Review: Barron’s Spanish Idioms

See also Amusing Spanish Idioms

Once you achieve a reasonably advanced level of proficiency in Spanish, you will want to focus less on learning vocabulary and more on learning idiomatic expressions. To help you do this, you’ll probably want to purchase a good reference book of idioms. The one I use is Barron’s Spanish Idioms.

The reason I like this book is that it is pocket-sized so I can travel with it, and the idiomatic expressions it contains are generally practical and commonly used.

This particular book contains over 2000 idioms and only costs about $10.

Here are a few samples from the book:

cada loco con su tema – Everyone does his own thing.

en hora buena – Luckily.

Example: En hora buena encontré el camino. Luckily I found the road.

estar en la luna – To be daydreaming.

ponerle de patitas en la calle – To throw someone out.

Example: La pusieron de patitas en la calle. They threw her out.