After 3 years, the Spanish queen of pop, diva, and motomami Rosalía has released another album, but not just any album. Several influential magazines have given the singer’s 4th album LUX a near perfect rating, and having left such a strong impression on me too, I have decided to devote a separate article to it. However, not to its music part, but rather its linguistic aspects—here are 9 of them that will allow not only Spanish learners to immerse themselves in this sexy language.
Part A: For everyone, even those with zero knowledge of Spanish
1. Proper Names
Not only did Rosalía manage to pack 13 languages into 15 songs, but the geographical locations that made it into LUX are also diverse—for example, in the song Reliquia, we count up to 16 references to places. If you take a closer look at this collection of sites, you will notice that although in most cases the city names might sound like in your native language or in English, they are still a little “spanishified”. Just as Slovaks came up with Londýn for London or the English with Venice for Venezia, you will also encounter Spanish’s own versions of proper names (no shit, Sherlock!).
Play the game and test yourself to see how well you can name world capitals en español!
2. Use of Anglicisms
If you listen more closely, the singer didn’t always use her native tongue when referring to places. For example, the United Kingdom is being referred to as UK, instead of Reino Unido, or we even hear LA rather than Los Ángeles. When I asked my friend Sara from northern Spain about this, she said that she would not expect such a use of language from many people, except perhaps from members of the younger generation who know English well and have experience abroad, or possibly from Latin American Spanish speakers. So while cases such as stalkear or red flag andante authentically reflect the vocabulary of my generation, phrases such as perdí los heels (I lost my heels) are more about economy of words for the sake of rhythm.
Try matching the Spanish equivalents to the Spanglish words from the album in the game!
3. The Silent d
In my very first Spanish textbook, the pronunciation chapter stated that the final d (e.g., Madrid) is almost silent. This phenomenon is particularly widespread in the south – Sara even confirmed this when I looked confusedly at the phrase ’Toito te lo perdono’ in the song La Rumba del Perdón. Toito could easily sound like a proper name to a non-native speaker. “No, no, it’s just todito (everything),” Sara assured me.
The d has disappeared from the words! Find the unabbreviated versions of the shortened words.
Part B: Very Basic Knowledge of Spanish
4. Verbs
If you’ve never studied Spanish, don’t leave yet! I can imagine that some students might have difficulty understanding many of the poetic expressions in the album, but at the same time, other parts of the lyrics offer us a great opportunity to familiarize ourselves with one of the basic pillars of the language – verbs. In Spanish, we can identify their infinitive form by the typical endings -ar, -er, or -ir, similar to -ť in Slovak (robiť, mať, volať sa) or -en in German (machen, haben, heißen).
Read excerpts from the first 10 songs and try to find verbs in the infinitive form.
5. The Most Frequent Irregular Verbs
As is often the case with languages, the most commonly used verbs tend to be irregular – in English, for example, you say did and done instead of doed. As a Spanish learner, if you have completed at least 5 introductory lessons, you may have already encountered the verbs tener, hacer or poder, which can be found in the album too and are also nicely conjugated in the songs Reliquia, Porcelana or Berghain.
Fill in the gaps in the song excerpts with the correct form of the irregular verbs.
6. Definite articles el, la, los, las
Similar to Slovak or German, Spanish also distinguishes between noun genders. Unlike German, where it can be tricky to determine a noun’s gender, even though there are some grammatical rules, in Spanish you can distinguish between masculine and feminine genders with a little more certainty. This article, for example, covers the topic effectively – why not brush up on the rules for determining gender and then apply them to the lyrics of the album? Rosalía uses pretty short sentences, so the articles will definitely stand out.
Part 3: For Experienced Learners
7. Subjuntivo
A frequent source of fear for Spanish learners at B1 level and above is the subjunctive, a verb form used after certain expressions. It was precisely quién pudiera (who possibly could) from the very first song Sexo, violencia y llantas that made me write an entire article on the album. This form is characteristic of unreal wishes and exclamations, as well as polite phrases (like quisiera yo in Mundo nuevo) or constructions to indicate purpose. You can find a more detailed explanation e.g. here, and practise the forms of past subjunctive in the following exercise.
Create the correct form of the subjuntive in the imperfect tense.
8. The True Meaning of Adjectives
In the last point, I would like to venture into uncharted territory, which is why Sara and I needed to have a long conversation. The album is full of expressions that are emotionally charged, whether through adjectives or prepositional phrases. It’s exactly knowing which adjective to use depending on the emotional charge what I consider one of the biggest challenges when learning a foreign language.
That’s why, when I first heard some of the expressions from the album Lux, I raised my eyebrows, because after translating them into my mother tongue, they sounded either strange or a bit over the top. So I sat down with Sara and analyzed a few of them. She also perceived some as meh, or at least neutral, such as such as deseos indeseables (undesirable desires), deportes de sangre (blood sports) or ruina divina (divine ruin).
Others lit her up, either because of the play on words or because of the collocations that I didn’t know. One of them was the phrase terrón de azúcar (sugar lump in Berghain), which refers to a kind, warm-hearted person, while bala perdida (lost bullet) can refer to someone without a clear direction or, as I found on one blog, someone with immoral behavior😈
