Spanish How To Speak

Learning the Spanish language can be very useful and fun today if you live in the United States.

Learning Spanish normally starts with Spanish greeting phrases and words.

Beginning with simple greeting words and phrases is not complicated by complex syntax.  As in the English greeting, “Hello”, you also simply say a single word in Spanish, “Hola” (the “H” is silent and not pronounced).

“Hola” is an appropriate greeting for both strangers or acquaintances when speaking to them in person.  However, Spanish speakers frequently use “bueno” or “diga” when answering the telephone, unlike English which uses “hello” for both situations.

Whenever you greet someone, you will also have to end up saying “goodbye” them and the Spanish word for “goodbye” is “adios.”

The Romance languages (Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Romanian) generally have two forms of verbs for addressing people.  There are what is normally known as the formal form (generally used when addressing strangers, older people (who are not close friends or relatives) or people of higher position and the informal form normally used when addressing relatives, friends, younger people or people of lower position. 

Following the initial greeting, one usually says something such as “How are you?”  A Spanish speaker would say, “Como esta?” (formal) or “Como estas?” (informal), or perhaps “Que passa?” (What’s happening?”), “Como se va?” (formal) or “Como te vas?” (informal) for “How is it going with you?”.

In the morning you might say “Buenos dias” for Good morning (literally “Good day”) or in the afternoon, you might greet someone with “Buenas tardes” for “Good afternoon.”  At night it would be “Buenos noches” for “Good night.”

When meeting someone new you might ask their name by saying “Como te llamas?” (informal) or the more formal form, “Como se llama?” which literally translates as “How do you call yourself?”

These are the simplest greetings to learn and once you master these Spanish phrases the rest is easy. There are a few harder ones to learn, but not yet. The next step to learning Spanish is numbers, letters, time, asking how to get somewhere, male or female, colors, parts of the body, and relatives.

Frequent use of these commonly used Spanish phrases and words will help develop your comfort zone as you further develop your language skills.