📍Madrid, Retiro Park
Hola chic@s,
Espero que estén bien 🙏
Earlier this year I went back to Madrid to visit some old amig@s.
One of them being Iván, the IT guy I used to work with.
We weren’t doing anything particularly exciting.
Just wandering through El Retiro Park, chatting Spanish and pondering life’s biggest questions.
At one point, he stopped, pointed towards a tree and said:
“Es un manzano.”
I remember thinking, ‘hang on a second’, I know ‘manzana’ means apple and it did look like an apple tree…
So I asked Iván,
“Oye tío… ¿‘manzano’ significa ‘apple tree’?”
“Sí,” he replied.
We laughed at how logical English is.
Apple + Tree = Apple Tree
But in Spanish?
Manzana = Apple 🍎
Manzano = Apple Tree
My love for the language only grew stronger and it was another tiny moment that completely changed how I looked at Spanish.
Not because of learning this one new word.
But because I’d discovered a pattern.
Naranja = Orange 🍊
Naranjo = Orange Tree
Cereza = Cherry 🍒
Cerezo = Cherry Tree
Spanish loves building words into families.
Suddenly your brain has far less to memorise.
You’re no longer learning isolated words, but rather how Spanish builds itself.
Of course, there are some trickier fruit trees.
Pera = Pear 🍐
Peral = Pear Tree
Higo = Fig 🌰 (there’s no fig emoji…)
Higuera = Fig Tree
No textbook ever taught me this.
Iván did.
I learned it while walking through Madrid with a friend…
That’s why I’ll always preach Spanish for living, not just learning.
That’s the kind of Spanish I want to help you learn.
The kind that’s attached to people.
To places.
To stories.
Because those are the words you’ll remember years later.
Keep getting out there chic@s.
Un abrazo,
Harrison
Spanish for living, not just learning
P.S - It’s good to see so many of you using The Chat Spanish Verb Lab 🧪 For those unaware, it’s a free tool I created to help you practice conjugating the 100 most common verbs in Spanish. ¡Disfruta!
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