Spanish I

Bienvenidos! (Welcome!) The best news for a new Spanish student is that Spanish is phonetic: once you know a few rules, you can read almost any word out loud correctly, because the letters nearly always make the same sound. English vowels wander (think of the "a" in cat, father, and about), but Spanish vowels are steady and pure. Nail these five sounds and you already have a good accent.

The five vowels

Each Spanish vowel has exactly one clean sound. Say each one crisply and do not let it glide into a second sound the way English often does.

Vowel	Sounds like	Example	English
a	"ah" in father	casa	house
e	"eh" in met	mesa	table
i	"ee" in see	sí	yes
o	"oh" in note	foto	photo
u	"oo" in food	uno	one

Read these aloud with one clean sound per vowel: casa (house), libro (book), mono (monkey), música (music). Even when vowels sit side by side they stay pure, so Europa is "eh-oo-ROH-pah".

The alphabet (el abecedario)

The Spanish alphabet has the same letters as English plus one extra letter, ñ. Knowing the letter names lets you spell your name on the phone and use a dictionary. A few names to know: h is "hache," j is "jota," ñ is "eñe," y is "ye," and z is "zeta." To ask how a word is spelled you say ¿Cómo se escribe? (How is it written?).

Do not aim for perfect on day one. Spanish speakers understand learners easily, and clean vowels matter far more than a flawless accent. Read every new word in this course out loud, and your ear and mouth will train together.

Vowel combinations (diptongos)

When a strong vowel (a, e, o) meets a weak vowel (i, u), the two glide together inside one syllable. This blend is called a diptongo (diphthong). You still give each vowel its pure sound, only faster and joined. Listen for it in bueno (good), which is "BWEH-noh," and seis (six), which is "seys." More examples: agua (water) is "AH-gwah," tiempo (time or weather) is "TYEM-poh," and Europa (Europe) keeps two clean vowels, "eh-oo-ROH-pah," because two strong vowels do not blend. Do not add extra English sounds; keep a and e crisp even when they run together.

Spelling your name out loud

Because Spanish is so regular, spelling aloud is genuinely useful. A few letter names are worth memorizing so you can give an email or a last name over the phone: a (ah), e (eh), i (ee), o (oh), u (oo), b (be), v (uve), w (uve doble), h (hache), j (jota), k (ka), ñ (eñe), y (ye), and z (zeta). To ask someone to spell a word, say ¿Cómo se escribe? (How is it written?) and to ask them to repeat, ¿Puede repetir, por favor? (Can you repeat, please?).

The whole alphabet with its letter names

Here is the complete alphabet as the Real Academia Española lists it, with the name you say when you spell aloud. Reading the names down the columns takes about a minute, and it pays for itself the first time you have to give a last name or an email address over the phone.

Letter	Name	Letter	Name	Letter	Name
a	a	j	jota	r	erre
b	be	k	ka	s	ese
c	ce	l	ele	t	te
d	de	m	eme	u	u
e	e	n	ene	v	uve
f	efe	ñ	eñe	w	uve doble
g	ge	o	o	x	equis
h	hache	p	pe	y	ye
i	i	q	cu	z	zeta

That makes 27 letters. Two old friends are missing. Until 2010, ch and ll were counted as separate letters with their own sections in the dictionary. They are still written, and they still have their own sounds, but they now count as pairs of letters, so chico (boy) files under c and llave (key) files under l. Older speakers may still call y "i griega" and v "ve," and both are perfectly normal; "ye" and "uve" are simply the names the RAE now recommends.

Every vowel in a real word

Say each row out loud twice, once slowly and once at speaking speed. The vowel keeps exactly the same value in every position, stressed or unstressed, first syllable or last.

• a as in father: casa (house), mapa (map), plaza (square), nada (nothing), hablar (to speak)
• e as in met: mesa (table), leche (milk), verde (green), siete (seven), comer (to eat)
• i as in see: sí (yes), libro (book), vivir (to live), cinco (five), día (day)
• o as in note: foto (photo), ocho (eight), como (like, as), rojo (red), señor (sir)
• u as in food: uno (one), mucho (a lot), lunes (Monday), azul (blue), música (music)

Notice nada, casa, and hablar. English speakers instinctively weaken any vowel that is not stressed into a lazy "uh" sound, the way the a in about almost disappears. Spanish never does this. The unstressed a in nada is just as full and open as the stressed one, so the word is "NAH-dah" and never "NAH-duh." Fixing this one habit does more for your accent than anything else in this lesson.

Breaking a word into syllables

Spanish syllables like to end in a vowel, so a single consonant between two vowels joins the syllable that follows it. Say each of these with a small pause between the pieces: ca-sa (house), me-sa (table), li-bro (book), a-mi-go (friend), es-cue-la (school), pro-fe-sor (teacher), bo-lí-gra-fo (pen). Two consonants usually split between syllables (car-ta, letter), except for the pairs bl, br, cl, cr, dr, fl, fr, gl, gr, pl, pr, and tr, which stay together (li-bro, ma-dre, mother). Because a diphthong is one syllable, bue-no (good) has two syllables and not three.

Question marks and exclamation marks come in pairs

Spanish is the only major language that opens a question with an upside-down mark: ¿Cómo te llamas? (What is your name?). Exclamations work the same way: ¡Hola! (Hi!) and ¡Qué bonito! (How pretty!). The opening mark is not decoration. Spanish word order in a question can be identical to a statement, so the reader needs a warning at the start that the sentence is going to be a question rather than at the end when it is too late. The mark goes exactly where the question begins, which is not always at the start of the sentence: Ana, ¿cómo estás? (Ana, how are you?). This course writes both marks every time, and so should you.

Which Spanish are you learning?

Spanish is spoken across two dozen countries, and beginners sometimes worry about picking the "right" one. Relax: the differences are smaller than the differences between British and American English, and speakers understand each other everywhere. Two differences do show up from day one. First, seseo: in all of Latin America, the Canary Islands, and much of Andalusia, the letter z and the letter c before e or i are pronounced like an English s, so zapato (shoe) is "sah-PAH-toh." In most of mainland Spain those same letters are pronounced like the th in think, a feature called distinción. Second, the word for "you all": Spain uses vosotros, while Latin America uses ustedes for every group, formal or friendly. This course teaches Latin American pronunciation and vocabulary as its default, because that is what most learners hear, but it always shows you the peninsular forms so that neither variety surprises you.

A short dialogue: spelling a name

Two people meet at a front desk. Every word here is either a greeting or a letter name.

• Ana: Hola, buenos días. (Hello, good morning.)
• Luis: Buenos días. ¿Cómo se llama usted? (Good morning. What is your name?)
• Ana: Me llamo Ana Muñoz. (My name is Ana Muñoz.)
• Luis: ¿Cómo se escribe Muñoz? (How do you spell Muñoz?)
• Ana: Eme, u, eñe, o, zeta. (M, u, ñ, o, z.)
• Luis: Gracias. ¿Puede repetir, por favor? (Thank you. Can you repeat, please?)
• Ana: Sí, claro. Eme, u, eñe, o, zeta. (Yes, of course. M, u, ñ, o, z.)

Where Spanish is spoken

Spanish is an official or national language in twenty countries and in Puerto Rico, and roughly 500 million people speak it as a first language, which makes it the second most widely spoken native language in the world after Mandarin Chinese. Mexico has more Spanish speakers than any other country. The United States has one of the largest Spanish-speaking populations anywhere, and Spanish has been spoken continuously in what is now New Mexico, Texas, and California for over four centuries, long before those places were part of the United States. Learning Spanish is not learning a language of somewhere far away; for tens of millions of people it is the language of the next street.

Common mistakes

• Letting a vowel glide the English way. The word no is a clean "noh," never "noh-oo." Keep each of the five vowels to one steady sound.
• Pronouncing the h. It is always silent, so hola (hello) is "OH-lah" with no breathy start.
• Turning an unstressed final o into the English "uh." The last vowel of gato (cat) is a full "oh," giving "GAH-toh," not "GAH-tuh."
• Forgetting the ñ is its own letter. In a dictionary it is not the same as n, and swapping them changes words: año (year) versus ano (a very different word).
• Leaving off the opening ¿ or ¡. In Spanish they are part of the spelling of the sentence, not an optional flourish, so write ¿Cómo estás? and ¡Gracias! in full.
• Reading a written accent as a stronger or longer vowel. The accent in música only tells you which syllable to stress; the u itself is the same clean "oo" as anywhere else.

Recap

Spanish is phonetic, so learning a few sound rules lets you read almost anything aloud. The five vowels a, e, i, o, u each have exactly one pure sound and never glide, not even when they are unstressed. The alphabet has 27 letters, matching English plus ñ, and ch and ll are now treated as pairs of letters rather than separate ones. Weak and strong vowels can blend into a single-syllable diphthong, syllables prefer to end in a vowel, and knowing the letter names lets you spell aloud. Questions and exclamations carry an opening ¿ or ¡ as well as a closing one. Read every new word out loud and your accent will build itself.

Sources

1. Real Academia Española. (2023). Diccionario de la lengua española: abecedario. RAE-ASALE. dle.rae.es
2. Real Academia Española. Español al día: ortografía y abecedario. RAE. rae.es
3. Real Academia Española. Tilde. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
4. Instituto Cervantes. Plan curricular: pronunciación y prosodia. Centro Virtual Cervantes. cvc.cervantes.es
5. Ceciliano, E., & Notman, S. La clase de español. Beginning Spanish: Empecemos por aquí (Humanities LibreTexts). human.libretexts.org
6. COERLL. Spanish Proficiency Exercises. University of Texas at Austin. laits.utexas.edu
7. SpanishDict. Spanish alphabet and pronunciation guide. SpanishDict. spanishdict.com

Most Spanish consonants are close to English, but a handful surprise beginners. Learn these and your reading will sound natural.

Consonants to watch

• The letter h is always silent: hola (hello) is "OH-lah" and hospital starts with an "o" sound.
• The letter j makes a strong "h" from the back of the throat: jamón (ham) is "hah-MOHN".
• The pair ll usually sounds like the English "y": llamar (to call) is "yah-MAR".
• The letter ñ sounds like the "ny" in canyon: español is "es-pah-NYOL".
• A single r is a quick tap, while rr is a rolled trill: compare pero (but) and perro (dog).

C and G change before e and i

The letter c sounds like "k" before a, o, u (casa, house) but like "s" before e or i (cena, dinner). The letter g is hard like "go" before a, o, u (gato, cat) but throaty like the Spanish j before e or i (gente, people). To keep a hard "k" before e or i, Spanish writes qu, as in queso (cheese), where the u is silent.

Where does the stress go?

Spanish stress follows clear rules. If a word ends in a vowel, n, or s, stress the next-to-last syllable: casa (CA-sa), hablan (HA-blan). If a word ends in any other consonant, stress the last syllable: hablar (ha-BLAR), usted (us-TED). When a word breaks these rules, it carries a written accent mark on the stressed vowel, which is why we write música (MU-si-ca) and adiós (a-DIOS). The accent simply tells you where to push.

B and V sound the same

This surprises new learners: in Spanish the letters b and v are pronounced identically, both close to a soft English "b." So vaca (cow) and baca (roof rack) sound the same, and native speakers sometimes ask ¿Con be o con uve? (With b or with v?) to know how a word is spelled. Do not try to make a separate English "v" sound with your teeth on your lip.

D, and the letter Z

The Spanish d between vowels is soft, close to the "th" in the English word "this": nada (nothing) sounds like "NAH-thah." The letter z is pronounced like an "s" in Latin America (zapato, shoe, is "sah-PAH-toh"), while in most of Spain it sounds like the "th" in "think." Both are correct; pick the one you hear around you and stay consistent.

Accent marks do three jobs

A written accent (as in café) is never decoration. It does one of three jobs: it marks stress that breaks the normal rule (lápiz, pencil), it separates two words that are otherwise spelled the same (tú, you, versus tu, your; sí, yes, versus si, if), or it appears on every question word (qué, dónde, cómo). If you ever wonder whether an accent matters, the answer is yes; it can change the meaning.

The consonants at a glance

Here is the full working list. Anything not shown behaves close enough to English that you can read it on sight.

Letter	Sound	Example	English
c + a, o, u	k	casa	house
c + e, i	s (Latin America)	cena	dinner
g + a, o, u	hard g as in go	gato	cat
g + e, i	throaty h	gente	people
gu + e, i	hard g, silent u	guitarra	guitar
h	always silent	hola	hello
j	throaty h	jamón	ham
ll	y	llave	key
ñ	ny as in canyon	año	year
qu	k, silent u	queso	cheese
r (single, inside a word)	one quick tap	pero	but
rr, or r starting a word	rolled trill	perro, rojo	dog, red
v	same as b	vaca	cow
y	y, but "ee" when alone	yo, y	I, and
z	s (Latin America)	zapato	shoe

Getting the r and the rr

The single r between vowels is not the English r at all. Your tongue tip taps the ridge behind your top teeth once, quickly. English speakers already make this sound without noticing: the middle of butter and ladder, said fast in American English, is almost exactly the Spanish r in para (for). Try saying "pot o' tea" quickly and listen to that t; that is your tap.

The rr holds the tongue tip loosely in the same place and lets a stream of air make it flutter several times. It also appears at the start of a word even when only one r is written, so rojo (red), Roberto, and radio all begin with a trill. The difference is not decorative; it changes words. Say these pairs slowly:

• pero (but) versus perro (dog)
• caro (expensive) versus carro (car)
• pera (pear) versus perra (female dog)
• coro (choir) versus corro (I run)

If the trill will not come, do not panic and do not substitute an English r. A clean single tap in place of a trill sounds like an accent; an English r sounds like a different language. The trill usually arrives after a few weeks of practice.

Three families of words by stress

Spanish grammar books sort words by which syllable carries the stress, and the names are worth knowing because your teacher will use them.

Family	Stress falls on	Examples	Written accent?
agudas	the last syllable	hablar, ciudad, papel, café, adiós	only if the word ends in a vowel, n, or s
llanas (or graves)	the next-to-last syllable	casa, hablan, martes, lápiz, árbol	only if the word ends in a consonant other than n or s
esdrújulas	the third syllable from the end	música, sábado, teléfono, plátano	always

The two rules are mirror images of each other, which is why the third family is so easy: every esdrújula carries an accent, with no exceptions to memorize. Read this set aloud and check each one against the table: hospital (hos-pi-TAL), examen (ex-A-men), exámenes (ex-A-me-nes), joven (JO-ven), jóvenes (JO-ve-nes), fácil (FA-cil), difícil (di-FI-cil), número (NU-me-ro). Notice how adding a syllable to examen and joven pushes the stress a step further from the end, so the plural suddenly needs a written accent to hold the stress in place.

Accents that tell two words apart

A second job of the written accent has nothing to do with stress: it separates pairs of short words that are spelled the same. These pairs are worth learning as a set, because leaving the mark off genuinely changes the sentence.

With accent	Meaning	Without accent	Meaning
tú	you	tu	your
él	he	el	the
sí	yes	si	if
mí	me (after a preposition)	mi	my
té	tea	te	you (object)
más	more	mas	but (literary)
sé	I know	se	oneself

Compare Tú tienes tu libro (You have your book) and Sí, si quieres (Yes, if you want). Question words carry an accent too whenever they actually ask something: ¿Qué quieres? (What do you want?) but Sé que quieres café (I know that you want coffee).

Words run together

Spanish does not pause between words the way English writing suggests. When one word ends in a vowel and the next begins with one, the two blend into a single syllable, a habit called sinalefa. So ¿Cómo está usted? comes out as something close to "CO-moes-tais-TED," and mi amigo (my friend) sounds like "mya-MI-go." This is exactly why fast Spanish feels impossible at first: the words are not being spoken faster than English, they are simply being joined. Practise by reading a whole short sentence as if it were one long word.

How the same words sound in different places

Every one of these is standard, correct Spanish; none is better than another.

• Seseo and distinción. In Latin America, the Canary Islands, and much of Andalusia, casa (house) and caza (hunt) sound identical. In most of mainland Spain the z is a th sound, so they are two different words to the ear.
• Yeísmo. For the large majority of speakers today, ll and y sound the same, so halla and haya are homophones. In much of Argentina and Uruguay both are pronounced like the s in measure or the sh in shoe, so calle (street) sounds like "CA-she."
• The travelling s. In the Caribbean, coastal Spain, and parts of Central America, an s at the end of a syllable often softens to a breath, so las casas can sound like "lah CA-sah." Your own s can stay crisp; just expect to hear this.
• The j. In Spain and Mexico the j is scraped fairly far back in the throat; in the Caribbean it is a softer h, close to the English h in hat.

A short dialogue: the tricky sounds in use

Read this aloud twice. Every underlined trouble spot from this lesson appears at least once.

• Jorge: ¡Hola! Me llamo Jorge. (Hi! My name is Jorge.)
• Rosa: Hola, Jorge. Yo soy Rosa. (Hello, Jorge. I am Rosa.)
• Jorge: ¿Quieres queso? (Do you want cheese?)
• Rosa: Sí, gracias. ¿Y la guitarra? ¿Es tuya? (Yes, thank you. And the guitar? Is it yours?)
• Jorge: Sí, toco la guitarra los jueves. (Yes, I play the guitar on Thursdays.)
• Rosa: ¡Qué bien! Hasta luego. (How nice! See you later.)

Common mistakes

• Pronouncing the silent h. Words like hola (hello) and hora (hour) begin with a vowel sound.
• Reading ll as an English "l." It usually sounds like "y," so llamar (to call) is "yah-MAR."
• Making g hard before e or i. Before those vowels it is throaty, so gente (people) is "HEN-teh," not "GHEN-teh."
• Dropping accent marks when you write. Leaving the accent off sí turns "yes" into "if," so the mark is part of the spelling.
• Forcing an English "v." Remember b and v sound the same in Spanish.
• Using an English r. The r in para (for) is a single tap of the tongue tip, and an English r makes the word sound like a different language rather than like an accent.
• Pronouncing the u in guitarra or queso. After g or q and before e or i, the u is a silent spelling device. It is only pronounced when it carries two dots, as in pingüino (penguin).
• Assuming an accent means a louder or longer vowel. It marks which syllable is stressed, or which of two identical words you mean, and nothing else.

Recap

A handful of consonants behave differently from English: h is silent, j is a throaty "h," ll sounds like "y," ñ is "ny," and rr is a rolled trill that also appears whenever a word starts with r. The letters c and g soften before e and i, qu and gu keep the hard sounds with a silent u, and b and v sound alike. Stress is regular: next-to-last syllable for words ending in a vowel, n, or s, and last syllable otherwise, with a written accent marking any exception and every esdrújula. Accents also separate pairs like tú and tu. Words blend into each other when a vowel meets a vowel, and pronunciation varies by region in ways that are all equally correct.

Sources

1. Real Academia Española. Tilde. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
2. Real Academia Española. Español al día: ortografía y acentuación. RAE. rae.es
3. Instituto Cervantes. Plan curricular: pronunciación y prosodia. Centro Virtual Cervantes. cvc.cervantes.es
4. Real Academia Española. Voseo. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
5. Spanish Grammar and Linguistics Bookshelf. Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
6. COERLL. Spanish Proficiency Exercises: pronunciation practice. University of Texas at Austin. laits.utexas.edu
7. SpanishDict. How to pronounce Spanish consonants and accent marks. SpanishDict. spanishdict.com

Spanish conversations open with warm, predictable greetings. A dozen phrases let you start almost any exchange. The all-purpose hello is hola, and you can add a time-of-day greeting.

Spanish	English
Buenos días	Good morning
Buenas tardes	Good afternoon
Buenas noches	Good evening / Good night
Adiós	Goodbye
Hasta luego	See you later
Hasta mañana	See you tomorrow

How are you?

To ask how someone is, the friendly form is ¿Cómo estás? (How are you?) and the polite form is ¿Cómo está usted?. Common answers include Muy bien, gracias (Very well, thank you), Bien (Fine), Más o menos (So-so), and Mal (Bad). A natural follow-up is ¿Y tú? (And you?) or the formal ¿Y usted?.

Courtesy words

Politeness words appear constantly. Learn por favor (please), gracias (thank you), de nada (you are welcome), perdón (excuse me or sorry), and con permiso (excuse me, when passing by). Here is a tiny dialogue you could already use:

• Hola, buenos días. (Hello, good morning.)
• Buenos días. ¿Cómo estás? (Good morning. How are you?)
• Muy bien, gracias. ¿Y tú? (Very well, thank you. And you?)
• Bien, gracias. (Fine, thanks.)

One more habit to notice: Spanish writes questions with an inverted question mark at the start and a normal one at the end, so a written question opens with an upside-down mark. This warns the reader that a question is coming.

Introducing yourself

Once you have greeted someone, you introduce yourself. Two common ways are Me llamo Ana (My name is Ana, literally "I call myself Ana") and Soy Ana (I am Ana). To ask a friend their name, say ¿Cómo te llamas? (What is your name?), and the polite version is ¿Cómo se llama usted?.

When you meet someone you say Mucho gusto (Nice to meet you) or Encantado if you are male, Encantada if you are female. A tiny exchange: Hola, me llamo Luis. ¿Y tú? ¿Cómo te llamas? Me llamo Sara. Mucho gusto. (Hello, my name is Luis. And you? What is your name? My name is Sara. Nice to meet you.)

Tú or usted?

Spanish has two ways to say "you," and greetings are where the choice first appears. Use the informal tú with friends, classmates, children, and family, which is why you say ¿Cómo estás? and ¿Y tú?. Use the formal usted with strangers, older people, teachers, and anyone you want to show respect, which turns the same questions into ¿Cómo está usted? and ¿Y usted?. When in doubt with an adult you do not know, choosing usted is the safe, polite option.

More useful courtesy phrases

• Con permiso (Excuse me) to pass by or leave a table.
• Lo siento (I am sorry) to apologize sincerely.
• No hay de qué (Do not mention it) as a warm reply to gracias.
• Bienvenido / bienvenida (Welcome) to greet a guest.
• Que tengas un buen día (Have a good day) as a friendly goodbye.

More ways to ask and to answer

¿Cómo estás? is not your only option. These four questions all mean roughly "How are you?" and none of them is more polite than the others; they simply sound different.

Question	Literally	Feel
¿Cómo estás? / ¿Cómo está usted?	How are you?	the safe default, informal or formal
¿Qué tal?	How so?	light and friendly, works with anyone
¿Cómo te va?	How is it going for you?	relaxed, common among friends
¿Qué hay de nuevo?	What is there that is new?	What is new? for someone you have not seen

And here is a fuller set of answers, arranged from best to worst, so you can say something truer than "fine."

Spanish	English
Muy bien, gracias.	Very well, thank you.
Bien, gracias. ¿Y tú?	Fine, thanks. And you?
Todo bien.	All good.
Más o menos.	So-so.
Así así.	So-so.
Un poco cansado / cansada.	A little tired.
Mal.	Bad.

Notice cansado and cansada. Adjectives that describe you change their ending to match you: a boy says Estoy cansado, a girl says Estoy cansada. The same is true of encantado and encantada. You will study this agreement properly in a later lesson; for now, just pick the ending that matches yourself.

Introducing yourself and someone else

There are three normal ways to give your own name, and they are interchangeable.

• Me llamo Sara. (My name is Sara. Literally: I call myself Sara.)
• Soy Sara. (I am Sara.)
• Mi nombre es Sara. (My name is Sara. A little more formal, common on the phone.)

To ask, use ¿Cómo te llamas? with a friend and ¿Cómo se llama usted? with anyone you are treating formally. To introduce a third person, say Te presento a Luis (Let me introduce Luis to you) informally or Le presento a la señora Ruiz (Let me introduce Mrs. Ruiz to you) formally. The replies are a set you can memorize whole:

• Mucho gusto. (Nice to meet you.)
• Encantado. / Encantada. (Delighted. Said by a male / by a female.)
• Igualmente. (Likewise.)
• El gusto es mío. (The pleasure is mine.)

Titles: señor, señora, señorita

Spanish uses titles far more than English does, and they are lower case unless abbreviated. Use señor (Mr., abbreviated Sr.), señora (Mrs. or Ms., Sra.), and señorita (Miss, Srta.) with a last name: Buenos días, señor López. Called out on their own, without a name, they are simply a polite way to address a stranger: Perdón, señora, ¿dónde está la estación? (Excuse me, ma'am, where is the station?). Many speakers now prefer señora for any adult woman, since señorita comments on whether she is married. A teacher is usually profesor or profesora, and a doctor is doctor or doctora.

All the ways to say "you"

English gets by with one word. Spanish has four, and which ones you use depends on where you are. Here is the full picture in one place, so nothing surprises you later.

Word	Who	Where	Example
tú	one person, informal	almost everywhere	¿Cómo estás?
vos	one person, informal	Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, much of Central America	¿Cómo estás vos?
usted	one person, formal	everywhere	¿Cómo está usted?
vosotros / vosotras	a group, informal	Spain only	¿Cómo estáis?
ustedes	a group	Latin America for every group; Spain only when formal	¿Cómo están ustedes?

This course teaches tú, usted, and ustedes, which will carry you through any Spanish-speaking country. You will meet vosotros in the verb tables so that you can read it, and vos is worth recognising because tens of millions of people use it every day.

A formal dialogue

A student arrives at a school office. Everything is in the usted form.

• Sra. Ruiz: Buenos días. ¿Cómo está usted? (Good morning. How are you?)
• Pedro: Muy bien, gracias. ¿Y usted? (Very well, thank you. And you?)
• Sra. Ruiz: Bien, gracias. ¿Cómo se llama usted? (Fine, thank you. What is your name?)
• Pedro: Me llamo Pedro Salas. Mucho gusto. (My name is Pedro Salas. Nice to meet you.)
• Sra. Ruiz: Encantada. Soy la señora Ruiz. (Delighted. I am Mrs. Ruiz.)
• Pedro: Gracias por su tiempo. Hasta luego. (Thank you for your time. See you later.)
• Sra. Ruiz: Hasta luego, Pedro. Que tenga un buen día. (See you later, Pedro. Have a good day.)

An informal dialogue

The same conversation between two classmates. Watch every verb change to the tú form.

• Marta: ¡Hola! ¿Qué tal? (Hi! How are things?)
• Diego: Más o menos. Estoy un poco cansado. ¿Y tú? (So-so. I am a little tired. And you?)
• Marta: Todo bien, gracias. ¿Cómo te llamas? (All good, thanks. What is your name?)
• Diego: Diego. ¿Y tú? (Diego. And you?)
• Marta: Marta. Mucho gusto. (Marta. Nice to meet you.)
• Diego: Igualmente. ¡Hasta mañana! (Likewise. See you tomorrow!)

Greeting habits

Greetings in Spanish-speaking countries are usually a little warmer and a little more physical than in English-speaking ones, though the details differ from country to country and from family to family. In Spain, friends and relatives commonly greet with a light kiss on each cheek; in most of Latin America a single kiss on one cheek is the norm between women, and between a woman and a man who know each other. Men who are friends often shake hands or add a brief hug. In a business or school setting a handshake is standard everywhere. When you are unsure, offer a handshake and follow the other person's lead. One habit that is nearly universal is worth copying: greeting people individually rather than waving at the group, and saying buenos días when you enter a small shop, a waiting room, or an elevator.

Common mistakes

• Using buenas noches only to say good night. It also means "good evening" and is a normal greeting after dark, not just a farewell.
• Mixing tú and usted in one sentence, like ¿Cómo está tú?. Keep them consistent: ¿Cómo estás tú? or ¿Cómo está usted?.
• Answering ¿Cómo estás? with Soy bien. Feelings use estar, so the answer is Estoy bien or simply Bien, gracias.
• Forgetting the opening inverted question mark when you write a question.
• Saying buenos tardes. The greeting is buenas tardes, because tarde is feminine, and likewise buenas noches. Only buenos días uses the masculine form.
• Translating "Nice to meet you" word for word. Spanish says Mucho gusto or Encantado, never a literal version of the English.
• Using encantado when you are female. The word agrees with the speaker, so a woman says encantada.
• Reaching for adiós every time. If you expect to see the person again soon, hasta luego or nos vemos (see you) sounds friendlier; adiós can feel final.

Recap

A small set of greetings opens almost any conversation: hola plus buenos días, buenas tardes, or buenas noches to say hello, and adiós, hasta luego, hasta mañana, or nos vemos to say goodbye. Ask ¿Cómo estás? (informal), ¿Cómo está usted? (formal), or the easy ¿Qué tal?, and reply with muy bien, bien, todo bien, más o menos, or mal. Introduce yourself with Me llamo..., Soy..., or Mi nombre es..., then say Mucho gusto, Encantado or Encantada, and Igualmente. Choose tú, usted, or ustedes to match the person and the place, and sprinkle in por favor, gracias, and de nada.

Sources

1. Instituto Cervantes. Plan curricular: saludos, despedidas y presentaciones. Centro Virtual Cervantes. cvc.cervantes.es
2. Real Academia Española. Usted. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
3. Real Academia Española. Tú. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
4. Real Academia Española. Voseo. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
5. Ceciliano, E., & Notman, S. Las personas y las perspectivas. Beginning Spanish: Empecemos por aquí (Humanities LibreTexts). human.libretexts.org
6. COERLL. Spanish Proficiency Exercises: greetings and introductions. University of Texas at Austin. laits.utexas.edu
7. Real Academia Española. Hola. Diccionario de la lengua española. dle.rae.es

To say who does something, Spanish uses subject pronouns. Note that Spanish has several words for "you" depending on formality and number.

Pronoun	Meaning
yo	I
tú	you (informal, singular)
él / ella / usted	he / she / you (formal)
nosotros / nosotras	we (masculine / feminine)
vosotros / vosotras	you all (informal, used in Spain)
ellos / ellas / ustedes	they (m / f) / you all

Spanish often drops the pronoun because the verb ending already shows who is speaking. So Soy estudiante already means "I am a student" without saying yo. Use tú with friends, family, and classmates, and usted to show respect to strangers, elders, and people in authority.

Conjugating ser (to be)

Spanish has two verbs for "to be." The first is ser. It is irregular, so memorize its forms.

Pronoun	Ser	Example	English
yo	soy	Yo soy Ana.	I am Ana.
tú	eres	Tú eres alto.	You are tall.
él / ella / usted	es	Ella es doctora.	She is a doctor.
nosotros	somos	Nosotros somos amigos.	We are friends.
vosotros	sois	Vosotros sois jóvenes.	You all are young.
ellos / ellas / ustedes	son	Ellos son de México.	They are from Mexico.

Use ser for things that define what someone or something fundamentally is: identity (Soy Ana, I am Ana), profession (Es profesor, He is a teacher), origin (Somos de España, We are from Spain), and lasting traits (El libro es interesante, The book is interesting). A memory aid: ser describes the essence of a thing, the traits that stay the same.

Ser for origin and nationality

One of the most common uses of ser is telling where you are from. Pair ser with de plus a place: Soy de los Estados Unidos (I am from the United States), Ella es de Colombia (She is from Colombia). To ask, say ¿De dónde eres? (Where are you from?) informally, or ¿De dónde es usted? formally. You can also use an adjective of nationality, which must agree in gender: a man is mexicano and a woman is mexicana; a man is español and a woman is española. Remember that nationalities are not capitalized in Spanish.

When Spanish keeps the pronoun

Because the verb ending already shows the subject, Spanish usually drops the pronoun: Soy estudiante, not "Yo soy estudiante." So when do speakers include it? For emphasis (Yo soy el profesor, no él, I am the teacher, not him), for contrast between two people (Tú eres alto y ella es baja, You are tall and she is short), and for clarity with the third-person forms, since es and son could refer to several people. Otherwise, leaving the pronoun out sounds more natural.

The five jobs of ser, with examples

Every use of ser falls into one of five buckets. Read the whole table aloud; twenty short sentences will teach you more than another paragraph of explanation.

Job	Spanish	English
Identity	Soy Marta.	I am Marta.
Identity	Ese es mi hermano.	That is my brother.
Profession	Mi madre es enfermera.	My mother is a nurse.
Profession	Somos estudiantes.	We are students.
Origin	¿De dónde eres?	Where are you from?
Origin	Ellos son de Guatemala.	They are from Guatemala.
Lasting trait	El libro es interesante.	The book is interesting.
Lasting trait	La casa es grande y blanca.	The house is big and white.
Time and date	Hoy es lunes.	Today is Monday.
Time and date	Son las tres.	It is three o'clock.

Two of those deserve a second look. With a profession, Spanish leaves out the word for "a": Es profesora means "She is a teacher," and adding una would sound as though you were pointing her out from a list. And with time, the verb agrees with the hour, so it is Es la una (It is one o'clock) but Son las dos (It is two o'clock).

Nationalities and where you are from

Nationality words are adjectives, so they change ending to match the person, and they are written in lower case even though the country name is capitalized.

Country	Male	Female
México	mexicano	mexicana
Colombia	colombiano	colombiana
España	español	española
Estados Unidos	estadounidense	estadounidense
Canadá	canadiense	canadiense
Costa Rica	costarricense	costarricense
Perú	peruano	peruana
Argentina	argentino	argentina

Words ending in -e or -ense do not change for gender at all, which is a small piece of good luck. So you can say Soy canadiense whoever you are, but Soy peruano or Soy peruana depending on who is speaking. To make any of them plural, add -s to a vowel and -es to a consonant: Somos mexicanos, Son españoles.

Saying it in the negative and asking questions

Negating any Spanish verb is refreshingly simple: put no directly in front of it. There is nothing like the English "do not."

• No soy de aquí. (I am not from here.)
• Ana no es doctora, es abogada. (Ana is not a doctor, she is a lawyer.)
• No somos hermanos, somos primos. (We are not brothers, we are cousins.)
• ¿No eres estudiante? (Are you not a student?)

To ask a yes-or-no question you can simply add the two question marks and let your voice rise: ¿Eres de México? (Are you from Mexico?). Spanish does not need an extra helping verb the way English needs "do" or "are." For an information question, start with the question word: ¿Quién es? (Who is it?), ¿De dónde es usted? (Where are you from?), ¿Cómo es tu casa? (What is your house like?).

Where English and Spanish part company

• English needs a subject; Spanish does not. "Is a student" is not an English sentence, but Es estudiante is a perfectly complete Spanish one. The ending -s on eres or the shape of soy already tells you who.
• Two verbs, one English word. Both ser and estar translate as "to be." This lesson covers ser; the next covers estar and how to choose.
• No article with jobs. English says "I am a student," Spanish says Soy estudiante.
• Lower-case nationalities. Soy mexicano, not "Soy Mexicano," even though México keeps its capital letter.
• usted takes the él form. It looks like a "you" word but behaves grammatically like "he" or "she," so it is usted es, never "usted eres."

A short dialogue

Two new classmates work out where everyone is from. Every verb here is a form of ser.

• Carla: Hola, soy Carla. ¿Y tú? ¿Cómo te llamas? (Hi, I am Carla. And you? What is your name?)
• Tomás: Soy Tomás. ¿De dónde eres? (I am Tomás. Where are you from?)
• Carla: Soy de Lima. Soy peruana. ¿Y tú? (I am from Lima. I am Peruvian. And you?)
• Tomás: Yo soy de Sevilla, así que soy español. (I am from Seville, so I am Spanish.)
• Carla: ¡Qué bien! ¿Y ellos? ¿Quiénes son? (How nice! And them? Who are they?)
• Tomás: Son mis primos. Son estudiantes también. (They are my cousins. They are students too.)
• Carla: Entonces todos somos estudiantes. (Then we are all students.)

Common mistakes

• Adding the pronoun everywhere. Yo soy, yo tengo, yo hablo in every sentence sounds unnatural; drop yo unless you need emphasis.
• Using ser for feelings or location. Estoy cansado (I am tired) and Estoy en casa (I am at home) use estar, not ser.
• Choosing the wrong "you." Do not use tú with a stranger you should respect; use usted. Note that usted takes the same verb form as él and ella: usted es.
• Capitalizing a nationality. Write soy mexicano, not "soy Mexicano."
• Adding "a" before a job. It is Soy estudiante and Es doctora, not "Soy un estudiante" or "Es una doctora."
• Translating "I am from" as two separate ideas. The whole phrase is ser de, so it is Soy de Chile, never "Soy en Chile."
• Writing tu for the pronoun. Tú eres (you are) needs the accent; tu casa (your house) does not.
• Forgetting that nosotras, vosotras, and ellas exist. Use the feminine form when the whole group is female; a mixed group takes the masculine.

Recap

Subject pronouns name who acts: yo, tú, él, ella, usted, nosotros, nosotras, vosotros, vosotras, ellos, ellas, ustedes. Spanish often drops them because the verb ending is enough, keeping them only for emphasis, contrast, or clarity. Ser is the irregular verb "to be" used for identity, profession, origin, lasting traits, and time, and its forms are soy, eres, es, somos, sois, son. Pair ser with de for origin, leave out the article before a job, write nationalities in lower case, negate by putting no in front of the verb, and choose tú or usted based on how formal the moment is.

Sources

1. Real Academia Española. Ser. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
2. Real Academia Española. Ser. Diccionario de la lengua española. dle.rae.es
3. Real Academia Española. Usted. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
4. Instituto Cervantes. Plan curricular: gramática, el verbo. Centro Virtual Cervantes. cvc.cervantes.es
5. Ceciliano, E., & Notman, S. Las personas y las perspectivas. Beginning Spanish: Empecemos por aquí (Humanities LibreTexts). human.libretexts.org
6. COERLL. Spanish Proficiency Exercises: talking about yourself. University of Texas at Austin. laits.utexas.edu
7. SpanishDict. Ser conjugation and uses. SpanishDict. spanishdict.com

Spanish has a second verb that also means "to be": estar. Where ser describes what something is, estar describes how or where something is right now. Here is the present tense.

Pronoun	Estar	Example	English
yo	estoy	Yo estoy bien.	I am fine.
tú	estás	Tú estás en casa.	You are at home.
él / ella / usted	está	Ella está cansada.	She is tired.
nosotros	estamos	Estamos contentos.	We are happy.
vosotros	estáis	Estáis aquí.	You all are here.
ellos / ellas / ustedes	están	Ellos están ocupados.	They are busy.

When to use estar

Use estar for two big ideas: location and temporary states. For location, El libro está en la mesa means "The book is on the table," and Estamos en la escuela means "We are at school." For feelings and conditions that can change, Estoy cansado means "I am tired," and El café está caliente means "The coffee is hot right now."

Ser or estar?

The choice can change the meaning. Compare these:

• Ella es aburrida. (She is boring, a lasting trait.)
• Ella está aburrida. (She is bored, a passing mood.)
• Él es rico. (He is rich.) versus El pastel está rico. (The cake tastes delicious.)

A simple rule of thumb: ask whether you are describing an essential identity or trait (use ser) or a current condition, feeling, or location (use estar). Many students remember estar with the phrase "how you feel and where you are." With practice the choice becomes automatic.

A memory trick: PLACE and DOCTOR

Two English acronyms help many beginners. Use estar for PLACE: Position, Location, Action (the ongoing sense), Condition, and Emotion. Use ser for DOCTOR: Description (lasting traits), Occupation, Characteristic, Time and date, Origin, and Relationship. So a doctor's identity (Es doctora, She is a doctor) uses ser, but her current state (Está ocupada, She is busy) uses estar. You do not need to memorize the acronyms forever; they are training wheels until the choice feels natural.

Estar with feelings vocabulary

Estar shines with emotions and conditions, so it is worth collecting a few adjectives that agree in gender and number: contento / contenta (happy), triste (sad), enojado / enojada (angry), nervioso / nerviosa (nervous), enfermo / enferma (sick), ocupado / ocupada (busy), and listo / lista (ready). Examples: Estoy contento hoy (I am happy today), Ella está enferma (She is sick), Estamos listos (We are ready). To ask, ¿Cómo estás? already draws on estar.

Adjectives that switch meaning

A small group of adjectives changes meaning depending on the verb, which is a fun way to feel the ser or estar difference:

• ser listo (to be clever) versus estar listo (to be ready).
• ser aburrido (to be boring) versus estar aburrido (to be bored).
• ser rico (to be rich) versus estar rico (to taste delicious).
• ser verde (to be green in color) versus estar verde (to be unripe).

The two verbs side by side

Seeing the whole picture in one table makes the choice much less mysterious. Cover the middle column and try to predict the verb.

Idea	Verb	Example
Who or what someone is	ser	Marta es mi prima. (Marta is my cousin.)
Job	ser	Es ingeniera. (She is an engineer.)
Where someone is from	ser	Somos de Bolivia. (We are from Bolivia.)
What something is made of	ser	La mesa es de madera. (The table is made of wood.)
Who owns it	ser	El libro es de Ana. (The book is Ana's.)
Time, day, date	ser	Son las diez. (It is ten o'clock.)
Lasting quality	ser	La clase es difícil. (The class is hard.)
Where something is	estar	El banco está allí. (The bank is over there.)
How you feel	estar	Estoy nervioso. (I am nervous.)
Health	estar	Mi abuela está enferma. (My grandmother is sick.)
A condition right now	estar	La puerta está abierta. (The door is open.)
An action in progress	estar	Estamos comiendo. (We are eating.)

Two of those rows tend to surprise people. Location always takes estar even when nothing could be more permanent, so a mountain range, a capital city, and a thousand-year-old cathedral all take está. But an event uses ser, because you are saying when and where it takes place rather than where an object sits: La fiesta es en mi casa (The party is at my house).

Estar plus a place word

Location sentences almost always pair estar with a small preposition. These are worth learning as a block.

Spanish	English	Example
en	in, on, at	Estoy en casa. (I am at home.)
al lado de	next to	El café está al lado del banco. (The cafe is next to the bank.)
cerca de	near	Estamos cerca del parque. (We are near the park.)
lejos de	far from	La escuela está lejos de aquí. (The school is far from here.)
delante de	in front of	Están delante de la puerta. (They are in front of the door.)
detrás de	behind	El perro está detrás del sofá. (The dog is behind the sofa.)
debajo de	under	El gato está debajo de la mesa. (The cat is under the table.)
encima de	on top of	El libro está encima de la mesa. (The book is on top of the table.)
entre	between	La tienda está entre el banco y el café. (The shop is between the bank and the cafe.)

Watch de + el. Spanish squeezes those two words into del, so it is al lado del banco and never "al lado de el banco." The same thing happens with a + el, which becomes al. These are the only two contractions in the language, so there is nothing else to memorize.

Estar for something happening right now

English has a special "-ing" form for actions in progress, and Spanish builds the same idea with estar plus a form ending in -ando or -iendo. You will study it properly later, but it is useful now because it explains a lot of what you hear.

• Estoy estudiando. (I am studying.)
• Ella está comiendo. (She is eating.)
• Estamos escuchando música. (We are listening to music.)
• ¿Qué estás haciendo? (What are you doing?)

Be careful, though: Spanish uses this far less than English does. For something happening today or generally, the plain present tense is the normal choice, so Estudio español covers both "I study Spanish" and "I am studying Spanish." Save estar + -ando for an action genuinely under way at this moment.

Why this pair breaks English speakers

The reason ser and estar are hard is not that the rule is complicated. It is that English hides the distinction inside a single word, so your first language gives you no signal at all about which one to reach for. Three habits will get you most of the way there. First, if the sentence says where something is, use estar without thinking about it. Second, if you could replace "is" with "is currently" or "is feeling," use estar. Third, if you could replace "is" with "equals," use ser. Test them on La sopa está fría (The soup is cold, right now, someone let it sit) versus El invierno es frío (Winter is cold, that is what winter is like). Learners who guess ser by default make far more mistakes than learners who guess estar, so when you truly cannot decide, estar is the better coin flip.

A short dialogue

Two friends on the phone. Every "to be" in the conversation is deliberate, so read it twice and ask why each one is what it is.

• Luis: Hola, Rosa. ¿Dónde estás? (Hi, Rosa. Where are you?)
• Rosa: Estoy en la biblioteca. Está cerca de la escuela. (I am at the library. It is near the school.)
• Luis: ¿Y cómo estás? (And how are you?)
• Rosa: Un poco cansada. La clase de historia es muy difícil. (A little tired. The history class is very hard.)
• Luis: ¿El profesor es simpático? (Is the teacher nice?)
• Rosa: Sí, es muy simpático, pero hoy está enfermo. (Yes, he is very nice, but today he is sick.)
• Luis: Entonces, ¿la fiesta es esta noche? (So, is the party tonight?)
• Rosa: Sí, es en casa de Ana. Estoy contenta. (Yes, it is at Ana's house. I am happy.)

Common mistakes

• Using ser for location. Even a permanent building takes estar: El museo está en el centro (The museum is downtown), not "es en el centro."
• Using ser for feelings. Say Estoy triste (I am sad), not "Soy triste."
• Forgetting agreement. With a woman, use cansada and contenta, not the masculine forms.
• Mixing up the two "boring" ideas. Ella es aburrida calls her boring; Ella está aburrida says she is bored right now.
• Using estar for an event. A party, a class, or a concert takes ser: El concierto es en el parque (The concert is in the park), even though a park is a place.
• Forgetting the accents. The forms estás, está, estáis, and están all carry a written accent; only estoy and estamos do not.
• Writing "es de el". The contraction is compulsory: Es del profesor (It belongs to the teacher).
• Overusing estar + -ando. For a habit or a plan, the plain present is right: Trabajo los sábados (I work on Saturdays), not "Estoy trabajando los sábados."

Recap

Estar is the second verb for "to be," with forms estoy, estás, está, estamos, estáis, están. Use it for location, for temporary states, feelings, and conditions, and for an action in progress with -ando or -iendo. Remember "how you feel and where you are." Ser covers lasting identity, jobs, origin, material, ownership, time, and events. When both are possible the verb changes the meaning, as in ser aburrido (boring) versus estar aburrido (bored). Location words like al lado de and cerca de pair with estar, and remember that de + el becomes del. Ask yourself: essence, or current state?

Sources

1. Real Academia Española. Estar, estarse. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
2. Real Academia Española. Ser. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
3. Real Academia Española. Estar. Diccionario de la lengua española. dle.rae.es
4. Real Academia Española. Gerundio. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
5. Instituto Cervantes. Plan curricular: gramática, ser y estar. Centro Virtual Cervantes. cvc.cervantes.es
6. Ceciliano, E., & Notman, S. La vida que vivimos. Beginning Spanish: Empecemos por aquí (Humanities LibreTexts). human.libretexts.org
7. SpanishDict. Ser vs. estar: a complete guide. SpanishDict. spanishdict.com

One of the most useful Spanish verbs is tener (to have). It is irregular, and it does far more than show possession. Learn it now and your sentences will open up quickly.

Pronoun	tener	Example	English
yo	tengo	Tengo un perro.	I have a dog.
tú	tienes	Tienes dos hermanos.	You have two brothers.
él / ella / usted	tiene	Ella tiene un libro.	She has a book.
nosotros	tenemos	Tenemos una clase.	We have a class.
vosotros	tenéis	Tenéis tiempo.	You all have time.
ellos / ellas / ustedes	tienen	Ellos tienen tarea.	They have homework.

Age uses tener, not ser

This surprises English speakers. To give an age, Spanish uses tener: Tengo quince años literally means "I have fifteen years," that is, "I am fifteen years old." To ask, you say ¿Cuántos años tienes? (How old are you?). Never use ser or estar for age.

Tener expressions for how you feel

Spanish uses tener for many physical states where English uses "to be." Study these useful expressions:

Spanish	English
tener hambre	to be hungry
tener sed	to be thirsty
tener frío	to be cold
tener calor	to be hot
tener sueño	to be sleepy
tener miedo	to be afraid

So Tengo hambre means "I am hungry," and Tenemos sed means "We are thirsty." One more high-frequency pattern is tener que + infinitive (to have to do something): Tengo que estudiar means "I have to study."

Add mucho or mucha for emphasis

Because these expressions really use nouns (hambre is "hunger," not "hungry"), you make them stronger with mucho or mucha, not "muy." The word must agree with the gender of the noun: Tengo mucha hambre (I am very hungry, hambre is feminine), Tengo mucho sueño (I am very sleepy, sueño is masculine), Tengo mucho miedo (I am very afraid). Saying "muy hambre" is a classic beginner slip; the noun needs mucho or mucha instead.

More tener expressions

Beyond the physical states, tener appears in several everyday phrases worth knowing:

Spanish	English
tener prisa	to be in a hurry
tener razón	to be right
tener suerte	to be lucky
tener ganas de	to feel like (doing something)

So Tengo prisa means "I am in a hurry," Tienes razón means "You are right," and Tengo ganas de bailar means "I feel like dancing." Like tener que, the expression tener ganas de is followed by an infinitive.

Common mistakes

Why tener changes its vowel

Look again at the table at the top. Three forms have an ie where the infinitive has a plain e: tienes, tiene, and tienen. The pattern has a shape to it. The e splits into ie exactly where the stress falls on it, which never happens in tenemos and tenéis because there the stress moves onto the ending. The yo form is irregular in a completely separate way: instead of changing the vowel it adds a g, giving tengo.

e becomes ie	Plain e kept	Its own irregular form
tú tienes	nosotros tenemos	yo tengo
él / ella / usted tiene	vosotros tenéis
ellos / ellas / ustedes tienen

Dozens of Spanish verbs change their vowel this way, so recognising the pattern now saves work later: querer (to want) gives quiero, quieres, quiere, queremos, queréis, quieren, and preferir (to prefer) gives prefiero, prefieres, prefiere, preferimos, preferís, prefieren. The verb venir (to come) does both tricks at once, exactly like tener: vengo, vienes, viene, venimos, venís, vienen.

Tener for possession, in full sentences

The plain meaning of tener is "to have," and it works exactly as you would expect.

• Tengo un hermano y dos hermanas. (I have one brother and two sisters.)
• ¿Tienes un bolígrafo? (Do you have a pen?)
• Mi amiga tiene un coche rojo. (My friend has a red car.)
• No tenemos clase los viernes. (We do not have class on Fridays.)
• Ellos tienen mucha tarea hoy. (They have a lot of homework today.)
• ¿Cuántos primos tienes? (How many cousins do you have?)

Notice how questions and negatives work. To make a question, wrap the sentence in question marks and let your voice rise; to make it negative, put no in front of the verb. Spanish never needs a helper word like the English "do" or "does."

The full set of tener expressions

This is the complete working list for a first-year student. Learn each one as a chunk rather than word by word, and check the example sentence to see it in action.

Expression	English	Example
tener hambre	to be hungry	Tengo hambre. (I am hungry.)
tener sed	to be thirsty	¿Tienes sed? (Are you thirsty?)
tener frío	to be cold	Los niños tienen frío. (The children are cold.)
tener calor	to be hot	Tenemos calor. (We are hot.)
tener sueño	to be sleepy	Tengo mucho sueño. (I am very sleepy.)
tener miedo (de)	to be afraid (of)	Tiene miedo de los perros. (He is afraid of dogs.)
tener prisa	to be in a hurry	Tengo prisa, hasta luego. (I am in a hurry, see you later.)
tener razón	to be right	Tienes razón. (You are right.)
tener suerte	to be lucky	¡Qué suerte tienes! (How lucky you are!)
tener cuidado	to be careful	Ten cuidado. (Be careful.)
tener éxito	to be successful	La escuela tiene mucho éxito. (The school is very successful.)
tener ganas de	to feel like	Tengo ganas de bailar. (I feel like dancing.)
tener que	to have to	Tenemos que estudiar. (We have to study.)
tener ... años	to be ... years old	Tiene catorce años. (She is fourteen.)

Obligation: tener que plus an infinitive

This pattern is one of the highest-value structures in first-year Spanish, because it lets you talk about everything you must do using verbs you have not conjugated yet. The second verb stays in its dictionary form.

• Tengo que hacer la tarea. (I have to do the homework.)
• Tienes que hablar con el profesor. (You have to talk to the teacher.)
• Mi hermana tiene que trabajar hoy. (My sister has to work today.)
• Tenemos que llegar temprano. (We have to arrive early.)
• ¿Tienes que estudiar esta noche? (Do you have to study tonight?)
• No tengo que trabajar los domingos. (I do not have to work on Sundays.)

Tener ganas de works the same way and is just as useful: Tengo ganas de comer pizza (I feel like eating pizza), No tenemos ganas de estudiar (We do not feel like studying).

Tener versus hay

Beginners often reach for tener when they want to say "there is" or "there are." That job belongs to a different word, hay, which never changes form no matter how many things there are.

• Hay un libro en la mesa. (There is a book on the table.)
• Hay veinte estudiantes en la clase. (There are twenty students in the class.)
• ¿Hay una farmacia cerca? (Is there a pharmacy nearby?)
• No hay problema. (There is no problem.)

Compare La clase tiene veinte estudiantes (The class has twenty students) with Hay veinte estudiantes en la clase (There are twenty students in the class). Both are correct; the first says who owns what, the second says what exists.

Why Spanish "has" what English "is"

The single hardest thing about this lesson is not the conjugation, it is the habit. English treats hunger, cold, fear, and age as things you are; Spanish treats them as things you have. Once you accept that hambre is a noun meaning "hunger" and not an adjective meaning "hungry," the rest follows automatically, including the reason you strengthen it with mucha rather than muy. English does the same thing in a few places, which can help you remember: we say "I have a headache," not "I am headachy." Say it aloud a few times, tengo hambre, tengo sed, tengo sueño, until reaching for soy feels wrong.

A short dialogue

Two friends after school. Nearly every line uses tener.

• Sofía: ¿Tienes hambre? (Are you hungry?)
• Marcos: Sí, tengo mucha hambre. Y tengo sed también. (Yes, I am very hungry. And I am thirsty too.)
• Sofía: Hay un café cerca. ¿Tienes tiempo? (There is a cafe nearby. Do you have time?)
• Marcos: No, tengo prisa. Tengo que estudiar para el examen. (No, I am in a hurry. I have to study for the exam.)
• Sofía: Tienes razón. Yo también tengo mucha tarea. (You are right. I have a lot of homework too.)
• Marcos: ¿Cuántos años tiene tu hermano? Él estudia conmigo. (How old is your brother? He studies with me.)
• Sofía: Tiene dieciséis años. Y tiene ganas de aprender francés. (He is sixteen. And he feels like learning French.)

Common mistakes

• Using ser or estar for age or these states. Say Tengo hambre (I am hungry) and Tengo dieciséis años (I am sixteen), never "Soy hambre" or "Soy dieciséis años."
• Using muy with the noun. It is mucha hambre and mucho frío, not "muy hambre."
• Forgetting años when giving an age. Tengo quince is incomplete; say Tengo quince años.
• Dropping que in the obligation pattern. It is Tengo que estudiar, not "Tengo estudiar."
• Conjugating the second verb. After tener que and tener ganas de, the next verb stays in its infinitive form: Tengo que comer, never "Tengo que como."
• Using tener for "there is." Hay un problema means there is a problem; Tiene un problema means he or she has one.
• Writing "tenemos hambre mucha." The word mucha comes first: Tenemos mucha hambre.
• Changing the vowel in the nosotros form. It is tenemos, never "tienemos."

Recap

Tener (to have) is irregular: tengo, tienes, tiene, tenemos, tenéis, tienen. The e turns into ie in tienes, tiene, and tienen, the yo form adds a g to give tengo, and tenemos and tenéis keep the plain e. It shows possession, but it also gives age (Tengo quince años) and expresses physical states where English uses "to be" (tener hambre, tener frío, tener sueño, tener miedo). Strengthen those with mucho or mucha, not muy, because they are nouns. Tener que + infinitive means "to have to" and tener ganas de + infinitive means "to feel like." For "there is" or "there are," use the separate word hay.

Sources

1. Real Academia Española. Tener, tenerse. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
2. Real Academia Española. Tener. Diccionario de la lengua española. dle.rae.es
3. Real Academia Española. Haber. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
4. Instituto Cervantes. Plan curricular: gramática, el verbo. Centro Virtual Cervantes. cvc.cervantes.es
5. Ceciliano, E., & Notman, S. La vida que vivimos. Beginning Spanish: Empecemos por aquí (Humanities LibreTexts). human.libretexts.org
6. COERLL. Spanish Proficiency Exercises. University of Texas at Austin. laits.utexas.edu
7. SpanishDict. Tener conjugation and tener expressions. SpanishDict. spanishdict.com

Every Spanish noun (a person, place, or thing) has a gender: it is either masculine or feminine. This is grammatical, not about biology, so a table (la mesa) is feminine and a book (el libro) is masculine. The gender controls the words around the noun, so always learn a noun together with its article.

Helpful endings

Most nouns follow a pattern: nouns ending in -o are usually masculine, and nouns ending in -a are usually feminine.

• Masculine: el libro (the book), el gato (the cat), el dinero (the money)
• Feminine: la casa (the house), la silla (the chair), la ventana (the window)

Learn these common exceptions: el día (the day) is masculine though it ends in -a, and la mano (the hand) is feminine though it ends in -o. Words ending in -ción or -dad are feminine, such as la nación (the nation) and la ciudad (the city). Many words ending in -ma are masculine, like el problema (the problem).

The four "the" and four "a"

English has one word for "the." Spanish has four, matching gender and number, plus four words for "a" or "some."

	Masc. singular	Fem. singular	Masc. plural	Fem. plural
the (definite)	el	la	los	las
a / some (indefinite)	un	una	unos	unas

So "the book" is el libro, "the books" is los libros, "a house" is una casa, and "some houses" is unas casas. To make most nouns plural, add -s after a vowel (libro to libros) and -es after a consonant (ciudad to ciudades). Always practice new vocabulary with its article; "libro" alone is only half the word to a Spanish ear.

More endings that reveal gender

Beyond -o and -a, several endings almost always signal one gender. These are feminine: -ción and -sión (la canción, the song; la televisión, television), -dad and -tad (la verdad, the truth; la libertad, freedom), and -tud (la actitud, the attitude). These are masculine: -ma in words of Greek origin (el problema, el programa, el tema, the topic) and -or (el color, the color; el amor, love). Learning the endings saves you from memorizing each gender one by one.

The special case of feminine el

Here is a quirk worth knowing. A feminine noun that begins with a stressed a sound uses el in the singular to avoid two a-sounds clashing: el agua (the water), el águila (the eagle). The word is still feminine, so its adjective agrees as feminine (el agua fría, the cold water) and the plural returns to las (las aguas). Do not let el agua trick you into thinking the noun is masculine.

Nouns for people

For people and many animals, the ending often changes with the person's gender: el amigo / la amiga (friend), el profesor / la profesora (teacher), el niño / la niña (boy / girl). Some nouns keep one form and only the article changes: el estudiante / la estudiante (the student), el artista / la artista (the artist). A mixed group takes the masculine plural: los amigos can mean a group of male friends or a mixed group.

The ending clues in one table

Roughly nine nouns out of ten follow one of these endings, so this table is close to a complete map of Spanish gender. Read each example with its article; that is how the word is actually stored in your memory.

Ending	Gender	Examples
-o	masculine	el libro (book), el dinero (money), el zapato (shoe)
-a	feminine	la casa (house), la silla (chair), la puerta (door)
-ción, -sión	feminine	la canción (song), la lección (lesson), la televisión (television)
-dad, -tad	feminine	la ciudad (city), la verdad (truth), la libertad (freedom)
-tud	feminine	la actitud (attitude), la juventud (youth)
-umbre	feminine	la costumbre (custom), la legumbre (vegetable)
-ma (from Greek)	masculine	el problema, el programa, el tema (topic), el sistema
-or	masculine	el color (colour), el amor (love), el calor (heat)
-aje	masculine	el viaje (trip), el paisaje (landscape)
-l, -n, -r, -s	usually masculine	el papel (paper), el examen (exam), el lugar (place), el mes (month)

Watch out for the small group that breaks the -o and -a rule outright. Memorize these as a short list rather than trying to reason about them: el día (day), el mapa (map), el sofá (sofa), el planeta (planet), la mano (hand), la foto (photo), la moto (motorbike), and la radio (radio). The last three are short for la fotografía, la motocicleta, and la radiodifusión, which is exactly why they stayed feminine.

Making nouns plural

The rule is simple, with three tidy spelling adjustments.

Word ends in	Add	Singular	Plural
a vowel	-s	el libro, la casa	los libros, las casas
a consonant	-es	la ciudad, el papel	las ciudades, los papeles
-z	-ces	el lápiz, la vez	los lápices, las veces
-ión	-iones, accent drops	la canción, la lección	las canciones, las lecciones
unstressed vowel + s	nothing changes	el lunes, la crisis	los lunes, las crisis

The accent behaviour in canción and lección is not a special rule; it falls straight out of the stress rules from Lesson 2. In the singular the word ends in n and is stressed on the last syllable, so it needs a written accent. In the plural the stress is on the next-to-last syllable of a word ending in s, which is the normal pattern, so the accent is no longer needed. The same logic runs backwards with el examen and los exámenes.

Definite or indefinite? When Spanish uses "the"

Spanish reaches for el, la, los, las in several places where English uses no article at all, and this is one of the commonest sources of learner mistakes.

• With a general idea: Me gusta la música. (I like music.)
• With a whole category: Los perros son leales. (Dogs are loyal.)
• With days of the week to mean "on": Tengo clase los martes. (I have class on Tuesdays.)
• With languages and school subjects: Estudio el español y las matemáticas. (I study Spanish and maths.)
• With a title when you talk about someone: La señora Ruiz es profesora. (Mrs. Ruiz is a teacher.) But you drop it when you speak to her: Buenos días, señora Ruiz.
• With parts of the body and clothing, where English uses "my" or "your": Me duele la cabeza. (My head hurts.)

The indefinite articles go the other way and disappear more often than in English, especially before an unmodified job, nationality, or religion: Es profesora (She is a teacher), Soy estudiante (I am a student). Put an adjective on it and the article comes back: Es una profesora excelente (She is an excellent teacher).

Twenty nouns to store with their articles

Say each one aloud as a two-word unit. If you learn la mesa now, you will never have to guess later.

• el libro (book), el cuaderno (notebook), el bolígrafo (pen), el lápiz (pencil), el papel (paper)
• la mesa (table), la silla (chair), la puerta (door), la ventana (window), la pizarra (board)
• el colegio (school), el profesor (male teacher), la profesora (female teacher), el examen (exam), la tarea (homework)
• la ciudad (city), el país (country), la calle (street), el coche (car), la casa (house)

Why gender is not really about gender

English speakers often stumble here because the word "gender" suggests the language is claiming a table is female. It is not. Grammatical gender is a filing system: every noun belongs to one of two classes, and the words around it have to match the class. Nothing about a chair is feminine and nothing about a book is masculine. Two practical consequences follow. First, do not look for meaning in the gender; look at the ending, and when the ending is unhelpful, simply learn the article with the word. Second, gender matters more than it looks, because it spreads. La casa blanca es pequeña has the feminine marker on four words in a row, and getting the noun wrong knocks all of them out of line.

A short dialogue

Two students packing a bag. Every noun appears with its article.

• Ana: ¿Tienes el cuaderno de español? (Do you have the Spanish notebook?)
• Beto: Sí, y tengo los lápices y un bolígrafo. (Yes, and I have the pencils and a pen.)
• Ana: ¿Y la tarea? Hay un examen el martes. (And the homework? There is an exam on Tuesday.)
• Beto: Está en la mesa, debajo del mapa. (It is on the table, under the map.)
• Ana: ¿El mapa? ¿Para la clase de geografía? (The map? For geography class?)
• Beto: Sí. Y necesito el agua fría, por favor. (Yes. And I need the cold water, please.)
• Ana: Aquí está. Las clases empiezan a las ocho. (Here it is. Classes start at eight.)

Common mistakes

• Assuming every -a word is feminine. Remember el día (the day), el mapa (the map), and el problema are masculine.
• Assuming every -o word is masculine. La mano (the hand) and la foto (the photo) are feminine.
• Thinking el agua is masculine. It is feminine; el is used only to smooth the sound, so it is el agua fría.
• Learning a noun without its article. Store new words as la mesa and el libro, not "mesa" and "libro."
• Dropping the article in general statements. Say Me gusta el café (I like coffee) and Los gatos son independientes (Cats are independent), not "Me gusta café."
• Using en for "on Mondays." The article does that job by itself: Trabajo los lunes, never "en lunes."
• Forgetting the spelling change in the plural of a -z word. It is los lápices, not "los lápizes."
• Adding un or una before a plain job title. It is Soy estudiante and Es médico, unless you add a describing word.

Recap

Every Spanish noun is masculine or feminine, and the gender controls the articles and adjectives around it. Nouns in -o are usually masculine and those in -a usually feminine, with reliable extra clues: -ción, -sión, -dad, -tad, -tud, and -umbre are feminine, while -ma, -or, and -aje are masculine. Learn the short list of exceptions such as el día, el mapa, la mano, and la foto. The four words for "the" are el, la, los, las, and the four for "a" or "some" are un, una, unos, unas. Make plurals by adding -s after a vowel or -es after a consonant, with -z becoming -ces. Spanish uses "the" with general ideas, days of the week, and school subjects where English uses nothing, and drops "a" before a plain job title. Always learn each noun with its article.

Sources

1. Real Academia Española. Género. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
2. Real Academia Española. Plural. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
3. Real Academia Española. Agua. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
4. Instituto Cervantes. Plan curricular: gramática, el sustantivo y el artículo. Centro Virtual Cervantes. cvc.cervantes.es
5. Ceciliano, E., & Notman, S. La clase de español. Beginning Spanish: Empecemos por aquí (Humanities LibreTexts). human.libretexts.org
6. Spanish Grammar and Linguistics Bookshelf. Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
7. SpanishDict. Spanish nouns: gender and articles. SpanishDict. spanishdict.com

An adjective describes a noun. In Spanish, adjectives must agree with the noun they describe in both gender (masculine or feminine) and number (singular or plural). This is a big difference from English, where adjectives never change form.

How agreement works

An adjective that ends in -o has four forms. Take alto (tall):

	Singular	Plural
Masculine	alto	altos
Feminine	alta	altas

So we say el chico alto (the tall boy), la chica alta (the tall girl), los chicos altos (the tall boys), and las chicas altas (the tall girls). Adjectives ending in -e or a consonant usually do not change for gender, only for number: inteligente becomes inteligentes, and both un libro interesante and una clase interesante use the same form. Adjectives of nationality ending in a consonant do add -a for feminine, as in español and española.

Where adjectives go

Unlike English, most descriptive adjectives come after the noun: una casa grande (a big house), not "una grande casa." Some short adjectives of quantity, like mucho (much or many) and numbers, come before the noun: muchos amigos (many friends). Here are useful describing words with masculine and feminine pairs: bueno / buena (good), malo / mala (bad), pequeño / pequeña (small), bonito / bonita (pretty), and nuevo / nueva (new). Full example: Tengo un carro nuevo y una casa pequeña means "I have a new car and a small house," with each adjective matching its noun.

Making adjectives plural

Plurals follow the same rule as nouns. Add -s if the adjective ends in a vowel and -es if it ends in a consonant: alto becomes altos, grande becomes grandes, and joven (young) becomes jóvenes. Notice that jóvenes gains an accent to keep the original stress. When one adjective describes a mixed-gender group, use the masculine plural: Los estudiantes son inteligentes works for a class of boys and girls, and Ana y Pedro son altos describes them both as tall.

Adjectives that shorten before the noun

A few common adjectives drop their final -o when they come right before a masculine singular noun. Bueno becomes buen (un buen amigo, a good friend), malo becomes mal (un mal día, a bad day), and grande becomes gran before any singular noun, where it then means "great" rather than "big" (una gran idea, a great idea). This shortening is called apocopation, but you only need to recognize the pattern, not the term.

Colors as adjectives

Colors are handy describing words and follow the agreement rules. Colors ending in -o have four forms: rojo / roja / rojos / rojas (red), blanco (white), negro (black), amarillo (yellow). Colors ending in -e or a consonant change only for number: verde / verdes (green), azul / azules (blue), gris / grises (gray). So it is una casa blanca (a white house) but una casa azul (a blue house), with azul unchanged for gender.

The three shapes an adjective can have

Every Spanish adjective belongs to one of three families. Once you can spot which family a new word is in, you never have to guess its other forms.

Family	Masc. sg.	Fem. sg.	Masc. pl.	Fem. pl.
ends in -o (four forms)	alto	alta	altos	altas
ends in -o (four forms)	rojo	roja	rojos	rojas
ends in -e (two forms)	grande	grande	grandes	grandes
ends in -e (two forms)	inteligente	inteligente	inteligentes	inteligentes
ends in a consonant (two forms)	azul	azul	azules	azules
ends in a consonant (two forms)	joven	joven	jóvenes	jóvenes
nationality in a consonant (four forms)	español	española	españoles	españolas
ends in -dor, -ón, -án (four forms)	trabajador	trabajadora	trabajadores	trabajadoras

The last two rows are the exceptions worth memorizing: nationalities and adjectives in -dor, -ón, or -án add an -a for the feminine even though they end in a consonant. So a hard-working girl is una chica trabajadora, and a French woman is una mujer francesa, with the accent disappearing because the stress is now in the normal place.

A working vocabulary of adjectives

Here is a starter set, grouped so that opposites sit together. Use the masculine singular as the dictionary form.

Spanish	English	Opposite	English
alto	tall	bajo	short (in height)
grande	big	pequeño	small
bueno	good	malo	bad
nuevo	new	viejo	old
joven	young	viejo / mayor	old / older
bonito	pretty	feo	ugly
fácil	easy	difícil	hard
largo	long	corto	short (in length)
simpático	nice, likeable	antipático	unpleasant
inteligente	intelligent	tonto	silly
trabajador	hard-working	perezoso	lazy
rico	rich, tasty	pobre	poor

Notice largo. It looks like "large" and means "long," a classic false friend. For "large" you want grande.

Agreement in whole sentences

Read these aloud and track the ending as it travels from the noun to the adjective.

• El coche rojo es nuevo. (The red car is new.)
• La casa blanca es muy bonita. (The white house is very pretty.)
• Los libros son interesantes y difíciles. (The books are interesting and hard.)
• Las clases nuevas son fáciles. (The new classes are easy.)
• Mi hermana es alta, simpática y muy trabajadora. (My sister is tall, nice, and very hard-working.)
• Tenemos dos perros pequeños y un gato negro. (We have two small dogs and a black cat.)
• Ana y Pedro son inteligentes. (Ana and Pedro are intelligent.)
• Ana y María son españolas. (Ana and María are Spanish.)

The last two show the rule for groups. A mixed group of a boy and a girl takes the masculine plural, so Ana y Pedro son altos. An all-female group takes the feminine plural, so Ana y María son altas. One man in a group of a hundred women still makes it masculine, which is simply how the grammar works and not a statement about anybody.

When the position changes the meaning

Most adjectives sit after the noun and describe it plainly. Moving one in front is not a mistake; it changes the flavour, and with a handful of very common words it changes the meaning outright.

Before the noun	Meaning	After the noun	Meaning
un viejo amigo	a longstanding friend	un amigo viejo	a friend who is elderly
un gran hombre	a great man	un hombre grande	a big man
una nueva casa	a house that is new to me	una casa nueva	a newly built house
un pobre chico	a poor boy, meaning unfortunate	un chico pobre	a boy with no money

You do not need to produce these yet, but recognising them will stop you misreading a sentence. Numbers and quantity words always come first: tres libros (three books), muchos amigos (many friends), pocas sillas (few chairs).

Making a description stronger or weaker

Two small words do most of the work. Muy means "very" and goes in front of an adjective; un poco means "a little" and softens it. Note that muy never changes form, because it describes the adjective rather than the noun.

• La clase es muy fácil. (The class is very easy.)
• Las casas son muy grandes. (The houses are very big.)
• Estoy un poco cansada. (I am a little tired.)
• Es demasiado caro. (It is too expensive.)

Do not confuse muy with mucho. Muy goes with an adjective or an adverb and never changes; mucho goes with a noun and agrees with it. So muy simpático (very nice) but muchos amigos (many friends), and from the earlier lesson, mucha hambre and never "muy hambre."

What English speakers keep forgetting

English adjectives are frozen: "tall" is "tall" whether it describes one girl or forty boys. Spanish adjectives are alive, and the ending has to be recalculated every single time. The practical fix is to build the noun phrase from the noun outwards. Start with las casas, register that it is feminine and plural, and only then reach for the adjective, which must come out as blancas. Learners who start from the English adjective and translate it get "las casas blanco" every time. The good news is that the ending is nearly always visible in the noun you just said, so the information you need is sitting right there in the sentence.

A short dialogue

Two friends describing a new class. Watch every ending agree.

• Lucía: ¿Cómo es la clase nueva? (What is the new class like?)
• Raúl: Es muy interesante, pero un poco difícil. (It is very interesting, but a little hard.)
• Lucía: ¿Y los profesores? (And the teachers?)
• Raúl: Son simpáticos y muy trabajadores. (They are nice and very hard-working.)
• Lucía: ¿Hay muchos estudiantes? (Are there many students?)
• Raúl: Sí, treinta. Las chicas son muy inteligentes. (Yes, thirty. The girls are very intelligent.)
• Lucía: ¿Y el libro? ¿Es caro? (And the book? Is it expensive?)
• Raúl: Es un buen libro, pero es demasiado caro. (It is a good book, but it is too expensive.)

Common mistakes

• Leaving the adjective unchanged. English speakers write "las casas blanco"; it must be las casas blancas to agree.
• Putting the adjective before the noun by habit. Say una casa grande (a big house), not "una grande casa."
• Adding -a to adjectives that end in -e. It stays inteligente for a woman, not "inteligenta."
• Forgetting to shorten. Before a masculine singular noun it is un buen chico, not "un bueno chico."
• Changing muy to match the noun. It never agrees: unas chicas muy altas, not "muyas altas."
• Forgetting that a nationality in a consonant does take -a. It is una chica española, not "una chica español."
• Losing the accent rule in the plural. Joven becomes jóvenes and difícil becomes difíciles, because the stressed syllable must stay put.
• Translating largo as "large." It means "long"; use grande for large.

Recap

Adjectives agree with their noun in gender and number. Those ending in -o have four forms (alto, alta, altos, altas), while those ending in -e or a consonant change only for number (grande, grandes; azul, azules). Nationalities in a consonant and adjectives in -dor, -ón, or -án add an -a for the feminine. Most descriptive adjectives follow the noun, though numbers and quantity words come before, and a small group changes meaning when moved in front. A few shorten before a masculine singular noun (buen, mal, gran). Use muy with adjectives and mucho with nouns. Colors follow all of these rules too. Build the phrase from the noun outwards and match every describing word to what it describes.

Sources

1. Real Academia Española. Concordancia. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
2. Real Academia Española. Género. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
3. Real Academia Española. Plural. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
4. Instituto Cervantes. Plan curricular: gramática, el adjetivo. Centro Virtual Cervantes. cvc.cervantes.es
5. Ceciliano, E., & Notman, S. Las personas y las perspectivas. Beginning Spanish: Empecemos por aquí (Humanities LibreTexts). human.libretexts.org
6. COERLL. Spanish Proficiency Exercises: describing people and things. University of Texas at Austin. laits.utexas.edu
7. SpanishDict. Spanish adjectives: agreement and placement. SpanishDict. spanishdict.com

A Spanish verb in its base form is called the infinitive, and it always ends in -ar, -er, or -ir. To conjugate a regular verb, you drop that ending to find the stem, then add a new ending that matches the subject. We start with the largest group: -ar verbs.

The -ar endings

Take hablar (to speak). Drop -ar to get the stem habl-, then add these endings:

Pronoun	Ending	hablar	English
yo	-o	hablo	I speak
tú	-as	hablas	you speak
él / ella / usted	-a	habla	he/she speaks
nosotros	-amos	hablamos	we speak
vosotros	-áis	habláis	you all speak
ellos / ellas / ustedes	-an	hablan	they speak

Notice that every ending contains the letter a, which is the signature of this verb family. The same endings work for any regular -ar verb.

One tense, three English meanings

The Spanish present covers three English ideas at once. Hablo español can mean "I speak Spanish," "I am speaking Spanish," or "I do speak Spanish." Here are more examples:

• Yo estudio mucho. (I study a lot.)
• Nosotros trabajamos hoy. (We work today.)
• Ellos escuchan música. (They listen to music.)

Other common regular -ar verbs to practice: estudiar (to study), trabajar (to work), escuchar (to listen), cantar (to sing), bailar (to dance), and caminar (to walk). Drop -ar and add the matching ending, and you can talk about almost anything you do.

Making a sentence negative

Turning a sentence negative is wonderfully simple: put no right before the verb. Hablo francés (I speak French) becomes No hablo francés (I do not speak French). There is no extra helping word the way English uses "do not"; the single word no does the whole job. More examples: No trabajo hoy (I do not work today), Ella no baila (She does not dance).

Asking a question with an -ar verb

To ask a yes-or-no question, keep the same verb form and either raise your tone or move the subject: ¿Hablas español? (Do you speak Spanish?) and ¿Estudia Ana aquí? (Does Ana study here?). To ask for details, add a question word: ¿Dónde trabajas? (Where do you work?), ¿Qué estudias? (What do you study?). Notice Spanish never needs a helper like "do"; the verb ending carries everything.

Watch the spelling of jugar and llegar

A couple of very common -ar verbs keep their sound with a small spelling change you will meet later, such as llegar (to arrive) and jugar (to play a game). In the plain present they behave almost regularly (llego, llegas, llega, llegamos, llegan), so you can use them now. Just note that jugar has a stem change in some forms (juego, I play), which you will study with other stem-changing verbs.

Three more verbs conjugated in full

The endings never change, so once you can do hablar you can do all of them. Read these across, not down, and say each form aloud.

Pronoun	estudiar (to study)	trabajar (to work)	bailar (to dance)
yo	estudio	trabajo	bailo
tú	estudias	trabajas	bailas
él / ella / usted	estudia	trabaja	baila
nosotros / nosotras	estudiamos	trabajamos	bailamos
vosotros / vosotras	estudiáis	trabajáis	bailáis
ellos / ellas / ustedes	estudian	trabajan	bailan

Only two forms carry a written accent, -áis in the vosotros column, and it is there for the ordinary reason from Lesson 2: the stress falls on the last syllable of a word ending in s, which breaks the default pattern. Everything else is unaccented.

Twenty -ar verbs worth owning

These are all completely regular, so learning the word is the only work; the conjugation is already done.

Verb	English	Verb	English
hablar	to speak	caminar	to walk
estudiar	to study	cantar	to sing
trabajar	to work	bailar	to dance
escuchar	to listen (to)	mirar	to look at, to watch
necesitar	to need	buscar	to look for
comprar	to buy	usar	to use
tomar	to take, to drink	preparar	to prepare
llevar	to carry, to wear	ayudar	to help
enseñar	to teach	practicar	to practise
viajar	to travel	descansar	to rest

Four of these hide a trap for English speakers, because the Spanish verb already contains the little word that English needs afterwards. Escuchar means "to listen to," mirar means "to look at," buscar means "to look for," and esperar means "to wait for." So you say Escucho la radio (I listen to the radio) and Busco mi libro (I am looking for my book), with no extra preposition.

Sentences to read aloud

• Estudio español todos los días. (I study Spanish every day.)
• Mi padre trabaja en un hospital. (My father works in a hospital.)
• ¿Escuchas música en el autobús? (Do you listen to music on the bus?)
• Nosotros no bailamos muy bien. (We do not dance very well.)
• Ana y Luis cantan en el coro. (Ana and Luis sing in the choir.)
• Necesito comprar un cuaderno. (I need to buy a notebook.)
• ¿Dónde trabaja usted? (Where do you work?)
• Los estudiantes practican el vocabulario. (The students practise the vocabulary.)
• No necesitamos ayuda, gracias. (We do not need help, thank you.)
• ¿Por qué estudias español? (Why do you study Spanish?)

Look at Necesito comprar un cuaderno. When two verbs sit together, only the first one is conjugated and the second stays in its infinitive form, exactly as in tengo que estudiar. The same works with necesitar, desear (to wish), and esperar: Deseo viajar a México (I wish to travel to Mexico).

How Spanish and English handle the present differently

English has three present tenses where Spanish has one, which is good news arithmetic. "I work," "I am working," and "I do work" are all trabajo. But the traffic goes the other way too, in three places that trip people up:

• No helper verb. English builds questions and negatives out of "do." Spanish does not have this word at all in that job, so ¿Trabajas hoy? and No trabajo hoy are complete.
• No subject needed. The ending already names the subject, so Trabajamos is a whole sentence meaning "We work."
• The present can mean the future. With a time word, Spanish happily uses the present for a plan: Mañana estudio con Ana (Tomorrow I am studying with Ana).

Useful time expressions

Verbs need something to attach to. These little phrases turn a bare conjugation into a real sentence.

Spanish	English	Spanish	English
siempre	always	a veces	sometimes
todos los días	every day	nunca	never
hoy	today	mañana	tomorrow
ahora	now	después	afterwards
por la mañana	in the morning	por la tarde	in the afternoon
por la noche	at night	los fines de semana	on weekends

One useful oddity: when nunca comes after the verb, Spanish keeps the no as well, giving a double negative that is completely correct. Both Nunca bailo and No bailo nunca mean "I never dance."

A short dialogue

• Elena: ¿Estudias mucho? (Do you study a lot?)
• Javier: Sí, estudio todos los días por la tarde. (Yes, I study every afternoon.)
• Elena: ¿Y trabajas también? (And do you work too?)
• Javier: Trabajo los fines de semana en una tienda. (I work on weekends in a shop.)
• Elena: ¡Qué bien! Yo no trabajo, pero canto en un coro. (How nice! I do not work, but I sing in a choir.)
• Javier: ¿Cantas bien? (Do you sing well?)
• Elena: Más o menos. Nunca practico bastante. (So-so. I never practise enough.)
• Javier: Mañana practicamos juntos, entonces. (Then tomorrow we practise together.)

Common mistakes

• Mismatching subject and ending. It is Ella habla (she speaks), not "Ella hablas."
• Translating "am speaking" word for word. Do not add estar plus a helper here; Hablo already means I speak or I am speaking.
• Adding an English "do" in questions or negatives. Say No hablo and ¿Hablas?, never "No do hablo."
• Keeping the -ar ending. You must drop -ar before adding the new ending: habl- plus -o gives hablo, not "hablaro."
• Adding a preposition after escuchar, mirar, or buscar. Say Busco el libro (I am looking for the book), not "Busco por el libro."
• Conjugating the second verb in a pair. It is Necesito estudiar, never "Necesito estudio."
• Reaching for the usted ending by accident. Usted habla looks like a "you" sentence but takes the él ending, so it is not "usted hablas."
• Dropping the accent on habláis and estudiáis. If you write the vosotros form, it needs the mark.

Recap

A verb's base form, the infinitive, ends in -ar, -er, or -ir. For regular -ar verbs, drop -ar to find the stem and add -o, -as, -a, -amos, -áis, -an. Every ending carries the signature letter a, and only the vosotros form takes a written accent. The present tense covers "I speak," "I am speaking," and "I do speak" at once, and with a time word it can even cover the future. Make a sentence negative by putting no before the verb, and ask questions just by changing your tone or adding a question word, with no helper needed. When two verbs sit together, only the first is conjugated.

Sources

1. Instituto Cervantes. Plan curricular: gramática, el presente de indicativo. Centro Virtual Cervantes. cvc.cervantes.es
2. Instituto Cervantes. Diccionario de términos clave de ELE. Centro Virtual Cervantes. cvc.cervantes.es
3. Real Academia Española. Español al día: cuestiones gramaticales. RAE. rae.es
4. Real Academia Española. Hacer, hacerse. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
5. Ceciliano, E., & Notman, S. La vida que vivimos. Beginning Spanish: Empecemos por aquí (Humanities LibreTexts). human.libretexts.org
6. COERLL. Spanish Proficiency Exercises: daily activities. University of Texas at Austin. laits.utexas.edu
7. SpanishDict. Regular present tense -ar verbs. SpanishDict. spanishdict.com

Now for the other two families. The good news is that -er and -ir verbs share almost all their endings, so learning one nearly teaches you the other.

The -er and -ir endings

Take comer (to eat) and vivir (to live). Drop the ending to get the stems com- and viv-, then add these endings:

Pronoun	comer	vivir	English
yo	como	vivo	I eat / I live
tú	comes	vives	you eat / live
él / ella / usted	come	vive	he/she eats / lives
nosotros	comemos	vivimos	we eat / live
vosotros	coméis	vivís	you all eat / live
ellos / ellas / ustedes	comen	viven	they eat / live

The only difference between the two families is in the nosotros and vosotros forms: -er uses comemos / coméis, while -ir uses vivimos / vivís. Everywhere else the endings are identical.

Examples with translations

• Yo como pan. (I eat bread.)
• Ella vive en Madrid. (She lives in Madrid.)
• Nosotros aprendemos español. (We learn Spanish.)
• Tú escribes una carta. (You write a letter.)

Other common verbs to practice: for -er, aprender (to learn), beber (to drink), leer (to read), and correr (to run); for -ir, escribir (to write), abrir (to open), and recibir (to receive). Conjugate them the same way: drop -er or -ir, then add the matching ending.

Side by side with the -ar family

It helps to see all three families together in one form. In the yo form they all end in -o: hablo (I speak), como (I eat), vivo (I live). In the tú form, -ar uses -as while -er and -ir both use -es: hablas, comes, vives. The clearest difference is the nosotros form, where each family keeps its own vowel: hablamos, comemos, vivimos. If you ever forget an ending, remember that the vowel of the infinitive (a, e, or i) echoes through most of the conjugation.

Negatives and questions work the same way

Everything you learned with -ar verbs carries over. To make a sentence negative, put no right before the verb: No como carne (I do not eat meat), Ella no vive aquí (She does not live here). To ask a yes-or-no question, keep the same form and raise your tone or move the subject: ¿Comes pescado? (Do you eat fish?), ¿Dónde vives? (Where do you live?). As always, no helper word like the English "do" is needed, and written questions open with an inverted question mark.

Regular in the present, but watch the accents

These verbs are fully regular, yet a few keep written accents you should not drop. The vosotros forms carry an accent on the ending: coméis (you all eat) and vivís (you all live). The verb leer (to read) is regular in sound but its stem ends in a vowel, so you will simply see leo, lees, lee, leemos, leen. And remember that the endings never change for gender, only for the person, so ella come and él come are identical.

All three families in one table

This is the whole regular present tense of Spanish on a single grid. If you learn nothing else by heart this year, learn this.

Pronoun	-ar: hablar	-er: comer	-ir: vivir
yo	hablo	como	vivo
tú	hablas	comes	vives
él / ella / usted	habla	come	vive
nosotros / nosotras	hablamos	comemos	vivimos
vosotros / vosotras	habláis	coméis	vivís
ellos / ellas / ustedes	hablan	comen	viven

Three observations make the grid easier to hold in your head. Every yo form ends in -o, without exception. The -er and -ir columns are identical in four rows out of six. And the vowel of the infinitive survives in the nosotros form of each family: hablamos, comemos, vivimos.

Two more verbs conjugated in full

Pronoun	aprender (to learn)	escribir (to write)
yo	aprendo	escribo
tú	aprendes	escribes
él / ella / usted	aprende	escribe
nosotros / nosotras	aprendemos	escribimos
vosotros / vosotras	aprendéis	escribís
ellos / ellas / ustedes	aprenden	escriben

Verbs to add to your list

-er verbs	English	-ir verbs	English
comer	to eat	vivir	to live
beber	to drink	escribir	to write
aprender	to learn	abrir	to open
leer	to read	recibir	to receive
correr	to run	decidir	to decide
comprender	to understand	compartir	to share
vender	to sell	subir	to go up, to get on
responder	to answer	asistir a	to attend

Sentences to read aloud

• Como fruta por la mañana. (I eat fruit in the morning.)
• ¿Dónde vives? (Where do you live?)
• Vivimos cerca del colegio. (We live near the school.)
• Mi hermano lee muchos libros. (My brother reads a lot of books.)
• ¿Comprendes la pregunta? (Do you understand the question?)
• Los estudiantes escriben en el cuaderno. (The students write in the notebook.)
• No bebo café por la noche. (I do not drink coffee at night.)
• Aprendemos español todos los días. (We learn Spanish every day.)
• Ella abre la ventana porque tiene calor. (She opens the window because she is hot.)
• ¿Recibes muchos mensajes? (Do you get a lot of messages?)

Two verbs you will need that are not quite regular

You cannot get far without ir (to go) and hacer (to do, to make), and both are irregular. They are worth learning now rather than waiting.

Pronoun	ir (to go)	hacer (to do, make)
yo	voy	hago
tú	vas	haces
él / ella / usted	va	hace
nosotros / nosotras	vamos	hacemos
vosotros / vosotras	vais	hacéis
ellos / ellas / ustedes	van	hacen

Only the yo form of hacer is irregular; the rest is a normal -er verb. And ir comes with a bonus: ir a + infinitive is how Spanish talks about the near future, exactly like the English "going to." So Voy a estudiar means "I am going to study," and Vamos a comer means "We are going to eat." Remember that a + el contracts, so it is Voy al colegio (I am going to school).

A short dialogue

• Nora: ¿Dónde vives? (Where do you live?)
• Iván: Vivo en Bogotá, cerca del parque. ¿Y tú? (I live in Bogotá, near the park. And you?)
• Nora: Vivo lejos. Corro al autobús todos los días. (I live far away. I run to the bus every day.)
• Iván: ¿Comes en el colegio? (Do you eat at school?)
• Nora: Sí, como con mis amigas. Bebemos jugo y comemos fruta. (Yes, I eat with my friends. We drink juice and eat fruit.)
• Iván: Yo leo en la biblioteca y después escribo la tarea. (I read in the library and afterwards I write the homework.)
• Nora: ¿Comprendes la lección de hoy? (Do you understand today's lesson?)
• Iván: Más o menos. Vamos a estudiar juntos. (So-so. We are going to study together.)

Common mistakes

• Mixing up the nosotros forms. It is comemos for -er but vivimos for -ir, not "comimos" or "vivemos."
• Borrowing an -ar ending. The tú form of comer is comes, not "comas," and the él form is come, not "coma."
• Mismatching subject and verb. It is ella escribe (she writes), not "ella escribes."
• Forgetting that -er and -ir share endings everywhere except nosotros and vosotros, so comes and vives look parallel on purpose.
• Leaving the accent off vivís or coméis. Those two forms need the written mark to keep the stress on the ending.
• Adding a preposition after asistir. The verb needs its own a: Asisto a la clase (I attend the class).
• Dropping the a in the future pattern. It is Voy a comer, never "Voy comer."
• Writing "a el." The contraction is compulsory: Vamos al parque.

Recap

Regular -er and -ir verbs are conjugated by dropping the ending to find the stem and adding personal endings. The two families share every ending except nosotros and vosotros: -er uses -emos / -éis (comemos, coméis) while -ir uses -imos / -ís (vivimos, vivís). The yo form always ends in -o (hablo, como, vivo), the infinitive vowel survives in the nosotros form, and negatives and questions work just as they do with -ar verbs. Two irregular verbs are worth adding straight away: ir (voy, vas, va, vamos, vais, van), which also builds the near future with ir a + infinitive, and hacer (hago, haces, hace, hacemos, hacéis, hacen), irregular only in the yo form.

Sources

1. Instituto Cervantes. Plan curricular: gramática, el presente de indicativo. Centro Virtual Cervantes. cvc.cervantes.es
2. Real Academia Española. Hacer, hacerse. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
3. Real Academia Española. Hacer. Diccionario de la lengua española. dle.rae.es
4. Instituto Cervantes. Diccionario de términos clave de ELE. Centro Virtual Cervantes. cvc.cervantes.es
5. Ceciliano, E., & Notman, S. La vida que vivimos. Beginning Spanish: Empecemos por aquí (Humanities LibreTexts). human.libretexts.org
6. Spanish Grammar and Linguistics Bookshelf. Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
7. SpanishDict. Regular present tense -er and -ir verbs. SpanishDict. spanishdict.com

To say what you like, Spanish uses the verb gustar, but it works in a way that feels backward to English speakers. It does not mean "to like" directly. It means to be pleasing. So Me gusta el chocolate literally says "Chocolate is pleasing to me," which we translate as "I like chocolate."

The gustar formula

Because the thing liked is really the subject, the verb agrees with that thing, not with the person. You use an indirect pronoun to show who is pleased, then gusta or gustan.

Pronoun	Meaning	Example	English
me	to me	Me gusta el café.	I like coffee.
te	to you	Te gusta la clase.	You like the class.
le	to him/her/you (formal)	Le gusta el libro.	He/She likes the book.
nos	to us	Nos gusta la música.	We like music.
les	to them/you all	Les gusta el cine.	They like the movies.

Gusta or gustan?

Use gusta when one thing (or an action) is liked, and gustan when more than one thing is liked.

• Me gusta la pizza. (I like pizza, one thing.)
• Me gustan las manzanas. (I like apples, plural.)
• Me gusta bailar. (I like to dance; with a verb, always use gusta.)

To say you do not like something, add no before the pronoun: No me gusta el té (I do not like tea). To ask a friend, say ¿Te gusta el español? (Do you like Spanish?). For emphasis or clarity you can add a mí, a ti, or a name: A mí me gusta el arte (I like art), A Juan le gusta el fútbol (Juan likes soccer).

Why le and les need a clarifier

The pronouns le and les are handy but vague, because le can mean "to him," "to her," or "to you (formal)," and les can mean "to them" or "to you all." To make the meaning clear, Spanish adds a phrase with a plus the person: A ella le gusta el chocolate (She likes chocolate), ¿A usted le gusta el café? (Do you like coffee?), A ellos les gusta el fútbol (They like soccer). Notice the pronoun le or les still appears, even when the person is named; both parts are used together.

Verbs that work like gustar

A small family of very common verbs follows the exact same backward pattern, so learning gustar unlocks all of them. Study these with the same me, te, le, nos, les pronouns:

Spanish	Meaning	Example	English
encantar	to love (a thing)	Me encanta la música.	I love music.
interesar	to be interesting to	Me interesa el arte.	Art interests me.
importar	to matter to	No me importa.	It does not matter to me.
molestar	to bother	Me molesta el ruido.	The noise bothers me.

Each one uses encanta or encantan, interesa or interesan, and so on, agreeing with the thing, just like gusta and gustan. One note: use encantar for strong liking, and do not add "muy" to it, because it already means you love something.

The complete set of pronouns

The table above leaves out one form, os, which is the "to you all" used in Spain alongside vosotros. Here is the full set, with the optional clarifying phrase beside each one.

Pronoun	Clarifier	Meaning	Example
me	a mí	to me	A mí me gusta el café.
te	a ti	to you (informal)	A ti te gusta la clase.
le	a él, a ella, a usted	to him, her, you (formal)	A ella le gusta el libro.
nos	a nosotros, a nosotras	to us	A nosotros nos gusta la música.
os	a vosotros, a vosotras	to you all (Spain)	A vosotros os gusta el cine.
les	a ellos, a ellas, a ustedes	to them, to you all	A ellos les gusta el fútbol.

The clarifier is optional with me, te, nos and adds emphasis: A mí me gusta el té, pero a ella no (I like tea, but she does not). With le and les it is often necessary, because those two pronouns cannot tell you which person is meant on their own.

The shape of a gustar sentence

Every sentence with gustar has the same three slots, and once you can see the slots you will stop making mistakes.

(a + person)	pronoun	gusta / gustan	the thing that pleases
A mí	me	gusta	el chocolate.
A Juan	le	gustan	los deportes.
A nosotros	nos	gusta	bailar.
A mis padres	les	gustan	las películas viejas.

The last slot is the real subject of the verb, which is why the ending changes with it and never with the person. Reading each sentence backwards, in the literal Spanish order, makes this obvious: "To Juan, sports are pleasing." Once that clicks, the choice between gusta and gustan is automatic.

Fifteen sentences of practice

• Me gusta la pizza. (I like pizza.)
• Me gustan las fresas. (I like strawberries.)
• ¿Te gusta el chocolate? (Do you like chocolate?)
• ¿Te gustan los perros? (Do you like dogs?)
• No me gusta el ruido. (I do not like noise.)
• A mi hermana le gusta leer. (My sister likes reading.)
• A mis amigos les gusta el fútbol. (My friends like football.)
• Nos gusta caminar por el parque. (We like walking through the park.)
• Nos gustan las clases de arte. (We like art classes.)
• A ellos no les gusta estudiar los sábados. (They do not like studying on Saturdays.)
• ¿A usted le gusta el café? (Do you like coffee?)
• Me gusta cantar y bailar. (I like singing and dancing.)
• A mí me gusta el verano, pero a ti te gusta el invierno. (I like summer, but you like winter.)
• Me encanta la música mexicana. (I love Mexican music.)
• No nos interesan los videojuegos. (Video games do not interest us.)

Saying it back: agreeing and disagreeing

Two short words let you react to what someone else likes, and they are not the ones you would guess. Use también (also) to agree with something positive and tampoco (neither) to agree with something negative.

• Me gusta el chocolate. A mí también. (I like chocolate. Me too.)
• No me gusta el café. A mí tampoco. (I do not like coffee. Me neither.)
• Me gusta el café. A mí no. (I like coffee. I do not.)
• No me gustan los lunes. A mí sí. (I do not like Mondays. I do.)

Notice that the reply keeps the a mí and drops everything else. This is exactly how a Spanish speaker would answer, and it makes a conversation sound natural straight away.

More verbs in the gustar family

Verb	Meaning	Example	English
encantar	to love (a thing)	Me encantan los animales.	I love animals.
interesar	to interest	¿Te interesa la historia?	Are you interested in history?
importar	to matter to	No me importa el precio.	The price does not matter to me.
molestar	to bother	Nos molesta el ruido.	The noise bothers us.
faltar	to be missing, to lack	Me falta un libro.	I am missing a book.
quedar	to have left, to suit	Nos quedan dos días.	We have two days left.
doler	to hurt	Me duele la cabeza.	My head hurts.
parecer	to seem to	Me parece difícil.	It seems hard to me.

Look at Me duele la cabeza. Spanish does not say "my head," it says "the head hurts to me," which is why the article is la and not mi. The plural works the same way: Me duelen los pies (My feet hurt).

Why English speakers find gustar strange

The difficulty is not the vocabulary, it is that English and Spanish disagree about who is doing what. In English, I am the one doing the liking and chocolate just sits there. In Spanish, chocolate is the one doing the pleasing and I am on the receiving end. Nothing in the sentence is really the "object" of anything. English has one leftover verb built the same way, and it is a useful anchor: "It pleases me" and "Those shoes appeal to me" put the thing first exactly as Spanish does. When you catch yourself about to say "Yo gusto," which actually means something closer to "I am pleasing," stop and rebuild the sentence from the thing: what is it that pleases, and to whom?

A short dialogue

• Paula: ¿Qué te gusta hacer los fines de semana? (What do you like to do on weekends?)
• Hugo: Me gusta correr y me encanta la música. ¿Y a ti? (I like running and I love music. And you?)
• Paula: A mí me gustan las películas. No me gusta correr. (I like films. I do not like running.)
• Hugo: A mí tampoco me gustan las películas largas. (I do not like long films either.)
• Paula: ¿Y a tu hermano? ¿Qué le gusta? (And your brother? What does he like?)
• Hugo: A él le gusta el fútbol. Le encantan los deportes. (He likes football. He loves sports.)
• Paula: A mis padres les interesa mucho la historia. (My parents are very interested in history.)
• Hugo: ¡Qué bien! A mí me parece muy interesante también. (How nice! It seems very interesting to me too.)

Common mistakes

• Making the verb agree with the person. It is Me gustan los libros (the books please me), not "Yo gusto los libros."
• Using gustan with an action. Even a list of activities takes gusta: Me gusta cantar y bailar (I like to sing and dance).
• Dropping the article. Say Me gusta el café, not "Me gusta café"; Spanish keeps el, la, los, or las before the thing liked.
• Forgetting the clarifier with le. To be clear, add a person: A ella le gusta, not just "Le gusta" when the listener does not know who.
• Leaving out the pronoun when you name the person. Both parts are needed: A Juan le gusta, never "A Juan gusta."
• Putting no after the pronoun. It goes first: No me gusta, not "Me no gusta."
• Answering "Yo también" to a gustar sentence. The reply keeps the a-phrase: A mí también.
• Using mi with doler. It is Me duele la cabeza, not "Me duele mi cabeza."

Recap

Gustar means "to be pleasing," so the thing liked is really the subject and the verb agrees with it: gusta for one thing or an action, gustan for more than one. Show who is pleased with the pronouns me, te, le, nos, os, les, and add a phrase with a (a mí, a ella, a Juan) for emphasis or to clear up le and les, keeping the pronoun as well. Make it negative by putting no before the pronoun, and react with a mí también, a mí tampoco, a mí sí, or a mí no. Several verbs including encantar, interesar, molestar, faltar, quedar, doler, and parecer follow the very same pattern.

Sources

1. Real Academia Española. Gustar. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
2. Real Academia Española. Gustar. Diccionario de la lengua española. dle.rae.es
3. Real Academia Española. Leísmo. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
4. Instituto Cervantes. Plan curricular: gramática, expresar gustos y preferencias. Centro Virtual Cervantes. cvc.cervantes.es
5. Ceciliano, E., & Notman, S. Las personas y las perspectivas. Beginning Spanish: Empecemos por aquí (Humanities LibreTexts). human.libretexts.org
6. COERLL. Spanish Proficiency Exercises: likes and dislikes. University of Texas at Austin. laits.utexas.edu
7. SpanishDict. Gustar and verbs like gustar. SpanishDict. spanishdict.com

Numbers appear everywhere: ages, prices, phone numbers, and dates. Learn the essentials from zero to twenty first, then the tens.

#	Spanish	#	Spanish
0	cero	11	once
1	uno	12	doce
2	dos	13	trece
3	tres	14	catorce
4	cuatro	15	quince
5	cinco	16	dieciséis
6	seis	17	diecisiete
7	siete	20	veinte
8	ocho	30	treinta
9	nueve	40	cuarenta
10	diez	100	cien

The remaining tens are cincuenta (50), sesenta (60), setenta (70), ochenta (80), and noventa (90).

Building numbers in between

To join a ten and a unit from 31 upward, use the word y (and): treinta y uno is 31, cuarenta y cinco is 45, noventa y nueve is 99. The teens through 29 are written as a single word: dieciséis (16), diecisiete (17), veintidós (22), veintinueve (29). Note that 100 by itself is cien, but 101 becomes ciento uno.

You can already use these right away. To ask a price, say ¿Cuánto cuesta? (How much does it cost?) and hear an answer like cuesta treinta pesos (it costs thirty pesos). To give your age, Tengo dieciséis años (I am sixteen). Practice by counting objects around you out loud.

Uno changes shape before a noun

The number uno (one) shortens to un before a masculine noun and becomes una before a feminine noun, exactly like the word for "a." So it is un libro (one book), una casa (one house), and in compounds veintiún libros (twenty-one books) and treinta y una casas (thirty-one houses). You only say the full uno when counting by itself: "uno, dos, tres." Notice that veintiún takes a written accent when it drops the o.

A few spelling points

Some numbers carry a written accent that you should not leave off: dieciséis (16), veintidós (22), veintitrés (23), and veintiséis (26). The numbers 16 through 29 are written as one word (dieciséis, diecisiete, veinte, veintiuno, veintidós), while from 31 upward you split them with y: treinta y uno, cuarenta y dos. A common slip is to write "veinte y uno"; the modern single-word spelling is veintiuno.

Cien versus ciento

The number 100 is cien when it stands alone or right before a noun: cien euros (a hundred euros), cien personas (a hundred people). But as soon as you add a smaller number to it, it becomes ciento: ciento uno (101), ciento cincuenta (150). You never say "un cien"; the word cien already means one hundred on its own.

Using numbers in real life

Numbers do real work every day. For phone numbers, Spanish speakers often read them in pairs: a number like 55 12 34 might be said cincuenta y cinco, doce, treinta y cuatro. For prices, pair a number with a currency: Cuesta cuarenta pesos (It costs forty pesos). For quantities in a store you can say Quiero dos manzanas y tres plátanos (I want two apples and three bananas). And for age you already know the pattern: Mi hermano tiene veinte años (My brother is twenty).

Zero to thirty, written out in full

The table at the top skips a few. Here is the complete run, which is the only part of the number system you have to memorize word by word.

#	Spanish	#	Spanish	#	Spanish
0	cero	11	once	21	veintiuno
1	uno	12	doce	22	veintidós
2	dos	13	trece	23	veintitrés
3	tres	14	catorce	24	veinticuatro
4	cuatro	15	quince	25	veinticinco
5	cinco	16	dieciséis	26	veintiséis
6	seis	17	diecisiete	27	veintisiete
7	siete	18	dieciocho	28	veintiocho
8	ocho	19	diecinueve	29	veintinueve
9	nueve	20	veinte	30	treinta
10	diez

From sixteen onwards the logic is visible in the spelling: dieciséis is diez y seis squeezed into one word, and veintitrés is veinte y tres. Exactly four numbers in this range carry a written accent, and all four are there because the word now ends in a stressed s: dieciséis, veintidós, veintitrés, veintiséis.

Thirty-one to ninety-nine

From 31 upward the pattern is completely regular: the ten, then y, then the unit, written as three separate words.

Ten	Spanish	Example	English
30	treinta	treinta y cuatro	34
40	cuarenta	cuarenta y siete	47
50	cincuenta	cincuenta y dos	52
60	sesenta	sesenta y nueve	69
70	setenta	setenta y cinco	75
80	ochenta	ochenta y ocho	88
90	noventa	noventa y uno	91

Past one hundred

#	Spanish	#	Spanish
100	cien	600	seiscientos
101	ciento uno	700	setecientos
200	doscientos	800	ochocientos
300	trescientos	900	novecientos
400	cuatrocientos	1000	mil
500	quinientos	2000	dos mil

Three of the hundreds are not built the way you would predict: quinientos (500), setecientos (700), and novecientos (900). Learn those three and the rest follow the pattern. The hundreds also agree in gender with what they count, which is a detail many courses skip: doscientos libros but doscientas casas, quinientos euros but quinientas personas. Note too that mil never takes un in front of it, so 1000 is just mil, while a million does: un millón.

Ordinal numbers

You need these for floors of a building, dates, and school years. They behave like ordinary adjectives and agree in gender and number.

English	Masculine	Feminine	Example
first	primero (primer)	primera	el primer día (the first day)
second	segundo	segunda	la segunda clase
third	tercero (tercer)	tercera	el tercer piso (the third floor)
fourth	cuarto	cuarta	la cuarta semana
fifth	quinto	quinta	el quinto libro
sixth to tenth	sexto, séptimo, octavo, noveno, décimo	sexta, séptima, octava, novena, décima	la décima lección

Primero and tercero lose their final -o before a masculine singular noun, exactly like bueno and malo from the adjectives lesson. Above tenth, Spanish speakers usually just use the ordinary number: el piso once (the eleventh floor).

Telling the time

Numbers earn their keep the moment you can say what time it is. Ask with ¿Qué hora es? (What time is it?).

Spanish	English
Es la una.	It is one o'clock.
Son las dos.	It is two o'clock.
Son las tres y cuarto.	It is a quarter past three.
Son las cuatro y media.	It is half past four.
Son las cinco y veinte.	It is twenty past five.
Son las seis menos cuarto.	It is a quarter to six.
Son las ocho de la mañana.	It is eight in the morning.
Son las cuatro de la tarde.	It is four in the afternoon.
Son las diez de la noche.	It is ten at night.
Es mediodía. / Es medianoche.	It is midday. / It is midnight.

One o'clock is the only hour that takes es and la, because it is a single hour; every other hour takes son and las. To say when something happens, swap a for the verb: La clase es a las ocho (The class is at eight), and ask ¿A qué hora empieza? (What time does it start?). In much of Latin America the last quarter of the hour is often said the other way round, as cuarto para las seis rather than las seis menos cuarto; both are correct.

Writing numbers down

The punctuation is not the same as in English, and the recommendation has changed recently. The Real Academia Española now advises separating groups of thousands with a thin space rather than a point or a comma, so one million is written 1 000 000. For decimals both the comma and the point are accepted: the comma is usual in Spain, the point in Mexico and much of the Americas. What you should not do is copy the English habit of a comma for thousands and a point for decimals into a Spanish text, because a reader in Madrid would read 1,5 as one and a half.

A short dialogue at a market

• Cliente: Buenos días. ¿Cuánto cuestan las manzanas? (Good morning. How much do the apples cost?)
• Vendedora: Cuestan treinta pesos el kilo. (They cost thirty pesos a kilo.)
• Cliente: Quiero dos kilos, por favor. ¿Y los plátanos? (I want two kilos, please. And the bananas?)
• Vendedora: Veinticinco pesos. En total son ochenta y cinco pesos. (Twenty-five pesos. Altogether that is eighty-five pesos.)
• Cliente: Aquí tiene cien pesos. (Here is a hundred pesos.)
• Vendedora: Gracias. Quince pesos de cambio. (Thank you. Fifteen pesos change.)
• Cliente: ¿A qué hora cierra usted? (What time do you close?)
• Vendedora: A las seis y media de la tarde. (At half past six in the afternoon.)

Common mistakes

• Writing the teens and twenties as two words. It is dieciséis and veintiuno, not "diez y seis" or "veinte y uno."
• Keeping full uno before a noun. Say un libro and veintiún libros, not "uno libro."
• Saying "un cien." The word cien already means one hundred, so no un is needed.
• Dropping the accent on dieciséis or veintidós. The written accent is part of the correct spelling.
• Adding un to a thousand. It is mil personas, not "un mil personas," though a million does take one: un millón.
• Leaving the hundreds unchanged before a feminine noun. It is trescientas páginas, not "trescientos páginas."
• Using son for one o'clock. It is Es la una, and only that hour.
• Inventing "quinientos" as "cincocientos." Five hundred, seven hundred, and nine hundred are irregular: quinientos, setecientos, novecientos.

Recap

Learn zero to fifteen as unique words, then the tens: veinte, treinta, cuarenta, cincuenta, sesenta, setenta, ochenta, noventa, and cien. Numbers 16 to 29 are single words (dieciséis, veintidós), while from 31 up you join a ten and a unit with y (treinta y uno). Uno shortens to un or una before a noun, and 100 is cien alone but ciento before a smaller number. The hundreds agree in gender (doscientas casas) and three of them are irregular: quinientos, setecientos, novecientos. Ordinals behave like adjectives, with primero and tercero shortening before a masculine noun. Tell the time with Es la una for one o'clock and Son las... for everything else, adding y cuarto, y media, or menos cuarto. A few numbers keep written accents you should not drop.

Sources

1. Real Academia Española. Números. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
2. Real Academia Española. Español al día: escritura de los números. RAE. rae.es
3. Real Academia Española. Tilde. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
4. Instituto Cervantes. Plan curricular: nociones generales, cantidad y número. Centro Virtual Cervantes. cvc.cervantes.es
5. Ceciliano, E., & Notman, S. La clase de español. Beginning Spanish: Empecemos por aquí (Humanities LibreTexts). human.libretexts.org
6. COERLL. Spanish Proficiency Exercises: numbers and shopping. University of Texas at Austin. laits.utexas.edu
7. SpanishDict. Numbers in Spanish: 0 to 100. SpanishDict. spanishdict.com

Talking about the calendar lets you make plans and mark birthdays. First, the days of the week (los días de la semana).

Spanish	English	Spanish	English
lunes	Monday	viernes	Friday
martes	Tuesday	sábado	Saturday
miércoles	Wednesday	domingo	Sunday
jueves	Thursday

An important habit: in Spanish, days and months are not capitalized. The Spanish week is usually shown starting on Monday, not Sunday. To ask the day, say ¿Qué día es hoy? (What day is today?) and answer Hoy es martes (Today is Tuesday).

The months (los meses)

The twelve months are enero (January), febrero, marzo, abril, mayo, junio, julio, agosto, septiembre, octubre, noviembre, and diciembre. They too are lowercase.

Giving a date

To give a date, use the pattern el + number + de + month: el cinco de mayo means "the fifth of May," and el veinte de diciembre is "the twentieth of December." Notice Spanish puts the day before the month. For the first of the month, Spanish traditionally uses el primero: el primero de enero (January first). To ask the date, say ¿Cuál es la fecha de hoy? (What is today's date?). To ask about a birthday, use ¿Cuándo es tu cumpleaños? (When is your birthday?), and answer Mi cumpleaños es el diez de junio (My birthday is the tenth of June).

Using el with days to mean on

The article makes a nice difference with days of the week. Add el before a day to mean "on that day": el lunes means "on Monday," as in Tengo clase el lunes (I have class on Monday). Use the plural los to mean "every" such day: los lunes means "on Mondays" or "every Monday," as in Estudio los sábados (I study on Saturdays). Five of the seven days do not change in the plural because they already end in s: el lunes becomes los lunes. Only sábado and domingo add an -s: los sábados, los domingos.

The order is day, then month, then year

Spanish writes and says dates from smallest to largest: day, month, year. So the fourth of July, 2025, is el cuatro de julio de dos mil veinticinco, and in numbers it is often written 4/7/2025, not 7/4. This is the reverse of the common United States order, so read foreign dates carefully. The full pattern is el + day + de + month + de + year, joining each part with de.

Seasons and useful time words

A few extra words round out talking about the calendar. The seasons are la primavera (spring), el verano (summer), el otoño (autumn), and el invierno (winter), and you pair them with en: en marzo (in March), en verano (in summer). Handy time words include hoy (today), mañana (tomorrow), ayer (yesterday), la semana (the week), el mes (the month), and el año (the year). So you might say Hoy es lunes y mañana es martes (Today is Monday and tomorrow is Tuesday).

The twelve months in a table

Spanish	English	Spanish	English
enero	January	julio	July
febrero	February	agosto	August
marzo	March	septiembre	September
abril	April	octubre	October
mayo	May	noviembre	November
junio	June	diciembre	December

Nine of the twelve are close enough to English that you can read them on sight. The three that hide slightly are enero, agosto, and diciembre. Note the spelling septiembre, which is also written setiembre in some countries; both are accepted, though septiembre is the more common form.

Dates in full sentences

• Hoy es jueves, doce de marzo. (Today is Thursday, the twelfth of March.)
• Mi cumpleaños es el primero de abril. (My birthday is the first of April.)
• El examen es el veinte de noviembre. (The exam is on the twentieth of November.)
• Las clases empiezan el ocho de septiembre. (Classes start on the eighth of September.)
• ¿Cuál es la fecha de hoy? (What is today's date?)
• Estamos a quince de mayo. (It is the fifteenth of May.)
• Nací el treinta de junio de dos mil diez. (I was born on the thirtieth of June, 2010.)

That sixth sentence shows a second, very common way to give the date, using estar a: Estamos a lunes (It is Monday), Estamos a tres de agosto (It is the third of August). Both patterns are correct and you will hear each of them.

On, in, and every: the little words of the calendar

Spanish	English	Example
el + day	on that day	Tengo clase el martes. (I have class on Tuesday.)
los + day	every such day	Trabajo los sábados. (I work on Saturdays.)
en + month	in that month	Mi cumpleaños es en julio. (My birthday is in July.)
en + season	in that season	En invierno hace frío. (In winter it is cold.)
de ... a ...	from ... to ...	De lunes a viernes. (From Monday to Friday.)
todos los + day	every single	Estudio todos los días. (I study every day.)

Spanish never uses a word for "on" with a day. The article does that job by itself, which is why el lunes already means "on Monday" and writing "en lunes" is a mistake.

More time vocabulary

Spanish	English	Spanish	English
hoy	today	la semana pasada	last week
mañana	tomorrow	la semana que viene	next week
ayer	yesterday	el fin de semana	the weekend
anoche	last night	el mes pasado	last month
pasado mañana	the day after tomorrow	el año que viene	next year
la semana	the week	el cumpleaños	the birthday

Careful with mañana. On its own it means "tomorrow," but la mañana, with the article, means "the morning." So mañana por la mañana means "tomorrow morning," which looks like a typing error and is not.

Reading a Spanish calendar

Two things about a printed Spanish calendar surprise English speakers. The week is laid out starting on lunes, so Saturday and Sunday sit together at the right-hand end where they belong. And dates in figures run day first: 4/7/2025 is the fourth of July, not the seventh of April. When a date could be misread, write the month out: 4 de julio de 2025. The year is read as a single number, so 2025 is dos mil veinticinco and 1998 is mil novecientos noventa y ocho, never split into pairs the way English says "nineteen ninety-eight."

A short dialogue

• Elena: ¿Qué día es hoy? (What day is today?)
• Marco: Hoy es miércoles, catorce de febrero. (Today is Wednesday, the fourteenth of February.)
• Elena: ¿Y cuándo es tu cumpleaños? (And when is your birthday?)
• Marco: Es el primero de marzo. ¿Y el tuyo? (It is the first of March. And yours?)
• Elena: El veintitrés de agosto. En verano. (The twenty-third of August. In summer.)
• Marco: ¿Tienes clase los viernes? (Do you have class on Fridays?)
• Elena: Sí, de lunes a viernes. Los sábados descanso. (Yes, from Monday to Friday. On Saturdays I rest.)
• Marco: El examen es el lunes que viene, ¿verdad? (The exam is next Monday, right?)
• Elena: Sí, el veintiséis. Tenemos que estudiar. (Yes, the twenty-sixth. We have to study.)

Two dates worth knowing

Every Spanish-speaking country has its own calendar of national days, and it is worth checking the ones for the country you are studying rather than assuming they are shared. Two are widely misunderstood by English speakers. El cinco de mayo marks the Mexican victory at the Battle of Puebla in 1862; it is a modest local commemoration in Mexico, mainly in the state of Puebla, and is celebrated far more widely in the United States than in Mexico itself. Mexican independence is actually marked on el dieciséis de septiembre. And el día de los muertos, on the first and second of November, is a warm family remembrance of relatives who have died, with food, flowers, and visits to graves; it is not a Mexican version of Halloween.

Common mistakes

• Capitalizing days or months. Write lunes and enero in lowercase, never "Lunes" or "Enero."
• Putting the month before the day. It is el cinco de mayo, not "el mayo cinco."
• Using a plain number for the first. Tradition prefers el primero de enero over "el uno de enero."
• Adding -s to weekday names that already end in s. The plural of el lunes is los lunes, not "los luneses."
• Adding en before a day. The article is enough: Tengo clase el martes, not "en el martes."
• Splitting the year into pairs. Say mil novecientos noventa y nueve, not "diecinueve noventa y nueve."
• Confusing mañana and la mañana. The first is tomorrow, the second is the morning.
• Forgetting the de between the parts of a date. The pattern is el diez de junio de dos mil once.

Recap

The seven days (lunes through domingo) and twelve months (enero through diciembre) are always lowercase, and the Spanish week usually starts on Monday. Give a date with el + number + de + month, day before month, and use el primero for the first; Estamos a tres de agosto is a second common pattern. Add el before a day to mean "on Monday" and los to mean "every Monday," and never use en with a weekday. Use en with months and seasons. Full dates run day, month, year, each joined by de, which is the reverse of the common United States order, and the year is read as a single number.

Sources

1. Real Academia Española. Fecha. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
2. Real Academia Española. Números. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
3. Real Academia Española. Año. Diccionario de la lengua española. dle.rae.es
4. Instituto Cervantes. Plan curricular: nociones generales, tiempo. Centro Virtual Cervantes. cvc.cervantes.es
5. Ceciliano, E., & Notman, S. La cultura y los viajes. Beginning Spanish: Empecemos por aquí (Humanities LibreTexts). human.libretexts.org
6. COERLL. Spanish Proficiency Exercises: dates and plans. University of Texas at Austin. laits.utexas.edu
7. SpanishDict. Days, months, and dates in Spanish. SpanishDict. spanishdict.com

Weather (el tiempo) is an easy, everyday topic. To ask what the weather is like, say ¿Qué tiempo hace? (literally "What weather does it make?"). Most weather expressions use the verb hacer (to do or make) in its hace form.

Weather with hacer

Spanish	English
Hace sol	It is sunny
Hace calor	It is hot
Hace frío	It is cold
Hace viento	It is windy
Hace buen tiempo	The weather is nice
Hace mal tiempo	The weather is bad

Weather with other verbs

A few weather words do not use hacer. For rain and snow, Spanish uses special verbs: Llueve means "It is raining" (from llover, to rain) and Nieva means "It is snowing" (from nevar, to snow). To say it is cloudy, use estar: Está nublado (It is cloudy). And to point out that there is fog or clouds, you can use hay (there is / there are): Hay niebla (There is fog).

The four seasons

The seasons (las estaciones) are la primavera (spring), el verano (summer), el otoño (autumn), and el invierno (winter). You can now put it all together: En verano hace calor y hace sol (In summer it is hot and sunny), or En invierno hace frío y a veces nieva (In winter it is cold and sometimes it snows). Remember that hace is for most weather, but rain and snow have their own verbs.

Why weather uses hacer, not ser or estar

English says "it is hot," but Spanish usually says "it makes heat": Hace calor. That is because calor (heat), frío (cold), sol (sun), and viento (wind) are nouns, not adjectives, and hacer is the verb that goes with them. This also explains why you strengthen these with mucho rather than "muy": Hace mucho calor (It is very hot), Hace mucho frío (It is very cold). Saying "Hace muy calor" is a classic beginner slip; the noun needs mucho.

Do not confuse weather with how a person feels

Three different verbs all touch on hot and cold, so keep them apart. For the weather, use hacer: Hace calor hoy (It is hot today). For how a person feels, use tener: Tengo calor (I am hot), Tengo frío (I am cold). For the temperature of a thing, use estar: El café está caliente (The coffee is hot), La sopa está fría (The soup is cold). So the same idea of "hot" picks a different verb depending on whether you mean the weather, a person, or an object.

Talking about the temperature and asking around

To give a temperature, Spanish uses estar with grados (degrees): Estamos a treinta grados (It is thirty degrees, literally "we are at thirty degrees"), and you will also hear Hace treinta grados and Hay treinta grados. Useful follow-up questions include ¿Qué temperatura hace? (What is the temperature?) and ¿Cómo está el clima? (How is the weather or climate?). You can connect weather to the seasons you just learned: En otoño hace viento y llueve mucho (In autumn it is windy and it rains a lot), En primavera hace buen tiempo (In spring the weather is nice).

The complete weather list, sorted by verb

Weather in Spanish is really four small systems, each with its own verb. Keeping them in separate boxes is the whole skill.

Verb	Spanish	English
hacer	Hace sol.	It is sunny.
hacer	Hace calor.	It is hot.
hacer	Hace frío.	It is cold.
hacer	Hace viento.	It is windy.
hacer	Hace fresco.	It is cool.
hacer	Hace buen tiempo.	The weather is nice.
hacer	Hace mal tiempo.	The weather is bad.
its own verb	Llueve.	It rains. / It is raining.
its own verb	Nieva.	It snows. / It is snowing.
estar	Está nublado.	It is cloudy.
estar	Está despejado.	It is clear.
estar	Está lloviendo.	It is raining right now.
hay	Hay niebla.	There is fog.
hay	Hay tormenta.	There is a storm.
hay	Hay nubes.	There are clouds.

The verbs llover and nevar are stem-changing, which is why the o and the e split: llueve and nieva, exactly the same change you met in tienes. They only ever appear in this one third-person form, because rain has no other subject to talk about.

Weather vocabulary as nouns

Spanish	English	Spanish	English
el sol	the sun	la nube	the cloud
la lluvia	the rain	la niebla	the fog
la nieve	the snow	la tormenta	the storm
el viento	the wind	el paraguas	the umbrella
el calor	the heat	el abrigo	the coat
el frío	the cold	los grados	the degrees

Sentences to read aloud

• ¿Qué tiempo hace hoy? (What is the weather like today?)
• Hace mucho calor y no hay nubes. (It is very hot and there are no clouds.)
• En invierno nieva en las montañas. (In winter it snows in the mountains.)
• Llueve mucho en abril. (It rains a lot in April.)
• Hoy está nublado y hace fresco. (Today it is cloudy and cool.)
• Necesito un paraguas porque va a llover. (I need an umbrella because it is going to rain.)
• Tengo frío. ¿Dónde está mi abrigo? (I am cold. Where is my coat?)
• Estamos a cinco grados. Hace mucho frío. (It is five degrees. It is very cold.)
• En verano hace buen tiempo y vamos a la playa. (In summer the weather is nice and we go to the beach.)
• Hay tormenta, así que no salimos. (There is a storm, so we are not going out.)

Seasons are not the same everywhere

Here is a fact that catches out a lot of learners writing to a pen pal. The Spanish-speaking world sits in both hemispheres, so the seasons are not shared. In Mexico, Spain, Cuba, and most of Central America, July is the middle of summer. In Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and southern Peru and Bolivia, July is the middle of winter and January is high summer. Countries near the equator, such as Ecuador and Colombia, do not have four temperature seasons at all; people there usually talk about la temporada de lluvias (the rainy season) and la temporada seca (the dry season) instead. So En diciembre hace frío is true in Madrid and false in Buenos Aires, and it is worth asking rather than assuming.

Three ways to say hot and cold

This is the single most useful contrast in the lesson, so here it is in one table. English uses "is" for all three; Spanish uses three different verbs.

What you mean	Verb	Spanish	English
the weather	hacer	Hace calor.	It is hot.
a person	tener	Tengo calor.	I am hot.
a thing	estar	La sopa está caliente.	The soup is hot.
the weather	hacer	Hace frío.	It is cold.
a person	tener	Los niños tienen frío.	The children are cold.
a thing	estar	El agua está fría.	The water is cold.

Notice that the word itself changes too. With hacer and tener you use the noun calor; with estar you use the adjective caliente, which then has to agree with the thing it describes.

A short dialogue

• Ana: ¿Qué tiempo hace en tu ciudad? (What is the weather like in your city?)
• Pablo: Hoy hace mucho viento y está nublado. (Today it is very windy and cloudy.)
• Ana: Aquí llueve. Estamos a doce grados. (Here it is raining. It is twelve degrees.)
• Pablo: ¿Tienes frío? (Are you cold?)
• Ana: Un poco. Necesito un abrigo. (A little. I need a coat.)
• Pablo: En verano hace mejor tiempo, ¿verdad? (In summer the weather is better, right?)
• Ana: Sí, en julio hace mucho calor y hace sol todos los días. (Yes, in July it is very hot and sunny every day.)
• Pablo: En mi país es al revés. En julio es invierno. (In my country it is the other way round. In July it is winter.)

Common mistakes

• Using ser or estar for most weather. Say Hace sol and Hace frío, not "Es sol" or "Está frío" for the weather in general.
• Saying "muy" with weather nouns. It is Hace mucho calor, not "Hace muy calor."
• Mixing up the person and the weather. Tengo calor means I feel hot; Hace calor means the weather is hot.
• Trying to use hacer for rain and snow. Those take their own verbs: Llueve (it is raining) and Nieva (it is snowing).
• Adding a subject to llueve. There is no word for "it" in Spanish, so Llueve is the entire sentence.
• Saying "Está caliente" about the weather. That describes an object; the weather is Hace calor.
• Forgetting the accent on frío. The i carries the mark, which is what breaks it away from the o into its own syllable.
• Assuming the seasons match your own. December is summer in Argentina and Chile.

Recap

Ask ¿Qué tiempo hace? and answer most weather with hacer: hace sol, hace calor, hace frío, hace viento, hace fresco, hace buen or mal tiempo. Rain and snow use their own stem-changing verbs (llueve, nieva), cloudiness and clear skies use estar (está nublado, está despejado), and hay introduces fog, storms, and clouds. Strengthen weather nouns with mucho, not muy, and keep weather (hacer) separate from how a person feels (tener) and how a thing feels (estar). The seasons are primavera, verano, otoño, and invierno, and they are reversed south of the equator.

Sources

1. Real Academia Española. Hacer, hacerse. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
2. Real Academia Española. Hacer. Diccionario de la lengua española. dle.rae.es
3. Real Academia Española. Haber. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
4. Instituto Cervantes. Plan curricular: nociones generales, el tiempo atmosférico. Centro Virtual Cervantes. cvc.cervantes.es
5. Ceciliano, E., & Notman, S. La cultura y los viajes. Beginning Spanish: Empecemos por aquí (Humanities LibreTexts). human.libretexts.org
6. COERLL. Spanish Proficiency Exercises: weather and seasons. University of Texas at Austin. laits.utexas.edu
7. SpanishDict. Talking about the weather in Spanish. SpanishDict. spanishdict.com

Asking questions is how conversations grow, and Spanish makes it easy. For a simple yes-or-no question, you can keep statement word order and just raise your voice at the end, or put the verb first. Both of these ask "Do you speak Spanish?":

• ¿Tú hablas español? (statement order, rising tone)
• ¿Hablas español? (subject dropped, very common)

Remember to open written questions with an inverted question mark and close with a normal one.

Question words

To ask for specific information, use these interrogatives. Each one carries a written accent.

Spanish	English	Example
qué	what	Qué quieres? (What do you want?)
quién	who	Quién es? (Who is it?)
dónde	where	Dónde vives? (Where do you live?)
cuándo	when	Cuándo llegas? (When do you arrive?)
por qué	why	Por qué estudias? (Why do you study?)
cómo	how	Cómo estás? (How are you?)
cuánto	how much	Cuánto cuesta? (How much does it cost?)

A subtle but important pair: por qué (two words, with an accent) means "why," while porque (one word, no accent) means "because." So you might ask ¿Por qué estudias español? and answer Porque me gusta (Because I like it). With these question words plus a verb, you can already interview a new friend about their name, home, age, and plans.

Question words that agree in number

Two interrogatives change form. Cuánto (how much or how many) agrees in gender and number with the noun it asks about: ¿Cuánto dinero? (How much money?), ¿Cuánta agua? (How much water?), ¿Cuántos libros? (How many books?), ¿Cuántas casas? (How many houses?). This is why age is ¿Cuántos años tienes? (literally "How many years do you have?"). And quién becomes quiénes for more than one person: ¿Quiénes son ellos? (Who are they?).

Qué versus cuál

Both can translate as "what" or "which," but they are used differently. Use qué right before a noun and to ask for a definition: ¿Qué libro quieres? (Which book do you want?), ¿Qué es esto? (What is this?). Use cuál to ask which one out of a group, especially before the verb es: ¿Cuál es tu color favorito? (What is your favorite color?), ¿Cuál prefieres? (Which one do you prefer?). A helpful rule: say ¿Cuál es tu nombre? or the more common ¿Cómo te llamas? for names, but not "Qué es tu nombre."

Where the subject goes in a question

When you use a question word, the subject usually comes after the verb: ¿Dónde vive Ana? (Where does Ana live?), ¿Qué estudian los niños? (What do the children study?). You never insert a helper like the English "do"; the question word plus the verb is enough. And do not forget the opening inverted question mark in writing, which signals a question from the very first word.

Answering questions naturally

Short answers are normal and polite. To a yes-or-no question you can simply say Sí or No, often adding a bit more: Hablas inglés? Sí, un poco (Do you speak English? Yes, a little). To an information question, answer with the matching piece: Dónde vives? Vivo en Miami (Where do you live? I live in Miami). And remember the why-because pair in a real exchange: Por qué estudias español? Porque quiero viajar (Why do you study Spanish? Because I want to travel).

Question words with their prepositions

Spanish puts the little word in front of the question word, where English leaves it stranded at the end. "Where are you from?" becomes literally "From where are you?" This is one of the neatest habits to pick up early, because it makes your questions sound native straight away.

Spanish	Literal	Natural English
¿De dónde eres?	From where are you?	Where are you from?
¿Adónde vas?	To where are you going?	Where are you going?
¿Con quién hablas?	With whom do you speak?	Who are you talking to?
¿De quién es el libro?	Of whom is the book?	Whose book is it?
¿Para qué estudias?	For what do you study?	What are you studying for?
¿A qué hora empieza?	At what hour does it start?	What time does it start?
¿Desde cuándo vives aquí?	Since when do you live here?	How long have you lived here?

Putting the preposition at the end, as in "¿Dónde eres de?", is not a stylistic slip in Spanish; it is simply not a sentence. Always front the pair together.

Twenty questions you can already ask

Everything here uses only grammar from the lessons so far. Read them aloud until they feel automatic.

• ¿Cómo te llamas? (What is your name?)
• ¿De dónde eres? (Where are you from?)
• ¿Cuántos años tienes? (How old are you?)
• ¿Dónde vives? (Where do you live?)
• ¿Cuál es tu número de teléfono? (What is your phone number?)
• ¿Qué estudias? (What do you study?)
• ¿Cuántos hermanos tienes? (How many brothers and sisters do you have?)
• ¿Cómo es tu casa? (What is your house like?)
• ¿Qué te gusta hacer? (What do you like to do?)
• ¿Cuándo es tu cumpleaños? (When is your birthday?)
• ¿Por qué estudias español? (Why do you study Spanish?)
• ¿A qué hora empieza la clase? (What time does the class start?)
• ¿Con quién vives? (Who do you live with?)
• ¿Adónde vas los fines de semana? (Where do you go on weekends?)
• ¿Qué tiempo hace hoy? (What is the weather like today?)
• ¿Cuánto cuesta el libro? (How much does the book cost?)
• ¿Quiénes son tus amigos? (Who are your friends?)
• ¿Tienes hambre? (Are you hungry?)
• ¿Hay una farmacia cerca? (Is there a pharmacy nearby?)
• ¿Puedes repetir, por favor? (Can you repeat, please?)

The accent tells you it is a question

Every question word carries a written accent, and the accent is not decoration here either. It is the only thing separating the questioning word from an identical ordinary word. Compare each pair aloud; the accented version is also said with a slightly stronger stress.

With accent (asking)	Without accent (not asking)
¿Qué quieres? (What do you want?)	Sé que quieres café. (I know that you want coffee.)
¿Dónde vives? (Where do you live?)	La casa donde vivo es pequeña. (The house where I live is small.)
¿Cuándo llegas? (When do you arrive?)	Cuando llegas, comemos. (When you arrive, we eat.)
¿Cómo estás? (How are you?)	Es alto como su padre. (He is tall like his father.)
¿Por qué estudias? (Why do you study?)	Estudio porque me gusta. (I study because I like it.)
¿Quién es? (Who is it?)	El chico que habla es Luis. (The boy who is speaking is Luis.)

The accent stays even when the question is tucked inside a longer sentence: No sé dónde vive (I do not know where he lives) keeps the mark, because a question is still being asked, just indirectly.

Softening a question and checking a fact

Two small additions make you sound much more fluent. Tag ¿verdad? or ¿no? onto a statement to check that you have it right, exactly like the English "right?" or "isn't it?".

• Eres de México, ¿verdad? (You are from Mexico, right?)
• El examen es el lunes, ¿no? (The exam is on Monday, isn't it?)
• Perdón, ¿puede repetir? (Excuse me, can you repeat?)
• ¿Cómo se dice "book" en español? (How do you say "book" in Spanish?)
• ¿Qué significa "biblioteca"? (What does "biblioteca" mean?)
• No entiendo. ¿Puede hablar más despacio, por favor? (I do not understand. Could you speak more slowly, please?)

Those last three are the most useful sentences in this entire course. Learn them by heart before your first real conversation, because they let you keep a conversation going instead of ending it.

A short interview

• Rosa: Hola, ¿cómo te llamas? (Hello, what is your name?)
• Kevin: Me llamo Kevin. ¿Y tú? (My name is Kevin. And you?)
• Rosa: Rosa. ¿De dónde eres, Kevin? (Rosa. Where are you from, Kevin?)
• Kevin: Soy de Chicago, pero vivo aquí ahora. (I am from Chicago, but I live here now.)
• Rosa: ¿Por qué estudias español? (Why do you study Spanish?)
• Kevin: Porque quiero viajar y porque me gusta. (Because I want to travel and because I like it.)
• Rosa: ¿Cuántos años tienes? (How old are you?)
• Kevin: Tengo dieciséis. Perdón, ¿cómo se dice "sixteen"? (I am sixteen. Sorry, how do you say "sixteen"?)
• Rosa: Dieciséis. Muy bien. ¿Qué te gusta hacer? (Dieciséis. Very good. What do you like to do?)
• Kevin: Me gusta correr. Vivo cerca del parque, ¿verdad que es bonito? (I like running. I live near the park; it is pretty, isn't it?)

Common mistakes

• Adding an English "do." Say ¿Dónde trabajas?, never "Dónde do you trabajas?"
• Confusing por qué and porque. Por qué (two words) asks why; porque (one word) gives the reason.
• Using qué for names. Ask ¿Cómo te llamas? or ¿Cuál es tu nombre?, not "Qué es tu nombre."
• Forgetting that cuánto agrees. It is ¿Cuántas casas? with a feminine plural noun, not "Cuánto casas."
• Leaving the preposition at the end. It is ¿De dónde eres? and ¿Con quién hablas?, never "¿Dónde eres de?"
• Dropping the accent. Without it, que, donde, and como are not question words at all.
• Writing only the closing question mark. Both marks are required: ¿Qué hora es?
• Using quién for a group. Two or more people take quiénes: ¿Quiénes son?

Recap

Form a yes-or-no question by keeping statement order with a rising tone or by putting the verb first, and open every written question with an inverted mark. The main question words all carry accents: qué, quién, dónde, cuándo, por qué, cómo, cuánto, cuál, and the accent is what separates them from the identical non-question words que, donde, cuando, como, and porque. Cuánto agrees in gender and number and quién becomes quiénes in the plural. Put any preposition in front of the question word (de dónde, con quién, a qué hora). Use qué before a noun and cuál to pick one from a group, tag ¿verdad? to check a fact, and never use an English helper like "do."

Sources

1. Real Academia Española. Qué. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
2. Real Academia Española. Cuánto, cuánta. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
3. Real Academia Española. Quien. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
4. Real Academia Española. Tilde. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
5. Instituto Cervantes. Plan curricular: gramática, oraciones interrogativas. Centro Virtual Cervantes. cvc.cervantes.es
6. Ceciliano, E., & Notman, S. Las personas y las perspectivas. Beginning Spanish: Empecemos por aquí (Humanities LibreTexts). human.libretexts.org
7. SpanishDict. Spanish question words and how to ask questions. SpanishDict. spanishdict.com

Family (la familia) is one of the first things people talk about. Here are the core members.

Spanish	English	Spanish	English
el padre / papá	father / dad	el hermano	brother
la madre / mamá	mother / mom	la hermana	sister
los padres	parents	el abuelo	grandfather
el hijo	son	la abuela	grandmother
la hija	daughter	el primo / la prima	cousin (m / f)
el tío / la tía	uncle / aunt	el perro / el gato	dog / cat

Notice that a mixed or all-male group uses the masculine plural: los padres can mean "the parents," and los hermanos can mean "the brothers" or "the siblings" together.

Showing whose it is

To say "my," "your," and so on, use possessive adjectives. They agree in number with the thing owned.

Spanish	English	Example
mi / mis	my	mi hermano, mis abuelos
tu / tus	your	tu tía, tus primos
su / sus	his/her/their/your	su madre, sus hijos
nuestro / nuestra	our	nuestra familia

You can also show possession with de: el perro de María means "María's dog" (literally "the dog of María"), because Spanish has no apostrophe-s.

Describing your family

Combine family words with the ser and adjective agreement you already know: Mi hermana es alta y simpática (My sister is tall and nice), Mis abuelos son mayores (My grandparents are older), Tengo un tío que es muy cómico (I have an uncle who is very funny). Useful describing words include simpático/a (nice), cómico/a (funny), serio/a (serious), joven (young), and mayor (older).

Telling how many with tener

To say how big your family is, use tener with a number: Tengo dos hermanos y una hermana (I have two brothers and one sister), Tenemos una familia grande (We have a big family). To ask, say ¿Cuántos hermanos tienes? (How many siblings do you have?). If you have none, use no ... ninguno or simply Soy hijo único for a male or Soy hija única for a female (I am an only child). Remember that hermanos in the plural can cover brothers and sisters together.

Su and sus can be unclear

The possessive su and sus are useful but vague, because su can mean "his," "her," "their," or "your (formal)." Context usually tells you, but to be clear Spanish often uses de plus the person instead: la casa de ellos (their house), el coche de usted (your car). This is the same de you use for possession when there is no apostrophe, as in los primos de Ana (Ana's cousins). Choose the de phrase whenever su might confuse your listener.

More describing words for people

Build richer descriptions by pairing ser with adjectives that agree. For personality: simpático/a (nice), antipático/a (unpleasant), trabajador/a (hard-working), inteligente (smart), tímido/a (shy). For appearance: alto/a (tall), bajo/a (short), guapo/a (good-looking), rubio/a (blond), moreno/a (dark-haired). Full examples: Mi madre es trabajadora y simpática (My mother is hard-working and nice), Mis primos son altos y morenos (My cousins are tall and dark-haired). Note that adjectives ending in -e like inteligente do not change for gender, only for number.

The complete family vocabulary

Spanish	English	Spanish	English
la familia	the family	el nieto / la nieta	grandson / granddaughter
el padre / la madre	father / mother	el sobrino / la sobrina	nephew / niece
los padres	parents	el esposo / la esposa	husband / wife
el hijo / la hija	son / daughter	el marido / la mujer	husband / wife
el hermano / la hermana	brother / sister	el novio / la novia	boyfriend / girlfriend
el abuelo / la abuela	grandfather / grandmother	el hermanastro / la hermanastra	stepbrother / stepsister
el tío / la tía	uncle / aunt	el padrastro / la madrastra	stepfather / stepmother
el primo / la prima	cousin	el amigo / la amiga	friend
los parientes	relatives	la mascota	pet

One word to be careful with: los parientes means relatives, not parents. Parents are los padres. Another: la mujer means both "woman" and "wife," and context does the sorting.

All the possessive adjectives

The table above shows the four you will use most. Here is the complete set. Only the nuestro and vuestro families change for gender; the rest change only for number.

Owner	Before a singular noun	Before a plural noun	Example
yo	mi	mis	mi hermana, mis hermanas
tú	tu	tus	tu primo, tus primos
él / ella / usted	su	sus	su tía, sus tías
nosotros / nosotras	nuestro, nuestra	nuestros, nuestras	nuestro padre, nuestras casas
vosotros / vosotras	vuestro, vuestra	vuestros, vuestras	vuestro colegio, vuestras clases
ellos / ellas / ustedes	su	sus	su coche, sus coches

The key idea, and it is the opposite of English, is that the possessive agrees with what is owned, not with the owner. Sus libros is plural because there are several books, no matter whether the owner is one person or twenty. And tu here has no accent; the accented tú is the pronoun "you."

Describing a family in full sentences

• Mi familia es grande. Somos seis en casa. (My family is big. There are six of us at home.)
• Tengo dos hermanos y una hermana menor. (I have two brothers and one younger sister.)
• Mi padre es alto y muy trabajador. (My father is tall and very hard-working.)
• Mi madre es profesora y es muy simpática. (My mother is a teacher and is very nice.)
• Mis abuelos viven en Guadalajara. (My grandparents live in Guadalajara.)
• Mi hermana mayor tiene veinte años. (My older sister is twenty.)
• Nuestros primos son de Puerto Rico. (Our cousins are from Puerto Rico.)
• El perro de mi tía se llama Toby. (My aunt's dog is called Toby.)
• No tengo hermanos. Soy hija única. (I have no siblings. I am an only child, said by a girl.)
• ¿Cómo se llama tu hermano? (What is your brother's name?)

Notice mayor and menor. Spanish prefers these to "more old" or "more young" for people: mi hermano mayor (my older brother), mi hermana menor (my younger sister). They do not change for gender, only for number: mis hermanos mayores.

Talking about appearance and personality

Two verbs share this work. Use ser for what someone is like, and tener for the features they have.

Verb	Spanish	English
ser	Es alto y delgado.	He is tall and slim.
ser	Es rubia y muy simpática.	She is blonde and very nice.
ser	Son jóvenes y trabajadores.	They are young and hard-working.
tener	Tiene el pelo negro.	He has black hair.
tener	Tiene los ojos verdes.	She has green eyes.
tener	Tengo el pelo corto y rizado.	I have short curly hair.

Spanish uses the article rather than the possessive with parts of the body, exactly as it did with Me duele la cabeza. So it is Tiene el pelo largo, not "Tiene su pelo largo."

Two surnames

Across the Spanish-speaking world people traditionally carry two family names: the first from the father and the second from the mother. If Ana Muñoz Salas marries, her legal name usually does not change, and her children would ordinarily take the first surname of each parent. The first surname is the one used in everyday address, so Ana Muñoz Salas is la señora Muñoz, not "Mrs. Salas." Alphabetical lists file her under M. Practices are shifting, and in Spain since 1999 parents have been able to agree the order of the two surnames, so you should not assume the paternal one always comes first. If you are filling in a form for a Spanish-speaking friend and it asks only for one last name, the first surname is the one to use.

A short dialogue

• Clara: ¿Cómo es tu familia? (What is your family like?)
• Tomás: Somos cinco. Mis padres, mis dos hermanas y yo. (There are five of us. My parents, my two sisters, and me.)
• Clara: ¿Y cómo son tus hermanas? (And what are your sisters like?)
• Tomás: Mi hermana mayor es muy seria. La menor es cómica. (My older sister is very serious. The younger one is funny.)
• Clara: ¿Dónde viven tus abuelos? (Where do your grandparents live?)
• Tomás: Viven cerca. Su casa está al lado del parque. (They live nearby. Their house is next to the park.)
• Clara: ¿Tienes mascotas? (Do you have pets?)
• Tomás: Sí, el gato de mi hermana. Tiene los ojos azules. (Yes, my sister's cat. It has blue eyes.)
• Clara: ¡Qué bonito! Yo soy hija única. (How lovely! I am an only child.)

Common mistakes

• Using an apostrophe for possession. There is no apostrophe-s in Spanish; say el perro de María, not "María's perro."
• Not matching the possessive to number. It is mis abuelos (my grandparents), because mi agrees in number with the plural noun.
• Forgetting adjective agreement. With a mother, say trabajadora and simpática, not the masculine forms.
• Leaving su ambiguous when it matters. If it is unclear, switch to la casa de ellos rather than "su casa."
• Making the possessive agree with the owner. Sus libros is plural because the books are plural, whether the owner is one person or many.
• Writing tú for "your." The possessive has no accent: tu hermana, not "tú hermana."
• Using a possessive with body parts. It is Tiene el pelo rubio, not "Tiene su pelo rubio."
• Confusing los padres with los parientes. The first means parents, the second means relatives.

Recap

The core family words include padre, madre, hermano, hermana, hijo, hija, abuelo, abuela, tío, tía, sobrino, nieto, and primo or prima, with the masculine plural (padres, hermanos) covering a mixed group. Show possession with mi/mis, tu/tus, su/sus, nuestro/nuestra/nuestros/nuestras, and vuestro and its forms, all of which agree with the thing owned rather than the owner, or with de plus a name because there is no apostrophe-s. Use tener with a number to say how many relatives you have, ser plus agreeing adjectives to say what people are like, and tener with the article for features such as el pelo and los ojos. Say mayor and menor for older and younger siblings.

Sources

1. Real Academia Española. Concordancia. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
2. Real Academia Española. Género. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
3. Real Academia Española. Tilde. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
4. Instituto Cervantes. Plan curricular: nociones específicas, relaciones familiares. Centro Virtual Cervantes. cvc.cervantes.es
5. Ceciliano, E., & Notman, S. Las personas y las perspectivas. Beginning Spanish: Empecemos por aquí (Humanities LibreTexts). human.libretexts.org
6. COERLL. Spanish Proficiency Exercises: family and descriptions. University of Texas at Austin. laits.utexas.edu
7. SpanishDict. Family vocabulary and possessive adjectives in Spanish. SpanishDict. spanishdict.com

Food (la comida) is a rewarding topic because you can use it right away. Let us build a small menu, then learn to order.

Spanish	English	Spanish	English
el pan	bread	el agua	water
el queso	cheese	el jugo	juice
el pollo	chicken	la leche	milk
la carne	meat	el café	coffee
el pescado	fish	la sopa	soup
la manzana	apple	la ensalada	salad

The three meals are el desayuno (breakfast), el almuerzo (lunch), and la cena (dinner). To eat is comer and to drink is beber.

Saying what you want with querer

To say what you want, use querer (to want). It is a stem-changing verb: the e in the stem becomes ie in most forms. So quiero (I want), quieres (you want), quiere (he/she wants), queremos (we want), quieren (they want). For example, Quiero un jugo means "I want a juice." To be polite you can soften it to Quisiera (I would like), which sounds more courteous when ordering.

Ordering in a restaurant

Here is a short exchange you could use today:

• Mesero: Buenas tardes. ¿Qué desea? (Waiter: Good afternoon. What would you like?)
• You: Quisiera la sopa y el pollo, por favor. (I would like the soup and the chicken, please.)
• Mesero: ¿Y para beber? (And to drink?)
• You: Un agua, por favor. (A water, please.)
• You (at the end): La cuenta, por favor. (The check, please.)

Two keywords will carry you through most meals: la cuenta (the bill) and the ever-polite por favor. Combine them with your gustar and querer sentences and you can hold a real conversation about food.

The full querer conjugation

Querer is a stem-changing verb: the e in the stem becomes ie in every form except nosotros and vosotros, where the stem stays the same. Learn the whole pattern.

Pronoun	querer	English
yo	quiero	I want
tú	quieres	you want
él / ella / usted	quiere	he/she wants
nosotros	queremos	we want
vosotros	queréis	you all want
ellos / ellas / ustedes	quieren	they want

Notice that queremos and queréis keep the plain e, while every other form has the ie change. You can follow querer with a noun (Quiero un café, I want a coffee) or with an infinitive (Quiero comer, I want to eat).

Ordering politely and the personal touch

When ordering, the softened form Quisiera (I would like) sounds more courteous than the plain Quiero. Other useful restaurant phrases: ¿Me trae el menú, por favor? (Will you bring me the menu, please?), Para mí, el pollo (For me, the chicken), and Está muy rico (It is very tasty). To say you are hungry or thirsty, remember the tener expressions from earlier: Tengo hambre (I am hungry), Tengo sed (I am thirsty). Waitstaff may be addressed politely; in many places you say Disculpe (Excuse me) to get attention.

Talking about likes at the table

Bring back gustar to describe your tastes. Use gusta for one food and gustan for several: Me gusta el pescado (I like fish), Me gustan las verduras (I like vegetables), No me gusta la cebolla (I do not like onion). You can combine likes and orders: Me gusta el pollo, así que quiero el pollo con ensalada (I like chicken, so I want the chicken with salad). This ties together three tools you now own: food vocabulary, querer, and gustar.

A much bigger menu

Spanish	English	Spanish	English
el arroz	rice	la naranja	orange
los frijoles	beans	el plátano	banana
la papa / la patata	potato	la fresa	strawberry
el huevo	egg	la verdura	vegetable
la mantequilla	butter	la lechuga	lettuce
el azúcar	sugar	el tomate	tomato
la sal	salt	la cebolla	onion
el postre	dessert	el helado	ice cream
el té	tea	el refresco	soft drink
la cuchara	spoon	el tenedor	fork
el cuchillo	knife	el plato	plate, dish
el vaso	glass	la servilleta	napkin

Two of those show how much food vocabulary varies from country to country. A potato is la papa in Latin America and la patata in Spain; juice is el jugo in Latin America and el zumo in Spain. Neither is more correct, and everyone will understand you either way. Other pairs worth knowing: el mesero or la mesera in Mexico and much of Latin America against el camarero or la camarera in Spain, and el almuerzo for lunch nearly everywhere against la comida for the midday meal in Mexico and Spain.

Verbs for eating and drinking

Pronoun	comer (to eat)	beber (to drink)	tomar (to have, to drink)
yo	como	bebo	tomo
tú	comes	bebes	tomas
él / ella / usted	come	bebe	toma
nosotros / nosotras	comemos	bebemos	tomamos
vosotros / vosotras	coméis	bebéis	tomáis
ellos / ellas / ustedes	comen	beben	toman

In most of Latin America tomar is the everyday verb for drinking, so Tomo café por la mañana is more common than "Bebo café." Both are correct, and beber is understood everywhere.

Sentences at the table

• ¿Qué desea tomar? (What would you like to drink?)
• Quisiera una ensalada y un vaso de agua, por favor. (I would like a salad and a glass of water, please.)
• Para mí, el pescado con arroz. (For me, the fish with rice.)
• ¿Me trae el menú, por favor? (Would you bring me the menu, please?)
• No como carne. Soy vegetariana. (I do not eat meat. I am a vegetarian, said by a girl.)
• Soy alérgico a los cacahuates. (I am allergic to peanuts, said by a boy.)
• ¿Cuánto cuesta el postre? (How much does the dessert cost?)
• Está muy rico, gracias. (It is very tasty, thank you.)
• La cuenta, por favor. (The bill, please.)
• ¿Está incluida la propina? (Is the tip included?)

Two of those are worth learning by heart if you have a food allergy, since they are the ones that matter most: Soy alérgico a... or Soy alérgica a... (I am allergic to...) and No puedo comer... (I cannot eat...).

Rico, delicioso, and the estar trap

Food is the classic place where ser and estar change the meaning, so it is worth a second look now that you have the vocabulary.

Spanish	English
La sopa está rica.	The soup tastes delicious (this soup, right now).
La sopa de mi abuela es rica.	My grandmother's soup is delicious (always is).
El café está caliente.	The coffee is hot right now.
El café está frío.	The coffee has gone cold.
Las manzanas están verdes.	The apples are unripe.
Las manzanas son verdes.	The apples are green in colour.

When you compliment a meal, está is almost always the right choice, because you are describing this particular plate at this particular moment: ¡Está delicioso!

Meals and mealtimes

Mealtimes differ from country to country, and knowing this saves you from arriving at an empty restaurant. In Spain the midday meal is typically eaten between about two and three in the afternoon, and the evening meal often after nine. In Mexico and much of Latin America the main meal is also at midday, with a lighter evening meal. Breakfast is usually light almost everywhere. A small habit worth copying: many people say buen provecho before eating, which is close to "enjoy your meal," and it is polite to say it to strangers at a nearby table as you pass. Another: ¡Salud! is what you say when raising a glass, and also what you say when someone sneezes.

A short dialogue at a restaurant

• Mesera: Buenas tardes. ¿Qué desean tomar? (Good afternoon. What would you like to drink?)
• Diego: Un jugo de naranja, por favor. (An orange juice, please.)
• Lucía: Para mí, un vaso de agua. Tengo mucha sed. (For me, a glass of water. I am very thirsty.)
• Mesera: Muy bien. ¿Y de comer? (Very well. And to eat?)
• Diego: Quisiera el pollo con arroz. Me gusta mucho el pollo. (I would like the chicken with rice. I really like chicken.)
• Lucía: Yo no como carne. ¿Hay una ensalada grande? (I do not eat meat. Is there a large salad?)
• Mesera: Sí, la ensalada con queso y tomate está muy rica. (Yes, the salad with cheese and tomato is very tasty.)
• Lucía: Perfecto, gracias. (Perfect, thank you.)
• Diego: Y después, ¿qué hay de postre? (And afterwards, what is there for dessert?)
• Mesera: Hay helado y fruta. (There is ice cream and fruit.)
• Diego: Un helado, por favor. Y la cuenta después. (An ice cream, please. And the bill afterwards.)

Common mistakes

• Forgetting the stem change. It is quiero and quieres, not "quero" or "queres"; only nosotros and vosotros keep the plain e.
• Using muy for hunger. Say Tengo mucha hambre (I am very hungry), because hambre is a noun.
• Dropping the article with foods. Say Quiero el pollo or Me gusta el café, keeping el, la, los, or las.
• Mixing gusta and gustan. It is Me gustan las verduras with a plural, but Me gusta la sopa with one thing.
• Saying "Soy caliente" to mean you are hot. That is not what it means; for feeling hot use Tengo calor.
• Praising food with ser. Say Está muy rico about the plate in front of you.
• Forgetting that el agua is feminine. It takes el for sound only, so it is el agua fría and las aguas.
• Ordering with a bare Quiero and nothing else. Adding por favor, or using Quisiera, is what makes it polite.

Recap

Build a menu of foods (pan, queso, pollo, carne, pescado, arroz, huevo, verduras, fruta) and drinks (agua, jugo or zumo, leche, café, té, refresco), plus the three meals: desayuno, almuerzo or comida, and cena. Say what you want with querer, a stem-changing verb (quiero, quieres, quiere, queremos, queréis, quieren), and soften it to Quisiera when ordering. Use comer, beber, and the very common tomar. Ask for la cuenta, por favor at the end, use tener for hunger and thirst, praise the food with está rico, and use gustar to describe which foods you like, matching gusta or gustan to the food. Expect vocabulary to vary by country: papa and patata, jugo and zumo, mesero and camarero.

Sources

1. Real Academia Española. Querer. Diccionario de la lengua española. dle.rae.es
2. Real Academia Española. Agua. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
3. Real Academia Española. Estar, estarse. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. rae.es
4. Instituto Cervantes. Plan curricular: nociones específicas, alimentación. Centro Virtual Cervantes. cvc.cervantes.es
5. Ceciliano, E., & Notman, S. La cultura y los viajes. Beginning Spanish: Empecemos por aquí (Humanities LibreTexts). human.libretexts.org
6. COERLL. Spanish Proficiency Exercises: food and restaurants. University of Texas at Austin. laits.utexas.edu
7. SpanishDict. Food vocabulary and ordering in a restaurant. SpanishDict. spanishdict.com