Nature and natural sciences

What holds these lists together

These lists run from the environment pages of a newspaper to the specialist lecture, and they share a trait: the technical words are almost all built from Greek or Latin, as in English, and so look easier than they are. That helps in reading and trips you up in speaking, because the stress falls elsewhere. English stresses «oxygen» and «hydrogen» on the first syllable; Spanish stresses oxígeno and hidrógeno on the second, and the written accent says so. Then there are words that mean something else in everyday use: el medio here is the surroundings a creature lives in, as in medio ambiente, and not the middle.

For example: el clima (the climate), la órbita (the orbit), el estrato (the layer of rock), el plumaje (the feathers as a whole), la masa forestal (the standing trees as a crop), la cartografía (the making of maps)

Spread across the levels

The category runs across the levels — it is an area, not a difficulty. If you practise it, you can also choose a level at the top of the practice page and then get only the part that sits there.