🍅 You don't know what you have till it's gone (Day 2)

Morning! 😃 ☕️ 

Same phrase, one word starting to fade. Today we take a quick trip across the map, because this proverb changes shape depending on which country you're standing in.

In today's email…

• 📱 Day 2: One word is gone. See if your memory fills the gap

• 🌟 The same idea, four ways, across the Spanish-speaking world

• 🏃 Pick the version that fits where your Spanish is headed

MEMORIZE 🧠

Nadie sabe __ que tiene hasta que lo pierde.

As always, the answer key and audio are at the bottom of this email.

PRACTICE WITH LOLA 🍅 

Here’s what a successful day with learning Spanish looks like, and the order doesn’t matter:

• Read the English email

• Listen to the Spanish (follow along)

• Then, go hang out with Lola and start working through a few things (5mins)

PRACTICE IT WITH LOLA 🍅

CULTURAL MOMENT 🍅

Proverbs travel, and they pick up a local accent along the way. The version you memorized, Nadie sabe lo que tiene hasta que lo pierde, is the clean, everyone-understands-it form.

But a real speaker in Buenos Aires or Mexico City might reshape it without even thinking about it.

Head to Argentina or Uruguay and you'll hear the vos form instead of tú. It comes out as "No sabés lo que tenés hasta que lo perdés."

Same meaning, but the verbs land on a different beat, that stress on the last part (sa-BÉS, te-NÉS, per-DÉS) is one of the easiest ways to spot a River Plate speaker. If your Spanish is aimed at that part of América Latina, this is the form to keep in your ear.

In much of Mexico, Spain, and Colombia, you'll often hear it flipped into the second person: "No sabes lo que tienes hasta que lo pierdes."

Instead of "nobody knows," it becomes "you don't know," a little more direct, a little more personal, like the speaker is talking straight to you. Both are correct. The "you" version just feels closer, so people reach for it in real conversations with friends.

There's also a swap you'll hear all over: people trade sabe (knows) for valora (values), "Uno no valora lo que tiene hasta que lo pierde."