Common Spanish mistakes for English speakers, and how to fix them

Updated 2026-10-18

The mistakes below share a cause: an English pattern carried into Spanish. Each one is shown the way the tutor in Convola files it, with the fix and the reason. Three come from a recorded conversation.

Ser and estar: two verbs for be

English has one verb, to be. Spanish has two. Ser with de gives origin: soy de Utrecht. Estar gives states, conditions and place: estoy cansado, está en la plaza.

From a recorded Convola conversation, at a hotel breakfast in Seville:

In the same line the learner wrote Soy de Holanda, which is right. Both uses sat side by side, and only one was a mistake.

A quick test: are you saying what something is, or how or where it is right now? Being on holiday is a passing situation, so estar. Where you come from does not change, so ser.

Gender on every noun

Every Spanish noun is masculine or feminine, and the article agrees with it. The ending helps, but not always. El día and el problema are masculine; la mano and la foto are feminine.

From the same recording:

Plurals carry the gender too: los churros, las tostadas.

Asking what there is

English asks what is good here. A word-for-word copy sounds wrong in Spanish. The tutor's note, from the same recording:

Hay covers both there is and there are, in one form. The guest's reply uses it twice: hoy no hay churros en el hotel. Hay tostadas con tomate y aceite.

Gustar: the thing you like is the subject

In me gusta la música, the subject is la música, and me is the person it pleases. So the verb agrees with the thing: me gusta el café, me gustan los churros.

In the tutor's format, our own example:

Doler works the same way, which matters at the doctor's: me duele la cabeza, me duelen los pies.

Tener where English says be

Spanish uses tener, to have, for age and for many physical states: tengo veinte años, tengo calor, tengo hambre.

Translate I am hungry word for word and you get estoy hambre, which is wrong. Think of hunger, heat and cold as things you have.

In the tutor's format, our own example:

Four words for you, and two false friends

Tú is familiar and usted polite. In the plural, Spain uses vosotros among friends and ustedes for formal address; in Latin America, ustedes covers both. Convola teaches the Spanish of Spain, so in a scene like a tapas crawl with new friends, a waiter might ask ¿Qué queréis tomar?

Some words look English and mean something else. Embarazada means pregnant, not embarrassed; for feeling ashamed, Spanish says tener vergüenza. Estoy constipado means I have a cold.

How to stop making the same mistake

Knowing a rule and using it mid-sentence are different skills. Reading a list like this one helps with the first. The second comes from meeting your own mistakes again, a few days apart, until the right form comes first.

Start with the mistakes you actually make. A grammar list treats every rule alike. Your own record shows which three or four keep coming back, and in Convola the issues you hit most often are the ones the tutor keeps an eye on in your next scenes.

Convola files each mistake under its topic on your list of issues. It returns as short prompts and grammar cards, spaced over days. Right twice, days apart, and it leaves the list; a new slip brings it back.

The tutor is AI and can be wrong, so a note that looks odd is worth checking. How it works: the AI Spanish tutor.

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