Learn Spanish (Spain): Mañana vamos a la montaña. - Tomorrow we are going to the mountain.

The word for mountain, montaña, is feminine, so it uses the feminine word for 'the': la. The contraction al is only used when the preposition a (to) meets the masculine el (the). Because la is feminine, they stay as two separate words: a la.

Why does vamos translate to 'we are going' here instead of 'we go'?

In Spanish, the simple present tense is very flexible. You can use it to talk about what you usually do ('we go') or what is happening right now or in the near future ('we are going'). Because we included the word mañana (tomorrow), it tells us this is a future plan, making 'we are going' the most natural English translation.

I thought mañana meant 'morning'. Why does it mean 'tomorrow' here?

The word mañana can actually mean both! If you see it with a feminine 'the' before it (la mañana), it means 'the morning'. But when it stands alone as a time word like it does at the start of this sentence, it means 'tomorrow'.

Do you pronounce the letter ñ differently than a normal n?

Yes! The letter ñ (with the squiggly line, called a tilde) makes a sound similar to the 'ny' in the English word 'canyon'. You can hear it twice in this sentence: in mañana and montaña.