Learn Spanish
Spanish Flashcards Built From What You Actually Read and Watch
Generic 1,000-word decks are fine to start. But the vocabulary you actually need is buried in the shows, books, and articles you consume — and Ellie extracts it.
Spanish is the second-most spoken native language on Earth after Mandarin, with around 500 million native speakers. It is also the most-learned second language in the US and one of the top three globally. The frequency curve is well studied: the first 1,000 lemmas cover roughly 80% of everyday spoken Spanish; the first 5,000 cover about 96%. Learning those first 5,000 by rote is the standard path — but rote gets boring by word 500.
Ellie's Spanish workflow is different. Paste text — a news article from El País, a Mercado Libre listing, subtitles from a Netflix show — and Ellie extracts the words you don't already know, generates flashcards with context sentences, and adds them to your review queue. Learning happens on content you already care about.
CEFR-mapped learning path
The Common European Framework of Reference (A1 through C2) is the standard yardstick. Ellie decks map to it.
- A1: 500 highest-frequency lemmas + present tense conjugations
- A2: 1,500 lemmas + preterite and imperfect
- B1: 3,000 lemmas + subjunctive introduction, ser vs estar mastery
- B2: 5,000 lemmas + full subjunctive, register awareness
- C1: 8,000+ lemmas + idiomatic expressions, register shifts
- C2: near-native — mostly reading and living the language
The subjunctive problem
Most English speakers hit a wall at the subjunctive. Ellie generates dedicated subjunctive triggers (WEIRDO — Wishes, Emotions, Impersonal expressions, Recommendations, Doubt, Ojalá) as flashcards with example sentences. Spaced repetition consolidates the trigger + tense combination into automatic recall.
Immersion + Ellie: the mining workflow
'Mining' means extracting new vocabulary from real content. Watch a Casa de Papel episode with Spanish subtitles. Copy the subtitles for words you don't know. Paste into Ellie. Cards generate with the original sentence as context. This is the same workflow Refold and Migaku teach for Japanese — Ellie automates the card-making step.
Frequently asked questions
How many words do I need to be conversational?
About 2,500 lemmas plus solid grammar gets you to B1 conversational. You will miss idioms and academic vocabulary but you can hold everyday conversations.
Latin American or Peninsular Spanish?
For flashcards, the vocabulary overlap is 95%+. Pick the accent you want to sound like and expose yourself to that region's media. Ellie decks are dialect-neutral by default.
How does this compare to Duolingo?
Duolingo is gamified drilling with a fixed curriculum. Ellie is content-driven — you learn from what you actually consume. Many learners use both: Duolingo for the daily habit, Ellie for real vocabulary retention.
Can I add audio?
Yes. Attach recordings to cards or use TTS. Pronunciation practice accelerates listening comprehension significantly.
Does Ellie handle verb conjugation drilling?
Yes. Verb conjugation decks are pre-built for each tense (present, preterite, imperfect, subjunctive, conditional). Add irregular verbs one by one as you meet them.
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