perdón
“perdón” — excuse me in Spanish. Interjection, level A0. For small things: a bump, an interruption. For something serious they say lo siento. In a live sentence: “Perdón, ¿le he pisado?” — Excuse me, did I step on your foot? You can hear how it sounds right here. A word from the everyday Spanish course, level A0.
In short
| Written in Spanish | perdón |
| Translation | excuse me |
| Part of speech | interjection |
| Level | A0 |
- perdónexcuse me
Why it looks that way
For small things: a bump, an interruption. For something serious they say lo siento
A word with a story stays in memory longer than one learned as a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.
In a live sentence
A single word almost never appears alone in conversation. A sentence shows where it fits and what stands next to it.
- Perdón, ¿le he pisado?Excuse me, did I step on your foot?
How not to forget this word
Reading a word and remembering it are different jobs. A day later, little survives of a single reading — and that is not bad memory, that is how memory works.
- This has been tested on foreign words too. The difference shows up most when you test yourself a few days later rather than straight away.checked many timesKim & Webb, 2022, Language Learning 72(2) · 48 experiments, 3,411 participants, 98 comparisons.
- Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
- An answer you worked out yourself sticks better than one handed to you.checked many timesBertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.
Frequently asked
How do you say “excuse me” in Spanish?
«perdón». In a live sentence: “Perdón, ¿le he pisado?” — Excuse me, did I step on your foot? You can hear how it sounds right on this page. Interjection, level A0.
Why does this word look the way it does?
For small things: a bump, an interruption. For something serious they say lo siento. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.
Can I hear how it sounds?
Yes, right on this page: click the word and it will play. The sound works on any phone, and nothing needs to be installed.