Learn 13 Bathroom Words In Spanish In Less Than 4 Minutes

Visualization is the least boring means of committing Spanish words to memory. Much has already been spoken about the merits of this methodology. Now, it’s time we put this technique to good use and acquire some new Spanish vocabulary, a task that would have been as mundane as ineffective had it been for traditional old-school methods. While expanding one’s vocabulary is important to learning any language, all good things must ideally begin at home; today we begin with our bathroom. Why bathroom? Because it’s my favorite section of any home – peaceful, calm, solitary, and just perfect for some serious language learning!

The trick of visualization and a key caveat

El baño is the perfect place for learning Spanish!
Photo credit: Keightley licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

This article will help you learn and remember some important words in the context of your bathroom; just skim through the list one word at a time. The most effective way to absorb Spanish using visualization is to focus on the image more than the word itself. Every language learner worth their grain knows today that the age-old rote mechanism of memorizing words has long been proven ineffective, tedious, and demotivating. Human mind retains natural input, such as images and sounds, much more efficiently than written words. So here we are, exploiting this very natural faculty of our brains to acquire some fresh Spanish vocabulary for permanent retention and instant recall.

Every row in the list consists of a word in Spanish, followed by its English equivalent, followed yet again by the visual cue (in parentheses) that will actually aid memory. Reading left to right as usual, understand the visual cue thoroughly at first; focus more deeply on the syllables or words in bold, and try to then imagine the visual cue with closed eyes for at least 15 seconds. All the while, keep relating the visual imagery with the Spanish word in question. After imagining the cue for about 15 seconds, open your eyes and move on to the next word, repeating the same cycle. This simple technique will help these brand new Spanish words and expressions stick to your memory like glue. Just try to make your imagination as vivid and uncanny as possible; the weirder it is, the better the learning.

The 13 words from the Spanish bathroom

Before you proceed with this list, do bear in mind that visual cues work best when born in the mind of the one who is visualizing. The mnemonics I am listing here were born in my mind and hence worked wonders for me. You might not experience the same effect using these mnemonics but they are, nevertheless, worth trying for sure. I cannot promise you the degree of impact my cues would have on your memory but I can surely assure you that they will prove way more effective that the traditional method of cramming up words.

bañera – bathtub (a sexy girl bathing in a bathtub kept out in the open oblivious to perverts like you watching her from behind the banana fronds that are swaying wildly with the air)

excusado – toilet (imagine excusing yourself from a party as you need to rush to the toilet after downing too much alcohol)

lavamanos – washbowl (think of a lavaman, a giant supernatural being who uses an active volcano’s caldera as a washbowl, washing his hands with the lava coming out of it)

botiquín – medicine-cabinet (the bottle of medicine is kept in Mr. Quinn’s medicine-cabinet)

jabón – soap (my granny is so weak; it’s as if her bones are made of soap – soft and squishy!)

toalla – towel (both words already sound similar enough; if you still need a visual cue, imagine a wet toad trying to pat himself dry using your favorite towel)

cortinero – curtain-rod (imagine seeing a satin curtain on an aeroplane window)

gorro de baño – shower cap (if you must wear a shower-cap in the shower but still wish to wet your hair, just gore plenty of holes in the cap and get inside the baño)

ducha – shower (the rich duchess has golden faucets and a golden shower in her huge bathroom)

jabonera – soap-dish (a jabón kept in a soap-dish out in open air; tip: in Spanish, the prefix, -era, usually gives the sense of something that holds the object in question...so, by analogy, a jabonera holds jabón, a pecera holds a pez, and so on)

esponja – sponge (again, the two words are too similar-sounding to warrant any visual cue for memory; just remember to pronounce it correctly, i.e., the “j” in esponja should be pronounced with a guttural /h/ sound approximating the sound of “ch” in the Scottish word, “loch”)

champú – shampoo (imagine this to be a Chinese shampoo brand)

desagüe – drain (agua is water and it is channeled out through a drainpipe so we can imagine it to be a channel that discharges agua)

There you go. Done with each of the 13 key Spanish words from the bathroom! Wasn’t it simpler than you thought? No, don’t rush to answer now. First, test your retention after a while. Come back after, say, an hour and see how many of these words you still remember effortlessly without straining your memory. If you falter, just repeat the process and you are done. Happy learning!