Spanish language Q&A Forum

I was reading along and halfway through it struck me that I was understanding every word easily. Wow! I was so pleased with my progress and then . . . I realized I was reading the Background segment which is in English!!! ¡Qué avergüenza!

¿A alguien más le ha pasado eso? Oh well, back to the grind . . . 

And now, having read-along with the audio, and failed in trying to figure out where the text related to the audio, it's almost enough to make me grab a plane and head for Seville. Well, a little more vocab and I'll be hot to trot  . . .

How might a speaker differentiate an inquiry of How is X? from What is X like?  (Context is usually enough, but both questions are common so it'd be nice to know.)

Hola! 

I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around the purpose of doubling down on the indirect object usage in some of these examples:

"Ella le envió un regalo a Miguel. 

She sent a present to Miguel."

In this example, why do you need the le if you already have Miguel. It reads to me literally as "she him sent a present to Miguel" and I suppose it feels like excessive and unnecessary additional language in an already clear sentence. Is it for emphasis? Por favor ayúdame a entender.

I would've said estos without it, but it made me second guess myself and put este. What is this hint trying to say? I'm not understanding how I misinterpreted it. 

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

Entender means understand, but in this example: Ella entiende de arte. - means: She knows about art. Why?

Thank you so much!

Am I missing where the English translation is? I can't imagine I would need to copy/paste the entire passage (and only at the end, when it's available) and go to another site to find the translation. That would be silly since this site is presumably designed to teach me Spanish..? 

Is there a rule for determining the Spanish ending for someone that does a profession? For example, a climber is escalador, and a traveler is viajero. Why is one ending in -or and the other -ero? 

There's a link to 'idioms about time' but there isn't anything to learn or do on that page. Is there a link that works for that subject? 

And all this time, going through 1, 2 and 3, I thought the lifeguard was a girl! Inma, you need to speak a little more gruffly, please LOL