LoginLearn Spanish for Catholics with Prayers
The Spanish language and the Catholic Church are deeply linked from the distant past to the present.
The Spanish language is deeply linked with the Catholic Church.
Not surprisingly a lot of American Catholics who want to learn Spanish also want to learn Catholic prayers, songs and masses in Spanish in addition to their usual lessons.
Old Catholic Prayers as New Spanish Lessons
We’ve had the Hail Mary prayer as a Spanish lesson since about 2008, but in early 2021, when an American Catholic Archdiocese became our customer, we asked them what prayers they would like us to add next and they said, the Our Father and the Glory Be.
The good news is that our Padre Nuestro and Gloria al Padre lessons are now complete and ready for any of our customers who are learning Spanish to study with on our site. They appear as a group in our list of lessons about 3/4 of the way down the list for logged in users.
For Learning Spanish — Presentation is Everything
It’s easy to make the mistake in thinking that just because you have the information to learn something, that it will be easy or even possible to learn it. But that turns out to not be true. Every common Spanish English dictionary has all the information that you need to learn Spanish, but while dictionaries are valuable, they aren’t very good tools by themselves to learn Spanish.
To learn a new phrase in Spanish you need to be shown the phrase and hear it, then you need to try to say it, then you need to forget it, and then recall it at increasing time intervals. Each successive repetition of forgetting then re-learning, wires the phrase more deeply in your mind. This works especially well when your forgetting and re-learning in done at intervals that start very small (like 10 seconds for something totally new) and then increase rapidly.
How We Teach You Spanish Phrases
If you are a beginning Spanish student, you will need to learn both what the words of a new lesson like the Padre Nuestro (Our Father) prayer mean, and how to say the words in order to a prayer.
If you already know these words in Spanish, but don’t happen to know this prayer, then you just need to learn how to say the words in order.
These are two different but important aspects of language learning. First let me explain how we teach you what the words mean.
You can try this tool right now, with a typical Spanish for beginners lesson, by clicking here and then starting the free lesson.
Spaced Repetition for Fast Learning
This is how our lessons look when studying with our main spaced repetition tool.
This screen shot shows a phrase from the Padre Nuestro prayer lesson when you are studying the prayer using our main spaced repetition tool. These phrases won’t all be of equal difficulty for you, so as you study them and grade yourself, some phrases will quickly be scheduled very far into the future, while others will need more reviews.
The result of this system is that you learn the material you need to learn very quickly while not wasting time reviewing material you already know well. But as you learn the meaning of these phrases and words, you will not be learning the prayer in order.
After you know the words to this prayer, you will want to use our Study in Order tool, which is designed to help you memorize longer texts like this prayer in order so you can recite it during a mass.
Study in Order for Sequential Learning
All of our lessons can be studied with this study in order tool, or with our main spaced repetition tool.
This screen shot shows how you can quickly review and study and of our lessons in order like the Padre Nuestro lesson.
Since you learn a lot faster when you actively recall what you are trying to learn, it’s best to start with this tool, going through the prayer with English translation prompts, while recalling the Spanish text. You can also study our lessons by only listening to the Spanish audio, or reading the Spanish text or listening and reading at the same time.
It’s not immediately obvious, but knowing how to understand a phrase is not the same skill as knowing what you want to say in English and then being able to say it in Spanish.
All of our lessons can be studied with our study in order tool, but using it makes the most sense when you are studying something that makes sense to learn in order like a prayer or a dialog lesson. Unfortunately, we don’t have a live free demo of our Study in Order tool, but you can try it free for 30 days if you sign up for any of our Spanish learning plans.
Padre Nuestro (Our Father) with Translations
Here’s is the full text of the Padre Nuestro prayer, with two translations that will be useful to Spanish students. The first is a literal word by word translation of the Spanish into English. This does NOT always make sense. Below that is a good translation of the phrase. We also have samples of the audio from the first phrase.
It’s very important to know that while you can look at all of our lessons with a display very much like what you see below, this is NOT the best way to learn these prayers. The best way to learn these prayers is by using the two study tools described above.
You Will Love Our Voice Artist
Make sure you click on the small speaker icons to hear samples of our audio recordings. We think you will like listening to his voice.
1 Padre nuestro que estás en el cielo,
Literal: Father our that (you are) in the heaven,
Good: Our Father, Who art in heaven,
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2 santificado sea tu nombre;
Literal: sanctified be your name;
Good: Hallowed be Thy Name;
3 venga a nosotros tu reino;
come to us your kingdom;
Thy Kingdom come;
4 hágase tu voluntad
(be done) your will
Good: Thy Will be done
5 en la tierra como en el cielo.
Literal: in the earth as in the heaven
Good: on earth as it is in Heaven.
6 Danos hoy nuestro pan de cada día;
Literal: (Give us) today our bread of each day;
Good: Give us this day our daily bread.
7 perdona nuestras ofensas,
Literal: Forgive our offenses,
Good: And forgive us our trespasses,
8 como también nosotros
Literal: as also we
Good: as we
9 perdonamos a los que nos ofenden;
Literal: forgive to them that us offend;
Good: forgive those who trespass against us;
10 no nos dejes caer en la tentación,
Literal: Not us let fall in the tempation,
Good: And lead us not into temptation,
11 y líbranos del mal. Amén.
Literal: and (deliver us) from bad. Amen.
Good: but deliver us from evil. Amen
We Would Like to Add More Prayers and Masses
We would be delighted to add more prayers and masses for new customers.
Please take a few minutes and try our Spanish lessons right now. First click on the Spanish flag below then — on the next page, not here — click the big red “Try It” button.
