Some ideas to help you start a diary in Spanish

Not long ago, following the mass exoudus from "Twitter" (R.I.P), I joined BlueSky (here's my profile!). In there, among others I follow a feed named #langsky, where lots of language learning lovers and polyglots' posts can be found. Recently a quite social polyglot I follow, Goran, posted with the following: "What are your favourite underrated language learning tools or methods? 📚" leading to a short exchange between him and Rachel Eugenia I found most interesting:

Screenshot of the exchange between Goran and Rachel Eugenia, source (requires log in to see): https://bsky.app/profile/santpolyglot.bsky.social/post/3lfwaln3bb22v

Immediately inspired by this brilliant idea, I chose an A5 notebook from the many in my collection, waiting to be used, and started my own diary in Malay. First, I printed some of my notes in the smallest format possible, to have a cheatsheet at hand in the notebook's pocket. Then, I decided what things could be useful on a journal's format, for example, the days of the week, which I listed on the first page, weather, foods...

So the outline is like: the date, a few things I have done in the day, including what I have eaten, the weather... all accompanied by little drawings, doodles, things glued to the pages and highlighting.

The first two pages of my Malay diary.

I only have a few pages, but I have also realised that as I write, my previous writing serves as reference for future writing, reducing slightly my translator checks.

Sitting down, reflecting on the day and having a quiet moment with the cute little notebook is slowly becoming a cherished daily routine. I am clearly loving this process (thank you, Rachel!) and therefore I am recommending it to all my students.

I am aware that facing the blank pages at the very beginning of the learning journey may feel daunting, and that is why I'd like to provide some "boilerplate" vocabulary, so you can have a few prompts to get you started with your Spanish journal. ¡Vamos!

Dates

It is pretty common to write the date at the top of each entry, giving us a great chance to practise days of the week, numbers, months...

Here's a standard format for written dates: Jueves, 30 de enero de 2025.

So:

(Day of the week), (number of the day in the month) de (month) de (year).

Let's see each of these elements separately!

Days of the week

Lunes	Monday
Martes	Tuesday
Miércoles	Wednesday
Jueves	Thursday
Viernes	Friday
Sábado	Saturday
Domingo	Sunday

When writing a date, it's a bit like the beginning of any sentence, hence the first word is capitalised. However, in Spanish we don't capitalise the days of the week.

Numbers

Officially, the numerical part of a date will be written with numbers, but if you want to get in the extra practice, you may choose writing them with letters instead. If you do, you'll need numbers up to 31!

Here is a Google document I made a bit back to use in lessons, where you can find the numbers listed.

They are divided in small blocks and some include little audio files of me reading out the numbers, plus some activities, of which some are self correcting!

Los números en español

Little screenshot from the doc, because having images looks nicer!

Months

Enero	January
Febrero	February
Marzo	March
Abril	April
Mayo	May
Junio	June
Julio	July
Agosto	August
Septiembre	September
Octubre	October
Noviembre	November
Diciembre	December

Like the days of the week, we don't capitalise months either, unless they are capitalised like any other word would. This said, I personally prefer my months capitalised, so I do.

Weather

In Spanish, we use the verb HACER (to do, to make) in an impersonal form (meaning it has no subject) to speak about some aspects the weather. The type of weather we express with HACER is the enfolding type of weather. I always explain that if it was a theater perfomance, it's the type of weather that gets painted on the background, instead of the one that can be represented with atrezzo. Whenever you see an ellipsis (...) after an expression, it means that's how we start the prompt, but more information is needed. This information that ends the sentences will have the ellipsis before the words.

This use of HACER can not really be translated word by word, so although it won't make sense in the English translation, you can totally put the pieces together, using the ellipses as the joining point.

Hoy hace...	Today it's...
Hoy ha hecho...	Today it's been...
Ayer hizo...	Yesterday it was...
Está haciendo...	It's being...
...sol	...sun
...buen tiempo	...good weather
...buen día	...good day
...mal día	...bad day
...mal tiempo	...bad weather

We can also use the verb HABER in its impersonal forms to talk about the aspects of weather that are more transient. In the theatrical performance analogy, these elements can totally be atrezzo: rain, clouds, wind, etc.

Hoy hay...	Today there is...
Ayer había...	Yesterday there was...
Ayer hubo...	Yesterday there was...
...lluvia	...rain
...niebla	...fog
...nieve	...snow
...nubes	...clouds
...tormenta	...storm
...viento	...wind

Miscellaneous prompts to complete

Hoy he aprendido...	Today I have learnt...
Hoy voy a aprender...	Today I am going to learn...
Ayer aprendí...	Yesterday I learnt...
Hoy he comido...	Today I have eaten...
Hoy voy a comer...	Today I am eating...
Ayer comí...	Yesterday I ate...
Hoy he ido a...	Today I have gone to...
Hoy voy a ir a...	Today I am going to...
Ayer fui a...	Yesterday I went to...
Estoy viendo...	I am seeing...
Estoy en...	I am in...
Estoy bebiendo...	I am drinking...
Estoy escribiendo...	I am writing...
Estoy con...	I am with...

Other tools

All the above prompts and vocabulary are going to serve as a kind of a skeleton, but the flesh is yours to bring! Try things! Look stuff up! Ask people! Check your notes! Glue stuff to it! Often, students refer to "checking notes" or "using a translator" as cheating. My answer is always the same: as long as we aren't specifically testing memory or recall, studying is very much encouraged. Same here! The idea is that you go and find the words that you are missing! Unless you use AI to give you the whole thing from a prompt. That'd definitely be cheating, since all it does to your skill is stunting it.

At the end of the day, what we want is to spend time with the language, getting to know it, like we'd do with a friend.

That's all!

I hope you give the journal a chance, and that, if you do, you find these resources helpful. If you have any suggestions, questions or would like to simply share your experience on the subject, I'd love to read you in the comment section.