a regional peculiarity? Maybe Colombia? Thanks.

Unfortunately, I cannot distinguish some sounds, as I have no ear habit. What can I do? 

Thanks for you help. 

MDBALABAN

in the hints you define "terrorífico" as meaning "terrifyingly" but then in the translation you count that as wrong and use "terrorificamente" instead.

you say "some fake drops of blood" but a better English translation would be "drops of fake blood". The drops are real; the blood is fake.

I have gotten confused by a specific use of the personal a.  As I understand it, if you are mentioning a person or group of people, you need a personal a infront of the person.  For example if I am talking about a reporter mentioning Juan, I might say El reportero mencionó a Juan.  It also looks like if I want to say that the reporter mentioned Juan to Ana, I should say  El reportero mencionó Juan a Ana.  

Is this correct?  Is this also a general pattern - i.e. when I would normally use a personal a, but there is an indirect object (Ana), should I always drop the personal a and use the a for the indirect object?

Thanks

Regarding this lesson, I do not understand how to choose the correct answer in the question when the lesson says that either gender can be used depending upon some vague circumstances. How can I, the speaker, determine which gender to use? This is a complete mystery to me. Please help.

Thank you, James