Spanish language Q&A Forum

With: "Both rivers, the Amazon and the Orinoco, and their respective basins", why does Amazon get pluralized to "Amazonas"? I've seen that the masculine is "el Amazonas" and the feminine is "la Amazona". Why is that, please? I'm wondering about the use of "el río Amazonas" versus "la selva Amazona" and "la selva Amazonica".

How does "se nos" change the meaning of "Uno de esos ríos que enseguida viene a la mente" -v- "Uno de esos ríos que enseguida se nos viene a la mente".

And the  use of "ello" . . . does "ello" not mean "it" or "that"? Is the use of "ello" as "this" merely the uneducated English useage where "this" and "that" and their appropriate relationships to time and place become misused? : "An example of that is Caño Cristales, a natural sanctuary."

And why the use of the future tense "existirán en otros lugares del mundo"?

Ricardo come con su familia dos veces a la semana

hum  thinking about  al    mes   and a la semana    wondering why

On all the other sites that I have read, you conjugate the verb in the correct tense when using desde. Can you please clarify this for me? I read in the comments that the tendency is to use the present tense, but why do none of the other sites say this?

what can i do to work on my spanish.

Hello, excellent lesson.  We know that "un/una" changes with gender.  Is this true of every number that ends with "un/una"?

Ex:

Vientiún estudiantes, veintiuna camas

Ciento un aguacates, ciento una botellas

Thanks.

Cuantos animales únicos son de Paraguay? Hay unos animales muy interesante o especial? Cuantos tipos de plantas son únicos a Paraguay? 

I don't feel like there is good guidance in this.  I see what appears to be mixed modes- Mi and ti, but not nos- it's nosotros.  If nosotros is the valid pronoun for this form, why is ti valid and tu not valid? There is no guidance here and I am constantly getting these screwed up.  To me, nosotros=we, nos=us, and nuestra=our.  I get it if they truly use those in that way, but please call it out as an exception so I know to memorize it that way.  Otherwise I am trying to find and fit a pattern and am hitting the wall trying to pass these tests in a way that I know I can replicate this in a week or a month from now and get it correctly then as well, and not just memorize it long enough to pass the test today.

Are there other examples besides just these? I have a Spanish dictionary that says that the word "internet" can be either feminine or masculine, with both "la internet" and "el internet" being correct. Could you provide any other words that do the same besides just the few that are provided in the lesson? 

Preferir... que... just means: prefer... than... .Doesn't it?

Preferir... en vez de... means: prefer... rather than.... Why? I don't understand.

Thank you so much

Hello, 

I am reading a fairly reputable bilingual version of Sherlock Holmes. On one sentence it says 'Iba vestido discretamente con un traje de mezclilla de lana....'

The translation (and my own reading of the context) suggests that this means 'He was discretely dressed....'

But if that's the case why have they used 'iba'? Is that incorrect? The man was not 'going to do' anything. He just 'was'. My searching online and using Google translate suggests that only estar (or possibly ser) in the past tense are valid here, not ir.

Thanks!