Kilo Lingo

Spanish · Chapter 43 · Lesson 15 · Grammar primer

Time and frequency phrases

The fixed multi-word adverbials: de vez en cuando (now and then), a menudo (often), de repente (suddenly), poco a poco (little by little), tarde o temprano (sooner or later), hoy en dia - learned whole.

The short version

Cada dos por tres has nothing to do with counting

Literally every two by three, it means constantly, every five minutes, and it usually carries a note of exasperation. Nothing in the words gives that away, which is the whole point of this family of phrases. Stop translating the parts, store the chunk, and drop it in ready-made.

Me llama cada dos por tres.

He rings me every five minutes.

That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.

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Lesson 15 of 22 in this chapter

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