Middle School Spanish

A surname spelled out in Guadalajara

It is the first morning of the school year at a secondary school in Guadalajara, the capital of the state of Jalisco in western Mexico. A new student waits at the office window while the secretary fills in a form.

• Secretaria: Buenos días. ¿Cómo te llamas? (Good morning. What is your name?)
• Jimena: Me llamo Jimena Ibáñez. (My name is Jimena Ibáñez.)
• Secretaria: ¿Jimena con jota o con equis? (Jimena with a j or with an x?)
• Jimena: Con jota. (With a j.)
• Secretaria: ¿Y cómo se escribe Ibáñez? (And how do you spell Ibáñez?)
• Jimena: I, be, a con tilde, eñe, e, zeta. (I, b, a with an accent, ñ, e, z.)
• Secretaria: Gracias, Jimena. Bienvenida. (Thank you, Jimena. Welcome.)

Seven short lines, and most of this lesson is already inside them. The secretary asks about the first letter because the same name is also written Ximena, with an old-fashioned x that sounds exactly like the j. Jimena spells her surname with the names of the letters, the way you would say "double-u" in English instead of making a w sound. She mentions a small slanting mark over the a, which Spanish speakers call a tilde. And she uses a letter English does not have at all: ñ, called eñe.

Here are the words from the conversation with a guide to saying them. In every guide in this course, the part in capital letters is the part you push hardest, and the letters are ordinary English letters read the ordinary English way.

Look at the marks that open the questions: the upside-down ¿ at the front of ¿Cómo te llamas? Spanish warns you at the start that a question is coming, and it does the same with exclamations: ¡Hola! (Hello!). The single r in gracias and escribe is a light tap of the tongue, like the tt in the American way of saying butter. The next lesson gives the r its own attention.

Five vowels, one sound each

In Jimena's first class, the teacher writes five words on the board, one for each vowel, and the whole class reads them together: casa (house), mesa (table), libro (book), ocho (eight), uno (one).

That is the whole vowel system: five letters, five sounds, and each letter keeps its sound in every word. English is not like that. Think of the a in cat, father, cake and about: four sounds for one letter. A Spanish a is always the a of father. The ch in ocho, by the way, is the ch of English chip.

Two English habits cause almost every vowel mistake, so it pays to know them by name.

• The glide. Say the English word no slowly. Your lips close at the end and you add a small w: no-w. Say day and you add a y: da-y. Spanish vowels do not glide. Spanish no stops dead on the o, and Spanish de (of) is just deh. Try holding your jaw still as you finish the vowel.
• The lazy vowel. In English, a vowel that is not stressed shrinks to uh: the second a in sofa, the o in lemon. Spanish never does this. The second a in casa is as full and open as the first: KAH-sah, never KAH-suh.

When two vowels stand side by side, each keeps its own sound, but they often run together in one beat. Buenos starts with u and e: BWEH-nohs, the u sliding quickly into the e. Días keeps its i and a apart, because the accent mark on the í gives the i a beat of its own: DEE-ahs.

Key idea: a Spanish vowel is one steady sound. Fix the five vowels and you have fixed most of your accent, because every Spanish word is built on them.

Twenty-seven letters and their names

The Real Academia Española, based in Madrid and working with the language academies of 22 other Spanish-speaking countries, sets the rules for spelling. It counts 27 letters in the Spanish alphabet, el abecedario (ah-beh-seh-DAH-ryoh): the 26 you know from English, plus ñ. Here they are with their names, the words you use when you spell something aloud.

The rr in the guide for erre is the rolled r, which the next lesson teaches. Five more things about this list are worth knowing.

• ñ is a letter of its own, not an n with decoration. In a dictionary it has its own section, straight after n.
• ch and ll are pairs of letters. Older dictionaries gave them sections of their own. Since 1994 they have been filed under c and l, and the Academy's count of 27 leaves them out. They still have their own sounds, which you meet below.
• k and w are rare. They turn up mainly in words borrowed from other languages, such as kilo and karate.
• v has more than one name. The Academy calls it uve, and that is what you hear in Spain. Across Latin America many people call it ve, and because b and v sound exactly the same in Spanish, speakers add a word to tell them apart: be grande and be chica (big b, little b) in Mexico and Peru, be larga and be corta (long b, short b) in Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. Some people simply give an example: b de burro, v de vaca (b as in burro, which means donkey; v as in vaca, which means cow).
• w is uve doble in Spain, doble ve in much of Latin America, and doble u in Mexico and Colombia.

Letters that surprise English speakers

Outside Jimena's classroom hangs the class list, la lista de clase (lah LEES-tah deh KLAH-seh). Six of the names on it:

• Hugo Llamas
• Gerardo Juárez
• Cecilia Cortés
• Quique Peña
• Yolanda Zúñiga
• Guillermo Vargas

Every one of those names holds a letter that an English reader would say wrongly. Here is what each letter really does.

Two small extras. The letter y standing alone is a word, y (and), and then it sounds like ee. And a d between two vowels is softer than an English d, close to the th in this: in nada (nothing), the tongue barely touches. The guides in this course write it as d; soften it when you can.

The old x of Ximena survives in a few names from centuries ago, and in one very famous one. Mexico writes its own name México and says it MEH-hee-koh.

Two correct ways to say z

If Jimena flew from Guadalajara to Madrid, she would hear her classmates' names said differently. In northern and central Spain, z, and c before e or i, are said like the th in think: Zúñiga becomes THOO-nyee-gah, Cecilia becomes theh-THEE-lyah, and gracias becomes GRAH-thyahs. This is called distinción, because those speakers keep s and z apart. In all of Latin America, in the Canary Islands and in parts of southern Spain, the same letters are said like s. That is called seseo, and it is what the guides in this course use.

Neither is a mistake, and nobody will misunderstand you either way. The same goes for ll and y. Most Spanish speakers say both like the y in yes, but in Argentina and Uruguay you will hear them like the sh in show, so a Hugo Llamas from Buenos Aires would be called OO-goh SHAH-mahs.

Sounding out a word in four steps

Here is a method that works on any Spanish word, tried out on the name of Jimena's city: ten letters, five of them a.

1. Find the vowels and split the word into beats. A Spanish syllable usually ends with a vowel, so a single consonant joins the vowel after it: Gua-da-la-ja-ra.
2. Give each vowel its one sound. Every a is the a of father. No uh anywhere.
3. Check the consonants against the table. G before u is the g in go. The u itself is said here, quickly, like a w, because an a follows it: gwah. The j is the strong h: hah. The single r is the light tap.
4. Push the right syllable. The next lesson teaches how to find it every time. For now, one rule: a word ending in a vowel is pushed on the second-to-last beat, here ja.

Put together: gwah-dah-lah-HAH-rah.

Now change one thing. In Guillermo, the u after the g is followed by i, not a. That flips step 3: before e or i, a u after g is silent. Its only job is to keep the g hard, so gui is gee and Guillermo is gee-YEHR-moh. Same letters, a different neighbour, a different result.

Spanish has a way to switch that silent u back on: two dots, called a diéresis. The word for penguin is pingüino, and the dots tell you to say the u: peen-GWEE-noh. Without them, you would read peen-GEE-noh.

Spelling aloud with ¿Cómo se escribe?

Spelling out loud is a real skill. You need it for a surname, an email address, or a street name over the phone. Say each letter by its name, and for a vowel with an accent mark add con tilde. Here is Yolanda from the class list at the school library, where the librarian is making her a library card:

• Bibliotecaria: ¿Cómo se escribe tu apellido? (How do you spell your surname?)
• Yolanda: Zeta, u con tilde, eñe, i, ge, a. (Z, u with an accent, ñ, i, g, a.)
• Bibliotecaria: ¿Zúñiga con zeta? (Zúñiga with a z?)
• Yolanda: Sí, con zeta. (Yes, with a z.)

Two new words there: apellido (ah-peh-YEE-doh), surname, and sí (see), yes. The accent on sí matters: si without it means if. Spanish puts an accent mark on a handful of short words that would otherwise look identical, and the next lesson collects them.

A warning about one word. In English, a tilde is the wavy line on ñ. In Spanish, una tilde usually means the slanting accent mark, as in á, and the wavy line has a name of its own, virgulilla. So a con tilde means a with an accent mark.

Common misconceptions

• The h is breathed a little, as in English. It is silent every time. Hugo is OO-goh, and hola (hello) is OH-lah.
• b and v are two different sounds. They are one sound in Spanish, which is exactly why people spell with b de burro and v de vaca.
• The accent mark changes how the vowel sounds. It never does. The á in Ibáñez is the same ah as every other a. The mark only tells you where to push, or tells two words apart, like sí and si.
• The ñ is an n with a decoration you can skip. Leave it off and you change the word. Año (AH-nyoh) means year. Ano is a completely different word, and not one you want on a birthday card.
• Unstressed vowels can relax. In Spanish they stay full. Casa is KAH-sah, and ocho is OH-choh, not OH-chuh.

Out loud, then on paper

Say it. Read the six names from the class list aloud, twice: once slowly, beat by beat, and once at normal speed. Spell your own first name aloud with Spanish letter names, adding con tilde to any accented letter. Finish with Guadalajara, four times, a little faster each time, keeping every a open.

Write it. In the activity below, a teacher spells five words aloud and you write them down, accents and all, with a say-it guide for each. Then you turn two words back into letter names.

What you now know

• Spanish has five vowels, a e i o u, each with one steady sound that never glides and never shrinks to uh.
• The alphabet has 27 letters: the English 26 plus ñ. You spell aloud with letter names such as jota, eñe and zeta, and say con tilde for an accented vowel.
• h is silent; j, and g before e or i, sound like a strong h; ll and y sound like the y in yes; ñ is the ny in canyon; b and v are the same sound.
• c before e or i, and z, are said like s in Latin America and like th in most of Spain. Both are correct.
• After g or q, a u before e or i is silent; the two dots of pingüino make it speak.
• To read a new word: split it into beats, give each vowel its sound, check the consonants, push the right syllable.

Sources

1. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 1.5: Vocabulario: El alfabeto. In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
2. Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Spanish orthography. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
3. Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Spanish phonology. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
4. Wiktionary contributors. (n.d.). tilde (Spanish noun). Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
5. Real Academia Española and Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española. (2010). Ortografía de la lengua española. Madrid: Espasa.

One sentence, three circles

Tom is twelve and three weeks into Spanish at a middle school in San Antonio, Texas. For homework he writes one sentence about his Saturday:

Mi papa y mi pero estan en el parque.

He means: My dad and my dog are in the park. His teacher, señora Garza, hands it back with three words circled and a note in the margin: ¿Una papa? ¿Un pero? (A potato? A but?)

Here is the sentence as señora Garza rewrote it:

Mi papá y mi perro están en el parque. (My dad and my dog are in the park.)

Tom's sentence did not fail on grammar. Every word was the right word in the right order. It failed on two missing accent marks and one missing letter, and each of those either changed the meaning or made a word that does not exist. A dad became a potato, a dog became the word but, and están, they are, became estan, which is not a Spanish word at all. This lesson debugs the sentence one circle at a time, and each circle turns out to hide a rule you can use on thousands of other words.

Circle one: pero is not perro

Before handing the homework back, señora Garza writes two sentences on the board and asks the class to listen to how she says every r.

• El perro de Rosa corre alrededor del carro rojo. (Rosa's dog runs around the red car.)
• Pero Mario prefiere el loro de Clara. (But Mario prefers Clara's parrot.)

In the first sentence almost every r rolls. In the second, every r is a tiny tap. Spanish has these two r sounds, and the spelling tells you which one to use.

The first is the tap. Say the English word butter the way most Americans do, quickly. The tt in the middle is not really a t at all: it is one quick flick of the tongue against the ridge just behind your top teeth. The dd in ladder does the same. That flick is the Spanish r in pero (but), Mario, loro (parrot) and Clara. It is one touch, lighter than any English r, and your lips do not round the way they do for English red.

The second is the trill, the rolled r. It is that same flick repeated three or four times in a row, as a stream of air makes the relaxed tip of your tongue flutter, a little like a cat's purr made at the front of the mouth. It is the sound in perro (dog), corre (runs) and carro (car).

The difference is not decoration. Spanish has pairs of words that differ only in their r.

In the say-it guides, a single r means the tap and a double rr means the trill. So when do you roll? Look back at the board. There are three places, and only three.

1. The word is spelled with rr: perro, corre, carro.
2. r is the first letter of the word: Rosa, rojo (red).
3. r comes straight after l, n or s: alrededor (around), where the r follows an l, and the name Enrique, where it follows an n.

Everywhere else, a single r is a tap: pero, Mario, prefiere, loro, Clara, and the r at the very end of alrededor. That last one surprises people: the same word can hold both sounds, ahl-rreh-deh-DOHR, a trill near the front and a tap at the end.

If the trill will not come yet, try this. Say the English word butter five times fast, and notice the flick. Then say tres (three) and hold the tr, pushing air over a loose tongue until it buzzes. Some people can trill on the first day, and many need weeks of a minute's practice here and there. Until it comes, use a strong tap and keep talking. In a whole sentence, the listener will almost always know whether you mean a dog or a but.

Circle two: papa is not papá

Every Spanish word with more than one syllable has one syllable you push harder than the others, la sílaba tónica (the stressed syllable). English gives you no help finding it: think of record the noun and record the verb. Spanish gives you two rules and a mark.

On the wall of señora Garza's classroom hangs a poster called Las palabras del mes (the words of the month). Here they are, sorted by the rule that tells you where the push goes. The pushed syllable is in capitals.

Read rule 3 carefully, because it is the one that trips people up. The accent mark does not appear because a word is special or foreign. It appears because the word is pushed somewhere the first two rules did not predict. Café ends in a vowel, so rule 1 expects CA-fe. People actually say ca-FÉ, so the mark goes on the é to tell you. Lápiz ends in z, so rule 2 expects la-PIZ. People say LÁ-piz, so the mark goes on the á.

Now the circled word. Papa ends in a vowel, so rule 1 expects PA-pa, and that is exactly how the word for potato is said: no mark needed. The word for dad is said pa-PÁ, pushed on the last beat, which rule 1 did not predict: so it needs the mark. One little line is all that stands between your father and a vegetable.

One group of words always carries a mark: the ones pushed three syllables from the end, like MÚ-si-ca, SÁ-ba-do and te-LÉ-fo-no. Neither rule ever predicts a push that far back, so every one of them is marked. Spanish grammar books call these words esdrújulas.

Remember: say the word, find the push, check the last letter. If the rules predict the push, write no mark. If they do not, mark the pushed vowel.

Circle three: estan is not están

Run the same check on the third circle. Say it: ehs-TAHN, pushed on the last beat. Check the last letter: n. Rule 1 says a word ending in n is pushed on the second-to-last beat, which would give ES-tan. The real word breaks the rule, so the pushed vowel is marked: están.

Compare hablan (they speak), which also ends in n but is said HA-blan. Rule 1 predicts that exactly, so hablan has no mark. The two words end the same way and are marked differently, and the only thing that decides it is where the push falls. The same check explains the question you met in the last lesson, ¿Cómo estás? (How are you?): estás ends in s but is pushed on the last beat, so it is marked.

Short words the mark tells apart

Tom is at his friend Diego's house after school. Listen for the short words.

• Diego: ¿Tú hablas español con tu abuela? (Do you speak Spanish with your grandmother?)
• Tom: Sí. Con mi abuelo no, porque él habla inglés. (Yes. Not with my grandfather, because he speaks English.)
• Diego: ¿Y el perro? (And the dog?)
• Tom: El perro entiende los dos. Para mí, el español es fácil si hablo despacio. (The dog understands both. For me, Spanish is easy if I speak slowly.)

These short words have only one syllable, so the stress rules have nothing to decide. Here the mark does a different job: it tells apart pairs of words that sound the same.

Find each one in the dialogue: tú hablas, tu abuela; él habla, el perro; sí at the start of Tom's answer and si hablo despacio at the end; para mí and mi abuelo. The pronunciation of each pair is identical. The mark is there for the reader.

Two vowels, one beat or two

Some vowels share a beat. Spanish counts a, e and o as strong vowels, and i and u as weak ones. When a weak vowel stands next to another vowel, the two usually slide together into one beat: bue-no (good), bien (well), seis (six). That is why abuela is a-bue-la, four beats and not five.

An accent mark on the i or u breaks the pair apart and gives the weak vowel a beat of its own. Día (day) is DÍ-a, two beats. Tía (aunt) is TÍ-a. País (country) is pa-ÍS. Without the marks, you would read dia as one beat, and pais as rhyming with rice.

Common misconceptions

• Every Spanish r is rolled. Only rr, a first-letter r, and an r after l, n or s are rolled. Roll the r in pero and you have said perro.
• The accent mark makes the vowel longer or higher. The vowel keeps its normal sound. The mark only shows which syllable is pushed, or tells twin words like tú and tu apart.
• Accent marks are decoration you can skip. They are part of the spelling. Leave one off and you may write a different word, like papa for papá, or a word that does not exist, like estan.
• Capital letters do not need accent marks. The Real Academia says they do. A name written in capitals keeps its mark: ÁLVARO, not ALVARO.

Your turn: tongue first, then pencil

Say it. Read señora Garza's two board sentences aloud, rolling every r in the first and tapping every r in the second. Then say the pairs pero, perro and caro, carro, five times each. Finish with Tom's corrected sentence three times: Mi papá y mi perro están en el parque.

Write it. The activity below gives you eight words from the class with their marks missing. You decide which ones need a mark and which rule decides it, then write two sentences of your own.

The short version

• Spanish has two r sounds. The tap is one flick, like the tt in American butter. The trill is a rolled flutter.
• Roll the r when it is spelled rr, when it starts a word, or when it follows l, n or s. Tap it everywhere else.
• Rule 1: a word ending in a vowel, n or s is pushed on its second-to-last syllable. Rule 2: a word ending in any other consonant is pushed on its last syllable.
• Rule 3: a word that breaks rule 1 or 2 carries an accent mark on the pushed vowel. Words pushed three from the end are always marked.
• On short words the mark tells twins apart: tú and tu, él and el, sí and si, mí and mi, té and te.
• A mark on i or u next to another vowel gives it a beat of its own: día, tía, país.

Sources

1. Silvaggio-Adams, E., and Vallejo-Alegre, M. del R. (n.d.). 1.3: ¡Aprendamos agrupar consonantes y vocales para formar palabras! In Yo puedo: para empezar. Milne Publishing; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
2. Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Spanish phonology: the trill and the tap. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
3. Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Spanish orthography: stress and accentuation. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
4. Wiktionary contributors. (n.d.). papa (Spanish: potato, pope). Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
5. Real Academia Española and Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española. (2010). Ortografía de la lengua española, chapter on the accent mark. Madrid: Espasa.

7:40 in the morning, the airport in Mexico City

Maya is twelve and lives in Chicago. She has just landed in Mexico City to spend a week with her aunt Carmen and her cousin Leo, who is thirteen and whom she has only ever seen on video calls. They are waiting at the arrivals gate.

• Tía Carmen: ¡Maya! ¡Hola, mi amor! ¡Bienvenida a México! (Maya! Hello, sweetheart! Welcome to Mexico!)
• Maya: ¡Hola, tía! Buenos días. (Hi, Auntie! Good morning.)
• Tía Carmen: Mira, te presento a Leo. (Look, this is Leo. Word for word: I present Leo to you.)
• Leo: Hola, Maya. ¿Qué tal? (Hi, Maya. How's it going?)
• Maya: Bien, gracias. ¿Y tú? (Fine, thanks. And you?)
• Leo: Muy bien. (Very well.)

Nobody in that conversation is being formal. Carmen is family, and Leo is Maya's age, so everyone uses the friendly word for you, tú (too), and the friendly questions that go with it. ¿Qué tal? (keh TAHL) is the quick, relaxed way to ask how someone is, like how's it going. Te presento a (teh preh-SEHN-toh ah) is how you introduce one person to another when you would use tú with the person you are talking to.

9:15, the lobby of the building

At Carmen's apartment building, an older man is sweeping the entrance. He has lived there for forty years, and Carmen calls him don Ernesto. Don (dohn) is a title of respect used before a man's first name.

• Tía Carmen: Buenos días, don Ernesto. Le presento a mi sobrina, Maya. (Good morning, don Ernesto. May I introduce my niece, Maya.)
• Don Ernesto: Mucho gusto, señorita. ¿Cómo está usted? (Nice to meet you, young lady. How are you?)
• Maya: Muy bien, gracias. ¿Y usted? (Very well, thank you. And you?)
• Don Ernesto: Bien, bien, gracias. Bienvenida. (Fine, fine, thank you. Welcome.)

Everything changed, and Maya noticed. Carmen said le presento, not te presento. Don Ernesto asked ¿Cómo está usted?, not ¿Cómo estás? And Maya handed the question back with ¿Y usted? instead of ¿Y tú? The word usted (oos-TEHD) is the respectful word for you, and it brings its own forms of the verbs with it. Maya chose it because don Ernesto is an adult she has just met, and a much older one.

4:30 in the afternoon, the corner shop

Maya walks to the small shop at the end of the street, la tienda (lah TYEHN-dah), for something to drink. A woman is behind the counter.

• Maya: Buenas tardes, señora. (Good afternoon, ma'am.)
• Señora: Buenas tardes. ¿Qué desea? (Good afternoon. What would you like?)
• Maya: Una botella de agua, por favor. (A bottle of water, please.)
• Señora: Aquí tiene. (Here you are.)
• Maya: Muchas gracias. (Thank you very much.)
• Señora: De nada. Hasta luego. (You're welcome. See you later.)

On the way out, the doorway is blocked by a man looking at the newspapers. Maya says con permiso (kohn pehr-MEE-soh), excuse me, word for word with permission, and he steps aside. A moment later she bumps a basket and says perdón (pehr-DOHN), sorry. Con permiso asks before you do something, like squeezing past. Perdón apologises after.

7:00 in the evening, the park

Leo takes Maya to the park where his friends meet after school.

• Leo: ¡Hola, chicos! Les presento a mi prima Maya. Es de Chicago. (Hi, guys! Let me introduce my cousin Maya. She's from Chicago.)
• Sofía: ¡Hola, Maya! Soy Sofía. Encantada. (Hi, Maya! I'm Sofía. Nice to meet you.)
• Maya: Encantada. (Nice to meet you.)
• Pablo: Yo soy Pablo. Mucho gusto. ¿De dónde eres? ¿De Chicago? (I'm Pablo. Nice to meet you. Where are you from? From Chicago?)
• Maya: Sí, soy de Chicago. (Yes, I'm from Chicago.)
• Pablo: ¡Qué padre! (How cool!)

Three new things. Leo is speaking to a whole group, so he says les presento, the form for several people. Sofía and Maya both say encantada (ehn-kahn-TAH-dah), delighted, because they are girls; Leo or Pablo would say encantado. And ¡Qué padre! is Mexican slang for how cool: a friend might say it to you, but it is not a phrase for don Ernesto.

10:00 at night, home

• Maya: Buenas noches, tía. Hasta mañana. (Good night, Auntie. See you tomorrow.)
• Tía Carmen: Buenas noches, mi amor. Hasta mañana. (Good night, sweetheart. See you tomorrow.)

Buenas noches did two jobs today. It is the hello you say to anyone after dark, and it is also the good night you say on the way to bed.

The greetings and answers from Maya's day

Here is everything Maya heard and said, gathered up. The times for the three hellos are a rough guide: people do not all switch at the same minute.

And the answers, from best to worst: muy bien (mwee byehn), very well; bien, fine; más o menos (mahs oh MEH-nohs), so-so; regular (rreh-goo-LAHR), okay, not great; mal (mahl), bad. Add gracias to be polite, then hand the question back: ¿Y tú? or ¿Y usted? A conversation keeps going when both people ask.

The ways to leave: adiós (ah-DYOHS), goodbye; hasta luego (AHS-tah LWEH-goh), see you later; hasta mañana (AHS-tah mah-NYAH-nah), see you tomorrow; nos vemos (nohs BEH-mohs), see you; and between friends, chao (chow), bye.

Tú or usted: how Maya decided

Maya made the choice five times in one day. Here are her decisions and the reason behind each.

That gives you a working rule. Use tú with friends, classmates, children, and usually your family. Use usted with adults you do not know well: a shopkeeper, a neighbour, a friend's grandparent, an official, and very often a teacher. If an adult would rather you used tú, they will tell you, often with the words háblame de tú (talk to me with tú).

The line is not drawn in exactly the same place in every family or every country. In an interview recorded for a university Spanish course, a businessman from Monterrey, in northern Mexico, explains that usted is a way of speaking with respect, that he would call a university director usted even if invited to use tú, and that he sometimes says usted to his own father. If you are unsure, start with usted. Being a little too polite is an easy mistake to recover from.

Usted also changes the words around it. It takes the same verb form as he and she, which is why don Ernesto asked ¿Cómo está usted? and not ¿Cómo estás? Compare the pairs:

The point: before you speak, look at who is in front of you. The same question comes in a tú version and an usted version, and choosing the right one is part of saying it correctly, just like the right vowels.

Talking to a group: ustedes, and vosotros in Spain

When Leo spoke to his friends all at once, he used the plural: les presento. The plural of both tú and usted in Mexico, and everywhere else in Latin America, is ustedes (oos-TEH-dehs). Leo uses it with his friends, and a teacher uses it with a whole class. There is no separate friendly version.

Spain is different. There, a group of friends is vosotros (boh-SOH-trohs), or vosotras for a group of girls, and ustedes is kept for a group you would address politely. If Leo lived in Madrid, he would have said os presento a mi prima. Equatorial Guinea, in Africa, uses vosotros too. This course uses ustedes as its main plural and always shows the vosotros form in its verb tables, so you will recognise it when you hear it.

One more you word exists. In Argentina, and alongside tú in several Central American and South American countries, friends use vos. You meet it properly in the lesson on the countries where Spanish is spoken.

Common misconceptions

• Usted is only for very old people, or for being stiff. It is the normal, respectful way to speak to adults you do not know well, including a shop assistant who might be twenty-five.
• Buenas noches only means good night at bedtime. It is also the ordinary hello after dark, when you walk into a shop or arrive at a friend's house.
• Así así means so-so. You may hear it in films, but it is not what Spanish speakers usually say. Say más o menos or regular.
• Everyone says encantado. A girl or woman says encantada. The ending matches the speaker, a pattern you will see again and again.
• Perdón and con permiso are the same. Con permiso asks first, when you need to get past. Perdón apologises afterwards.

Your lines: say them, then write them

Say it. Read the five scenes aloud, taking Maya's part, then read them again taking the other part. Then say the tú and usted pairs from the table, one after the other, until you can switch without thinking: ¿Cómo estás? ¿Cómo está usted?

Write it. In the activity below you write what you would say to five different people, choosing tú or usted each time, and then a short conversation of your own with a new classmate.

Putting it together

• Hola works any time. Buenos días, buenas tardes and buenas noches follow the clock, and buenas noches is also good night.
• Ask ¿Qué tal? or ¿Cómo estás? of a friend and ¿Cómo está usted? of an adult you respect. Answer muy bien, bien, más o menos, regular or mal, then ask back.
• Give your name with me llamo or soy. Introduce someone with te presento a, le presento a, or les presento a for a group. Answer with mucho gusto, encantado or encantada, or igualmente.
• Tú is for friends, family, children and people your age; usted is for adults you do not know well. Usted takes the he and she form of the verb.
• Ustedes is you all everywhere in Latin America. Spain also uses vosotros for a group of friends.
• Por favor, gracias, de nada, con permiso before you squeeze past, perdón after you bump.

Sources

1. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 1.4: Vocabulario: Bienvenidos a la clase. In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
2. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 1.6: Gramática: ¿Formal o informal? (includes an interview with A. Aguilera of Monterrey, recorded by O. R. Kelm). In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
3. Larsen Serigos, J., and Trovato, A. (n.d.). Subject pronouns. In Spanish Grammar in Context. COERLL, The University of Texas at Austin. grammar.spanishintexas.org
4. Wiktionary contributors. (n.d.). don (Spanish); con permiso. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org

A bike lock that will not open

It is Maya's third day in Mexico City. Leo is at school, and he has said she can take his bike to the park. At noon his voice message arrives:

• Leo: Maya, el candado de la bici es catorce, sesenta, veintiséis. ¡Hasta luego! (Maya, the bike lock is fourteen, sixty, twenty-six. See you later!)

Maya kneels by the bike and turns the dials to 40, 70, 26. Nothing. She tries again, more slowly: 40, 70, 26. The lock stays shut.

Two of her three numbers are wrong, and she heard every sound Leo made. The problem is that Spanish has several pairs of numbers that sound alike to a new ear. Before reading on, look at what Leo said and what Maya tried, and guess which two she misheard. By the end of this lesson you will be able to say exactly what went wrong, and you will not make the same mistake.

Two words from the message: el candado (ehl kahn-DAH-doh), the padlock, and la bici (lah BEE-see), the bike, short for la bicicleta.

Zero to fifteen: the words to learn by heart

That evening, Pablo's little sister Lupita climbs the stairs to their apartment counting one step at a time, and Maya climbs behind her, copying: cero, uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis, siete, ocho, nueve, diez, once, doce, trece, catorce, quince.

Two sounds are new here. The ei in seis is the ay of English say, with an s after it, all in one beat, so in the guides ay always means the vowel of say. And the ue in nueve is the we of English wet: NWEH-beh.

These sixteen words have no pattern you can lean on, so they are worth drilling. Notice one family, though: once, doce, trece, catorce, quince, eleven to fifteen, all end in -ce.

Sixteen to twenty-nine: ten and, twenty and

From sixteen on, Spanish starts building. Dieciséis means ten and six, and it is made by squeezing diez y seis (ten and six) into one word. The same squeeze makes all the numbers up to twenty-nine.

Look at which ones carry an accent mark: dieciséis, veintidós, veintitrés, veintiséis. The last lesson's rules explain every one. Each ends in s and is pushed on its last syllable, which rule 1 does not predict, so the pushed vowel is marked. Veinticuatro ends in a vowel and is pushed second-to-last, exactly as rule 1 expects, so it has no mark.

You may one day see these written as three words, diez y seis or veinte y dos. The Real Academia allows that, but one word is how they are normally written, and it is how you should write them.

Thirty to one hundred: the tens and the little word y

After twenty-nine, the squeezing stops. Every number from 31 to 99 is written as three words: the ten, then y (and), then the unit. So 31 is treinta y uno, 54 is cincuenta y cuatro, 87 is ochenta y siete. Here are the tens.

Every ten from thirty to ninety ends in -enta. None of the numbers eleven to fifteen does. That single ending is the most useful sound in this lesson.

Back to the lock

Now you can solve Maya's problem. Leo said catorce, sesenta, veintiséis: 14, 60, 26.

Maya heard catorce and turned the dial to 40. But forty is cuarenta, which ends in -enta, and catorce ends in -ce, like the other teens. Both words begin with a k sound and have an r in the middle, so a new listener grabs the wrong one. The ending gives it away every time.

Then she heard sesenta and turned the dial to 70. But seventy is setenta. The two words differ by a single letter, the second consonant: sesenta has s and s, like seis (six); setenta has s and t, like siete (seven). Leo's last number, veintiséis, she got right.

She turns the dials to 14, 60, 26, and the lock springs open.

Worth holding on to: the teens end in -ce and the tens end in -enta, and the sixties and seventies are told apart by one consonant, sesenta with s, setenta with t. Listen to the end of the word and the middle, not just the start.

Un, una and veintiún

Uno changes shape when a noun follows it. Before a masculine noun it drops its o and becomes un: un libro (a book, one book). Before a feminine noun it becomes una: una mesa (a table, one table). The same happens inside bigger numbers: veintiún libros (21 books), treinta y un libros (31 books), but veintiuna mesas (21 tables). Veintiún takes an accent mark because, once the o is gone, the word ends in n and is pushed on its last syllable. Masculine and feminine nouns get a lesson of their own soon; for now, remember that uno only stays uno when it stands alone, as in counting.

Cien also has a partner. It is cien for exactly one hundred, and cien before any noun: cien años (a hundred years). Only in the numbers after it does it become ciento: 101 is ciento uno, and 134 is ciento treinta y cuatro. Notice that no y follows ciento. The little word y only ever joins a ten to a unit.

How old are you? Tengo doce años

On the stairs, Lupita turns round to look at Maya.

• Lupita: ¿Cuántos años tienes? (How old are you? Word for word: How many years do you have?)
• Maya: Tengo doce años. ¿Y tú? (I'm twelve. And you?)
• Lupita: ¡Tengo seis! Y don Ernesto tiene setenta y ocho. (I'm six! And don Ernesto is seventy-eight.)

Spanish does not say I am twelve. It says I have twelve years: tengo (TEHN-goh), I have, plus the number, plus años (AH-nyohs), years. For another person it is tiene (TYEH-neh), he or she has, and to ask a friend it is tienes (TYEH-nehs), you have. If you asked don Ernesto directly, you would use the usted form, which is the same as he and she: ¿Cuántos años tiene usted?

Here the ñ earns its keep. Años, with the tilde, is years. Write it without the tilde and you have written a different word entirely, which is one reason to check that little wave every time you give your age.

Numbers at work: pages and sums

The next morning, Maya sits in on one of Leo's classes. The maths teacher opens with a warm-up.

• Profesor: Abran el libro en la página treinta y siete. (Open your books to page thirty-seven.)
• Profesor: ¿Cuánto es veinte más quince? (How much is twenty plus fifteen?)
• Leo: Veinte más quince son treinta y cinco. (Twenty plus fifteen is thirty-five.)
• Profesor: Muy bien. ¿Y cincuenta menos ocho? (Very good. And fifty minus eight?)
• Sofía: Cuarenta y dos. (Forty-two.)

For sums you need three words: más (mahs), plus; menos (MEH-nohs), minus; and son (sohn), which here means equals, literally they are. And la página (lah PAH-hee-nah), the page, is pushed three syllables from the end, so it carries its mark.

Common misconceptions

• You say soy doce for I am twelve. Age uses tener: tengo doce años, I have twelve years.
• Spanish puts y between every part of a number, the way English says a hundred and five. The y only joins a ten to a unit: treinta y uno. There is no y after ciento: 105 is ciento cinco.
• Veinte uno is how you say 21. Twenty-one squeezes into one word, veintiuno, and becomes veintiún before a masculine noun.
• Cien and ciento are the same word. Cien is exactly a hundred and the form before a noun. Ciento appears only inside the numbers after it: ciento uno, ciento veinte.

Count aloud, then write

Say it. Count from cero to cien by fives, then by tens, then back down from cien to cero by tens. Then read the five confusing pairs from the table aloud, one right after the other: catorce, cuarenta; quince, cincuenta; sesenta, setenta. Last, say your age, and the age of someone you know, with tengo and tiene.

Write it. The activity below asks you to write numbers in words, two sums as full Spanish sentences, and two sentences about ages.

What to remember

• 0 to 15 are single words to learn by heart; once to quince all end in -ce.
• 16 to 29 squeeze into one word: dieciséis, veintidós. The ones ending in a pushed s carry a mark.
• 31 to 99 are three words: the ten, y, the unit. The tens end in -enta: treinta, cuarenta, cincuenta, sesenta, setenta, ochenta, noventa. Then cien.
• Sesenta (60) has s, s, like seis; setenta (70) has s, t, like siete.
• Uno becomes un before a masculine noun and una before a feminine one: veintiún libros, veintiuna mesas. Cien is used before nouns; ciento only inside 101 to 199.
• Age is tener plus años: ¿Cuántos años tienes? Tengo doce años.

Sources

1. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 1.10: Vocabulario: Números 0-31. In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
2. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 3.4: Vocabulario: Números 30-100. In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
3. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 4.7: Gramática: El verbo tener (tener with años for age). In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
4. Wiktionary contributors. (n.d.). Appendix: Spanish numerals (notes on un, una, cien and ciento). Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
5. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 6.6: Vocabulario: Los números 101-1000+. In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org

Seven, slash, three

It is Wednesday morning in Mexico City, the fifth day of Maya's visit, and tía Carmen is frowning at her phone. Maya's mother is Carmen's sister, and she has lived in Chicago for fifteen years. She has just sent the details of Maya's flight home, and the message says: Vuelo de Maya: 7/3.

• Tía Carmen: ¿Siete, tres? ¿El siete de marzo? Pero hoy es el primero de julio. (Seven, three? The seventh of March? But today is the first of July.)
• Leo: No, mamá. En Estados Unidos escriben el mes antes del día. El siete es julio. (No, Mom. In the United States they write the month before the day. The seven is July.)
• Maya: Sí. Mi vuelo es el viernes, tres de julio. (Yes. My flight is on Friday, the third of July.)
• Tía Carmen: ¿Este viernes? ¡Ay, Maya! Hoy es miércoles. Solo tenemos hoy, mañana y el viernes. (This Friday? Oh, Maya! Today is Wednesday. We only have today, tomorrow and Friday.)

Nobody misread a number. The two sisters write dates in two different orders, and each order is normal where its writer lives. In Mexico, as in Spain and the rest of the Spanish-speaking world, a date runs from the smallest unit to the biggest: day, then month, then year. In the United States it runs month, day, year. So the same three characters, 7/3, mean the seventh of March to Carmen and the third of July to her sister in Chicago.

One sound is new. The oy of hoy is the oy of English boy, without the b: one quick beat.

Seven days, most of them named after the sky

On the fridge hangs a paper calendar, el calendario (ehl kah-lehn-DAH-ryoh), with the days of the week printed across the top. Leo runs his finger along the row while he tells Maya what is left of her visit.

• Leo: Hoy es miércoles. Mañana es jueves, y los jueves tengo fútbol. (Today is Wednesday. Tomorrow is Thursday, and on Thursdays I have soccer.)
• Maya: ¿Y el sábado? (And on Saturday?)
• Leo: El sábado tú estás en Chicago y yo no tengo escuela. Los sábados y los domingos no hay clases. (On Saturday you are in Chicago and I don't have school. On Saturdays and Sundays there are no classes.)

Carmen's calendar starts on Monday. That is not an accident of design: the Real Academia's dictionary defines lunes as el primer día de la semana, the first day of the week, while calendars printed in the United States usually begin on Sunday. Here is the week in Carmen's order.

The first five are the Moon and four planets, the way the Romans named their days. English does the same thing once: Monday is the Moon's day too. If you know the planets, you have a hook for every weekday: lunes and luna (moon), martes and Marte, miércoles and Mercurio, jueves and Júpiter, viernes and Venus.

Every sound here is one you already have. The j of jueves is the strong, throaty h of Juárez, and its ue is the we of wet, as in nueve. The ie of miércoles and viernes is the yeh of siete. Sábado is pushed three syllables from the end, so, like every such word, it carries an accent mark, and so does miércoles.

Now look at how Leo used the days, because this is where English habits cause mistakes.

• No capital letters. Leo writes jueves, not Jueves. A Spanish day only takes a capital at the start of a sentence, like any other word.
• No word for on. English says on Saturday. Spanish says el sábado, the Saturday: El sábado tú estás en Chicago. Putting en in front, en el sábado, is a classic beginner's slip.
• El for one day, los for every week. El jueves means this coming Thursday, one day. Los jueves means on Thursdays, every Thursday: los jueves tengo fútbol.
• Five days never change in the plural. Lunes to viernes already end in s, so one Monday is el lunes and all Mondays are los lunes. Only sábado and domingo add an s: los sábados, los domingos.

Twelve months, all in lowercase

While Leo is at the fridge, Maya picks up a pen and starts writing birthdays on the calendar.

• Maya: Leo, ¿cuándo es tu cumpleaños? (Leo, when is your birthday?)
• Leo: El catorce de agosto. ¿Y tu cumpleaños? (The fourteenth of August. And your birthday?)
• Maya: El nueve de octubre. (The ninth of October.)
• Tía Carmen: Y Lupita, la hermana de Pablo, cumple años el primero de enero. ¡El Año Nuevo! (And Lupita, Pablo's sister, has her birthday on the first of January. New Year's Day!)

Two useful words came up. El cumpleaños (ehl koom-pleh-AH-nyohs) is a birthday; the word is built from cumple (completes) and años (years), and friends often shorten it to el cumple (ehl KOOM-pleh). And cumplir años is to have a birthday: Leo cumple catorce años el catorce de agosto (Leo turns fourteen on the fourteenth of August). Here are the twelve months.

Most of the months look like their English cousins, so the dangers are in the sounds. Junio and julio differ by one letter, n against l, and a new listener mixes them up the way Maya mixed up sesenta and setenta: listen for the middle. Mayo is MAH-yoh, never like the English word May. And like the days, months are written in lowercase: agosto, not Agosto. In Peru, Costa Rica, Argentina and Uruguay you will also see the spelling setiembre, which the Real Academia accepts.

To say something happens in a month, use en: El cumpleaños de Leo es en agosto (Leo's birthday is in August). To name the exact day, use el, as you will see next.

An English date and a Spanish date, side by side

Here is Maya's flight home written both ways, with every difference between the two systems lined up in one table. Read across each row.

Reading the table, row by row

Order. The Real Academia recommends day, month, year for every Spanish-speaking country, and it calls the month-first order a habit borrowed from English. British English, by the way, agrees with Spanish: a reader in London, like Carmen, would take 7/3 to mean the seventh of March. Only the United States and a few places near it put the month first.

Plain numbers. English says the third of July. Spanish says el tres de julio, word for word the three of July, using the numbers from the last lesson. Say el tercero de julio and you will be understood, but you will sound like a textbook translated by machine. The single exception is the first of the month. In most of Latin America it is el primero: el primero de enero. In Spain people more often say el uno de enero. The Real Academia accepts both, so use the one you hear around you.

El before the day. When a date is part of a sentence, el stands where English puts on: Mi vuelo es el tres de julio (My flight is on the third of July). When you simply state today's date, you will hear it both with and without el: Hoy es el primero de julio or Hoy es primero de julio (Today is the first of July).

Punctuation. A day of the week before the date takes a comma after it, and the year joins on with another de: Hoy es miércoles, 1 de julio de 2026 (Today is Wednesday, the first of July, 2026).

In short: a Spanish date climbs from small to big, day then month then year, with de between the parts, el in front, plain numbers for every day except possibly the first, and no capital letters anywhere.

To ask for the date, the textbook question is ¿Cuál es la fecha de hoy? (What is today's date?), using la fecha (lah FEH-chah), the date. You will also hear ¿Qué fecha es hoy? And to ask the day of the week: ¿Qué día es hoy? Hoy es miércoles (What day is today? Today is Wednesday).

Saying the year in one piece

English splits a year into two halves: twenty twenty-six, nineteen ninety. Spanish never does. It says the whole number, two thousand twenty-six, using mil (meel), a thousand. Notice that it is mil, not un mil.

Every year from 2000 to 2099 is dos mil plus a number you already know: 2013 is dos mil trece, the year Maya was born. For the years your parents or grandparents were born, you need one more word, novecientos, nine hundred: 1990 is a thousand, nine hundred, ninety. To say in a year, use en, as with months: Maya nació en 2013 is how you would say Maya was born in 2013, though nació, was born, is a past-tense form that this course leaves for later.

¿Cuándo es tu cumpleaños?

That evening, Carmen and Maya bake a cake for no reason except that Maya is leaving on Friday. Leo asks Maya about birthdays in Chicago.

• Leo: ¿Cuándo cumples? (When is your birthday? Word for word: When do you complete?)
• Maya: El nueve de octubre. Cumplo trece años. (The ninth of October. I'm turning thirteen.)
• Leo: ¡Feliz cumpleaños por adelantado! (Happy birthday in advance!)
• Tía Carmen: Aquí cantamos Las mañanitas por la mañana, muy temprano. (Here we sing Las mañanitas in the morning, very early.)

¡Feliz cumpleaños! (feh-LEES koom-pleh-AH-nyohs) is happy birthday everywhere Spanish is spoken, and ¡Feliz cumple! is its friendly short form. Carmen means Las mañanitas, the traditional Mexican birthday song, which is usually sung early in the morning to wake the person whose birthday it is. Temprano (tehm-PRAH-noh) means early.

One small trap: cumpleaños already ends in s, so one birthday and two birthdays look the same. El cumpleaños de Leo is Leo's birthday; los cumpleaños de mis amigos are my friends' birthdays.

Yesterday, today, tomorrow and the day after

Back at the calendar, Leo counts the days on his fingers: ayer, martes; hoy, miércoles; mañana, jueves; pasado mañana, viernes.

Mañana does two jobs. On its own it means tomorrow. With la in front, la mañana is the morning, which is why Las mañanitas, little mornings, is sung at dawn. Put the two together and you get a phrase that looks like a riddle: mañana por la mañana, tomorrow morning.

Common misconceptions

• Days and months take capital letters, as in English. They are ordinary lowercase words in Spanish: lunes, julio. They take a capital only at the start of a sentence.
• On Monday needs a word for on. Spanish uses the article instead: el lunes for one Monday, los lunes for every Monday. En el lunes is wrong.
• 7/3 means July the third everywhere. In every Spanish-speaking country, and in Britain, it means the seventh of March. The day comes first.
• The third of July needs an ordinal, el tercero. Spanish uses plain numbers: el tres de julio. Only the first may be el primero, and in Spain even that is often el uno.
• Years split in two, like twenty twenty-six. Spanish says the whole number: dos mil veintiséis.

Say the date, write the date

Say it. Say the seven days aloud, starting with lunes, then the twelve months, starting with enero. Then say today's date in full, with the day of the week and the year: Hoy es jueves, 24 de septiembre de 2026, for example. Finish by answering ¿Cuándo es tu cumpleaños? with your own birthday, and ¿Cuándo es el cumpleaños de tu mamá? (When is your mom's birthday?) with someone else's.

Write it. The activity below asks you to write five dates the Spanish way, turn three dates written in the United States style into Spanish figures, write three years in words, and write a few sentences and a short dialogue about your own week and birthdays.

Summing up

• The days: lunes, martes, miércoles, jueves, viernes, sábado, domingo. The week starts on lunes. The months: enero to diciembre. All are lowercase.
• On Monday is el lunes; on Mondays is los lunes. Lunes to viernes do not change in the plural.
• A Spanish date runs day, month, year: 3/7/2026 is el tres de julio de dos mil veintiséis. De joins the parts, el goes in front, and days use plain numbers.
• The first of the month is el primero in most of Latin America and often el uno in Spain.
• Years are said whole, with mil: dos mil trece, mil novecientos noventa.
• ¿Cuándo es tu cumpleaños? Mi cumpleaños es el nueve de octubre. ¡Feliz cumpleaños!
• Anteayer, ayer, hoy, mañana, pasado mañana; mañana por la mañana is tomorrow morning.

Sources

1. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 2.3: Vocabulario: Días y meses. In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
2. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 2.7: Gramática: La fecha / ¿Cuándo? In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
3. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 6.6: Vocabulario: Los números 101-1000+ (saying years with mil). In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
4. Real Academia Española and Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española. (n.d.). Fecha. In Diccionario panhispánico de dudas (2nd ed., online edition; consulted 24 September 2026). The entry sets out the day, month, year order, lowercase months, and primero or uno for the first of the month. See also the entry lunes, primer día de la semana, in the Diccionario de la lengua española (23rd ed., online).
5. Wiktionary contributors. (n.d.). lunes; domingo; setiembre; cumplir (Spanish etymologies and usage notes). Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org

A boarding pass and a museum sign

On Thursday morning, the day before Maya flies home, tía Carmen prints her boarding pass. In the middle of the page, in heavy black type, it says SALIDA 14:20. Salida means departure. Carmen reads it aloud over breakfast.

• Tía Carmen: Maya, tu vuelo sale mañana a las catorce veinte. (Maya, your flight leaves tomorrow at fourteen twenty.)
• Maya: ¿Catorce? ¿Qué hora es eso? (Fourteen? What time is that?)
• Leo: Es fácil. Catorce menos doce son dos. Tu vuelo sale a las dos y veinte de la tarde. (It's easy. Fourteen minus twelve is two. Your flight leaves at twenty past two in the afternoon.)
• Tía Carmen: Entonces salimos de la casa a las doce y cuarenta y cinco. Bueno, a la una menos cuarto. (So we leave the house at twelve forty-five. Well, at a quarter to one.)

Two clocks are at work in that conversation. The boarding pass uses the 24-hour clock, which runs from 0 to 23 and needs no a.m. or p.m., and which the Real Academia recommends for timetables and schedules. Leo turns it into the 12-hour clock that people use when they talk. And Carmen corrects herself halfway through a sentence, from doce y cuarenta y cinco to la una menos cuarto, because Spanish usually tells the last quarter of an hour by counting down to the next hour, not up from the last one.

Hora starts with a silent h, like hola, so it is OH-rah. And it is a feminine word, la hora, which is why every time of day in Spanish has la or las in front of it: the article agrees with the hidden word hora.

The recipe: four steps from a clock to a sentence

Every time you will ever need to say goes through the same four steps. Learn the steps once and you can read any clock, digital or with hands, on a phone or on a train station board.

1. Find the hour on a 12-hour clock. If the time is written on the 24-hour clock and the hour is more than 12, take away 12. So 14 becomes 2, and 19 becomes 7.
2. Look at the minutes. From 1 to 30 minutes past, say the hour, then y (and), then the minutes: las dos y veinte. Fifteen minutes is y cuarto (and a quarter), and thirty is y media (and a half). From 31 minutes on, move up to the next hour and take minutes away with menos (minus): 12:45 becomes la una menos cuarto, one minus a quarter. On the hour exactly, you can add en punto (on the dot).
3. Choose es la or son las by the hour you are going to say. If that hour is one, it is es la una, it is one, in the singular. For every other hour it is son las, they are, in the plural: son las dos, son las diez.
4. Add the part of the day, and a if you mean at. If it could be morning or evening, add de la mañana, de la tarde or de la noche. To say at what time something happens, put a in front: a la una, a las dos.

Worked example one: 14:20, the flight home

Here is Maya's departure time taken through the four steps, one at a time.

1. The hour is 14, which is more than 12. Take away 12: 14 minus 12 is 2, so the hour is dos.
2. The minutes are 20, which is not past the half hour. So the minutes are added with y: dos y veinte.
3. The hour you will say is dos, not una, so it is plural: son las dos y veinte (it is twenty past two).
4. It is after midday and before the sun sets, so it is de la tarde. The flight leaves at that time, so add a: a las dos y veinte de la tarde.

The finished sentence: Mi vuelo sale a las dos y veinte de la tarde (My flight leaves at twenty past two in the afternoon).

Worked example two: 12:45, and the hour flips

Now change one thing, the minutes, and watch what happens to the rest. Carmen wants to leave the house at 12:45.

1. The hour is 12. That is not more than 12, so nothing is taken away: doce.
2. The minutes are 45, which is past the half hour. So you move up to the next hour, which is one, and take away the fifteen minutes that are left: una menos cuarto.
3. The hour you will say is now una. So the plural of example one flips to the singular: es la una menos cuarto (it is a quarter to one).
4. It is just after midday, so de la tarde, and Carmen means at, so: a la una menos cuarto de la tarde.

One changed input, 45 minutes instead of 20, changed the hour you say from twelve to one, and that in turn changed son las to es la. That is exactly what happened to Carmen in the middle of her sentence: she started on the minutes the way English does, twelve forty-five, then heard herself and switched to the Spanish way.

What matters here: decide the hour you are actually going to say before you open your mouth. It decides es la or son las, and after the half hour it is the next hour, not the one on the clock.

Every stop around the clock

Here is one hour, from three o'clock to four, with the Latin American way of counting down beside the menos way. The Real Academia describes both: menos is the general form, and in a large part of the Americas people give the minutes first and add para, which means for or to: veinte para las cuatro, twenty to four. In Mexico City you will hear both, and para very often.

Three more times have names of their own. Midday is el mediodía (meh-dyoh-DEE-ah): Es mediodía (It's noon). Midnight is la medianoche (meh-dyah-NOH-cheh): Es medianoche (It's midnight). And one o'clock, as you saw, is the only hour in the singular: Es la una (It's one o'clock).

The words cuarto and media are the words for a quarter and a half, so y cuarto is literally and a quarter, and y media is and a half. Notice media, not medio: it agrees with the feminine word hora hiding behind it.

¿Qué hora es? and ¿A qué hora...?

By half past eleven the three of them are inside the Museo Nacional de Antropología, standing in front of a huge round carved stone.

• Maya: Leo, ¿qué hora es? (Leo, what time is it?)
• Leo: Son las once y media. (It's half past eleven.)
• Maya: ¿Y a qué hora cierra el museo? (And what time does the museum close?)
• Leo: Normalmente a las seis, pero esta semana cierra a las siete. (Normally at six, but this week it closes at seven.)
• Tía Carmen: ¿Qué horas son? ¿Ya son las doce? Tengo hambre. (What time is it? Is it twelve already? I'm hungry.)

Two different questions are in play. ¿Qué hora es? asks what time it is now, and the answer starts es la or son las. ¿A qué hora...? (ah keh OH-rah) asks at what time something happens, and the answer starts with a: ¿A qué hora cierra el museo? A las seis (What time does the museum close? At six). Cierra (SYEH-rrah), it closes, is spelled with rr, so its r rolls.

Carmen's ¿Qué horas son?, in the plural, is something you will hear often in Mexico and several other countries of the Americas, especially in everyday speech. The Real Academia calls it acceptable but prefers ¿Qué hora es?, which is understood everywhere. Use ¿Qué hora es? yourself and recognise the other when you hear it.

Leo was reading real information. The museum's page from the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, the Mexican government body that runs it, gives its hours as Martes a domingo de 9 a 18 h, Tuesday to Sunday from 9:00 to 18:00, and in the summer of 2026 it listed an extended timetable: hasta el 5 de julio de 2026, hasta las 19 h (until 5 July 2026, until 19:00). Put that through the recipe: 18 minus 12 is 6, so the museum normally closes a las seis de la tarde; that week it closed a las siete. And like many museums, it rests on Monday, the first day of the week.

Morning, afternoon, night and the small hours

The parts of the day that follow a clock time are not decided by the clock alone. The Real Academia's guide puts it this way:

Because tarde lasts until the sun goes down, a July evening in Mexico City, when it stays light until after eight, can still be la tarde at seven o'clock. In December the same seven o'clock is dark and belongs to la noche. English has the same wobble between afternoon and evening. One thing is fixed: noon is never las doce de la tarde. Say mediodía, or las doce del día.

When there is no clock time, the little word changes. De la mañana follows a time: a las ocho de la mañana. Without a time, general Spanish says por la mañana (in the morning), por la tarde, por la noche: Leo tiene fútbol por la tarde (Leo has soccer in the afternoon). In much of Latin America you will also hear en la tarde, which is unusual in Spain, and in Argentina a la tarde. All three are correct where they are used.

The 24-hour clock on signs and screens

Boarding passes, bus and train timetables, museum signs and school schedules across the Spanish-speaking world are often written on the 24-hour clock, just like SALIDA 14:20. In speech, people usually turn them back into the 12-hour clock, the way Leo did. Here is the conversion for the afternoon and evening, where the numbers differ.

A written time often has h after it, for horas: 19 h, 14:20 h. The Real Academia also recommends writing a time either in words or in figures, not both, so las diez de la noche or las 22:00, rather than las 10 de la noche.

Common misconceptions

• Son las una. One o'clock is singular: es la una, a la una. Only the hours from two to twelve take son las and a las.
• ¿Qué tiempo es? means What time is it? Tiempo is time in the sense of how long, and also the weather. Clock time is la hora: ¿Qué hora es?
• 12:45 is said doce y cuarenta y cinco. You will hear it read off digital clocks, but the usual way is to count down to the next hour: la una menos cuarto, or un cuarto para la una.
• Noon is las doce de la tarde. Tarde begins at midday, so noon itself is mediodía, or las doce del día.
• Y medio. The half hour is y media, feminine, to agree with la hora.

Clock practice: say it, then write it

Say it. Take any clock in your house and read it aloud every time you pass it today, using the four steps. Then say the times from the table of one hour, from las tres en punto to las cuatro menos cinco, once with menos and once with para. Finish by answering two questions about your own day aloud: ¿A qué hora es tu primera clase? (What time is your first class?) and ¿A qué hora cenas? (What time do you have dinner?), starting each answer with A las or A la.

Write it. The activity below asks you to write six clock times as full sentences, to turn four 24-hour times into spoken Spanish, and to write three sentences about your own day with a las.

What to carry forward

• ¿Qué hora es? Es la una for one o'clock; son las for every other hour. ¿A qué hora...? is answered with a la or a las.
• Up to half past: the hour, y, the minutes. Y cuarto is a quarter past, y media is half past, en punto is on the dot.
• After half past: the next hour, menos, the minutes left, as in la una menos cuarto. In much of Latin America: the minutes, para, the next hour, as in un cuarto para la una.
• De la mañana, de la tarde, de la noche and de la madrugada follow a clock time. Without one, say por la mañana, or en la mañana in much of Latin America.
• On the 24-hour clock, take 12 away from any hour above 12: 14:20 is las dos y veinte de la tarde.
• Noon is mediodía and midnight is medianoche.

Sources

1. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 3.16: Gramática: ¿Qué hora es? In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
2. Real Academia Española and Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española. (n.d.). Hora. In Diccionario panhispánico de dudas (2nd ed., online edition; consulted 24 September 2026). Sections 2 to 5: the twelve-hour and twenty-four-hour models, menos and para, the parts of the day, and ¿Qué hora es? against ¿Qué horas son?
3. Real Academia Española and Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española. (n.d.). A, section 6: a with the parts of the day; and Mañana, section 2. In Diccionario panhispánico de dudas (2nd ed., online edition; consulted 24 September 2026).
4. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. (n.d.). Museo Nacional de Antropología: horario (opening hours and the extended timetable to 5 July 2026). INAH, Gobierno de México. inah.gob.mx
5. Wiktionary contributors. (n.d.). tiempo (Spanish: time, weather). Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org

Twelve sticky notes and a rule that breaks

On Monday morning, every object in señora Garza's classroom in San Antonio wears a yellow sticky note with its Spanish name and a blank in front of it: ___ mapa on the map of the world, ___ mesa on her table, ___ lápiz on a pencil, ___ día on the calendar, ___ reloj on the clock, ___ ventana on the window, ___ problema on the maths poster, ___ puerta on the door, ___ libro on a book, ___ pizarra on the whiteboard, ___ papel on a stack of paper, and ___ mano on a poster of a raised hand. On the board she has written: Escriban el o la (Write el or la).

Tom has a plan. Words that end in -a get la; everything else gets el. He finishes in two minutes and hands in:

la mapa, la mesa, el lápiz, la día, el reloj, la ventana, la problema, la puerta, el libro, la pizarra, el papel, el mano

Eight are right. Four come back circled: la mapa, la día, la problema, el mano. Here is the problem this lesson solves. Tom's rule is not a bad rule; it works two times in three. So why does it fail on exactly those four, and could he have known in advance which words would break it? And since a rule that is right two times in three will cost you marks every single day, what should you do instead?

Reloj ends in a j, which is rare at the end of a Spanish word; you will hear it said lightly or dropped altogether, so the guide gives rreh-LOH. And because the word starts with r, the r rolls.

Why la mapa is wrong: gender belongs to the word

Every Spanish noun, the word for a thing, a person or an idea, is either masculine or feminine. Grammar books call this the noun's gender. The word the goes with it and shows it: el for a masculine noun, la for a feminine one.

For people and many animals, gender follows the person: el profesor, la profesora (the teacher, a man or a woman). For everything else, gender is a fact about the word, not about the object. A table is not female and a book is not male. As the ¡Chévere! textbook puts it, you cannot guess a noun's gender from the object itself; you learn it with the word. And it matters, because some pairs of words differ only in their gender: el puerto is a port and la puerta is a door; el libro is a book and la libra is a pound.

So the honest answer to Tom's second question is this: never learn a noun alone. Learn el mapa, not mapa, the way you learn a person's first name and surname together. Then the article is already in your head when you need it.

Clues you can trust, and the famous exceptions

That said, endings are strong clues, and they are what Tom was half using. Here are the clues, from most to least reliable, with the exceptions that caught him.

Now Tom's four circles make sense. Mapa and día are the two everyday -a words that are masculine; there is no clue for them, so they have to be learned. Problema belongs to the -ma group from Greek, which are masculine far more often than not. And mano is the best-known -o word that is feminine: la mano, the hand. Could he have known in advance? For problema, yes, if he knew the -ma clue. For the other three, only by having learned them with their articles.

The upshot: the -o and -a endings are good clues, and -ción and -dad are almost certain ones, but the only method that never fails is to learn every noun with el or la attached.

What is in the room, and what is in the backpack

After the sticky notes come down, señora Garza checks that everyone has their things.

• Señora Garza: Diego, ¿qué hay en tu mochila? (Diego, what is in your backpack?)
• Diego: Hay un libro, un cuaderno, una calculadora y unos lápices. (There is a book, a notebook, a calculator and some pencils.)
• Señora Garza: ¿Y un bolígrafo? (And a pen?)
• Diego: No, no hay bolígrafo. ¿Tienes un bolígrafo, Tom? (No, there's no pen. Do you have a pen, Tom?)
• Tom: Sí, tengo dos. Aquí tienes. (Yes, I have two. Here you are.)

The little word hay (eye, like the English word eye) means there is or there are, and it never changes: hay un libro, hay dos libros. The Module 6 lesson on the house uses it much more. Here are the rest of the things you are likely to meet in a classroom.

Some classroom words change from country to country. In Mexico, a pen is very often una pluma, a word that also means a feather. And the computer that is la computadora in Mexico, Peru, Argentina and much of Latin America is el ordenador in Spain.

A, an and some: the four little articles

Diego used two kinds of article. El and la mean the, a particular one. Un and una mean a or an, any one, and you met them with the numbers in Lesson 4. Each has a plural, so there are four of each.

Unos and unas mean some or a few: unos lápices, some pencils. And a group that mixes masculine and feminine things takes the masculine plural: los libros y las mesas are, together, los objetos (the objects).

More than one: plurals in three rules

Diego had a single calculator but several pencils. Here is how a noun becomes plural.

1. Ends in a vowel: add -s. el libro, los libros; la mochila, las mochilas; la clase, las clases.
2. Ends in a consonant: add -es. el papel, los papeles; el reloj, los relojes; la pared, las paredes.
3. Ends in -z: change z to c, then add -es. el lápiz, los lápices; la luz, las luces.

Two extras follow from things you already know. First, a word that ends in an unstressed syllable with s does not change at all, exactly like the days of the week: el lunes, los lunes. Second, adding a syllable can move a word into or out of the accent-mark rules from Lesson 2. Examen (exam) is e-XA-men, and rule 1 predicts that, so it has no mark. Its plural, exámenes, is pushed on the same xa, which is now three syllables from the end, so it needs a mark. Lección has a mark because it ends in n and is pushed on its last syllable. Its plural, lecciones, ends in s and is pushed second-to-last, exactly as rule 1 predicts, so the mark disappears.

Señora Garza's instructions

Every Spanish class runs on a handful of instructions. Here is the start of señora Garza's lesson.

• Señora Garza: Buenos días, clase. Siéntense, por favor. (Good morning, class. Sit down, please.)
• Señora Garza: Saquen el libro. Abran el libro en la página diez. (Take out your book. Open your book to page ten.)
• Señora Garza: Escuchen y repitan: el mapa, la mano. (Listen and repeat: el mapa, la mano.)
• Señora Garza: Ahora lean el diálogo y escriban las respuestas en el cuaderno. (Now read the dialogue and write the answers in your notebook.)
• Señora Garza: ¿Preguntas? Levanten la mano. (Questions? Raise your hand.)

These are commands, the verb forms for telling someone to do something. The teacher is talking to the whole class, so she uses the ustedes form. If she spoke to Tom alone, she would use the tú form. You do not need to build these yourself yet; learn to recognise them.

There is a pattern hiding in the first column, and the Spanish Grammar in Context reference at the University of Texas spells it out: the class commands swap the verb's vowel. Verbs whose dictionary form ends in -ar, like escuchar (to listen) and mirar (to look), give commands ending in -en: escuchen, miren. Verbs in -er and -ir, like leer (to read) and escribir (to write), give commands ending in -an: lean, escriban. Notice too that Spanish says levanten la mano, raise the hand, where English says raise your hand.

Five sentences that rescue you

In the middle of the reading, Tom gets stuck.

• Tom: Señora Garza, ¿qué significa respuestas? (Mrs. Garza, what does respuestas mean?)
• Señora Garza: Significa answers. (It means answers.)
• Tom: Gracias. Y ¿cómo se dice marker en español? (Thank you. And how do you say marker in Spanish?)
• Señora Garza: Se dice marcador. (You say marcador.)
• Diego: Perdón, no entiendo. ¿Puede repetir, por favor? (Sorry, I don't understand. Can you repeat, please?)

With these, you can stay in Spanish even when you run out of words. They are worth more than any list of nouns.

Diego used puede, the usted form, because he was speaking to his teacher. To a classmate he would say ¿Puedes repetir? And sé, I know, carries an accent mark to tell it apart from se, the little word in ¿Cómo se dice?

Common misconceptions

• Every word that ends in -a is feminine. Most are, but el día, el mapa and many -ma words such as el problema and el idioma are masculine.
• Gender tells you whether the thing is male or female. For objects it is a property of the word only. Nothing about a chair is female; la silla is simply a feminine word.
• You make every plural by adding -s. Only words ending in a vowel just add -s. Consonants add -es, and z becomes c: el lápiz, los lápices.
• You can learn the noun now and look up the article later. The article is part of learning the word. A noun learned alone has to be learned twice.
• Levanten su mano is how you say raise your hand. Spanish uses the article for a part of the body: levanten la mano.

Label, then write

Say it. Walk around your room and name ten things aloud with el or la, then say each one again in the plural with los or las. Then give yourself the classroom instructions from the table, aloud, and do each one as you say it: open a book, close it, raise your hand, sit down. Finish with the five rescue sentences, until ¿Cómo se dice...? comes out without thinking.

Write it. The activity below asks you to write ten classroom nouns with their articles and their plurals, and to write what you would say in four tricky classroom moments.

Recap

• Every noun is masculine or feminine. El, un, los and unos go with masculine nouns; la, una, las and unas with feminine ones.
• Clues: -o is usually masculine, -a usually feminine, and -ción, -sión, -dad and -tad always feminine. Learn the exceptions: el día, el mapa, el problema, la mano.
• Nouns ending in -e or a consonant give no clue: learn el lápiz, el reloj, la clase, la luz with their articles.
• Plurals: add -s after a vowel, -es after a consonant, and change z to c: lápices, luces. Check the accent rules: exámenes, lecciones.
• Class commands end in -en for -ar verbs and -an for -er and -ir verbs: escuchen, miren; lean, escriban.
• Rescue sentences: ¿Cómo se dice...? ¿Qué significa...? No entiendo. ¿Puede repetir, por favor?

Sources

1. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 1.9: Vocabulario: En el salón de clases. In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
2. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 1.14: Gramática: Género de sustantivos. In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
3. Larsen Serigos, J., and Trovato, A. (n.d.). Nouns: Number. In Spanish Grammar in Context. COERLL, The University of Texas at Austin. grammar.spanishintexas.org
4. Larsen Serigos, J., and Trovato, A. (n.d.). Imperative mood (commands). In Spanish Grammar in Context. COERLL, The University of Texas at Austin. grammar.spanishintexas.org
5. Ceciliano, E., and Notman, A. (n.d.). 1.1: Module A: Introduction to La clase de español (Expresiones para la clase de español). In Beginning Spanish: Empecemos por aquí. Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org

Fourteen people, one table and a phone against the salt shaker

At two o'clock on Sunday, the fifth of July, two days after her flight home, Maya is back in Chicago. Eleven people are squeezed around her grandmother's dining table for Sunday lunch, and three more are on a phone propped against the salt shaker: tía Carmen and Leo in Mexico City, and Leo's friend Sofía, who happens to be at their apartment. Sofía has never met Maya's family, so Leo turns the phone round the table.

• Sofía: ¡Hola, Maya! ¿Quiénes son todas esas personas? (Hi, Maya! Who are all those people?)
• Maya: ¡Es mi familia! Esta es mi abuela Rosa y este es mi abuelo Jorge. Son los papás de mi mamá y de tía Carmen. (It's my family! This is my grandmother Rosa and this is my grandfather Jorge. They are my mom's and tía Carmen's parents.)
• Maya: Esta es mi mamá, Elena, y este es mi papá, Daniel. (This is my mom, Elena, and this is my dad, Daniel.)
• Sofía: ¿Y el niño? (And the little boy?)
• Maya: Es mi hermano Nico. Tiene ocho años. (He's my brother Nico. He's eight.)

Maya uses esta es (EHS-tah ehs), this is, for a woman or girl, and este es (EHS-teh ehs) for a man or boy, the same way she chose encantada in Lesson 3. And look at how she explains her grandparents: son los papás de mi mamá, they are the parents of my mom. Spanish has no apostrophe s. There is no way to say my mom's parents except by turning it round: the parents of my mom.

The h of hermano is silent, as always: ehr-MAH-noh.

Round the table: aunts, uncles and cousins

Leo keeps the phone moving.

• Maya: Este es mi tío Beto. Es el hermano de mi mamá. Esta es su esposa, mi tía Lucy. (This is my uncle Beto. He's my mom's brother. This is his wife, my aunt Lucy.)
• Maya: Y la niña es Ana, mi prima. Es la hija de mis tíos. Tiene cinco años. (And the little girl is Ana, my cousin. She's my aunt and uncle's daughter. She's five.)
• Leo: ¡Y yo también soy primo de Maya! Soy el hijo de tía Carmen... bueno, de mi mamá. (And I'm Maya's cousin too! I'm tía Carmen's son... well, my mom's.)
• Sofía: ¡Qué familia tan grande! (What a big family!)

Leo's joke works because tía Carmen is his mother and Maya's aunt at the same time. Every relationship word depends on whose point of view you take, and Spanish marks that point of view the way English does, with my, his and her. Here is Maya's family as a tree, told from her side of the table.

And from the grandparents' side of the table, the same people have different names: Elena, Carmen and Beto are los hijos (EE-hohs) of Rosa and Jorge, their children; Maya, Nico, Leo and Ana are los nietos (NYEH-tohs), their grandchildren. From tía Carmen's side, Maya is la sobrina (soh-BREE-nah), her niece, which is the word she used when she introduced Maya to don Ernesto.

Why los tíos can include Lucy

Look again at the tree. Maya calls Carmen, Lucy and Beto mis tíos, a masculine plural, even though two of the three are women. That is the rule you met with los libros y las mesas in the last lesson: a group that mixes masculine and feminine takes the masculine plural. So los abuelos is grandparents, los tíos is aunts and uncles, los primos is cousins of both sexes, los hijos is children, and los hermanos can be brothers and sisters together. Only the context tells you whether los hermanos means two boys or a boy and a girl.

That makes one question very useful:

• Sofía: Maya, ¿cuántos hermanos tienes? (Maya, how many brothers and sisters do you have?)
• Maya: Tengo un hermano, Nico. ¿Y tú? (I have one brother, Nico. And you?)
• Sofía: Tengo dos hermanas y un hermano. (I have two sisters and a brother.)
• Leo: Yo no tengo hermanos. Soy hijo único. (I don't have any brothers or sisters. I'm an only child.)

Hijo único (EE-hoh OO-nee-koh) is an only child, and a girl would say hija única. Notice that Sofía's answer counts her sisters with dos hermanas, feminine, and her brother with un hermano: once you are giving the details, each word takes its own gender again.

A word of warning about two family words. For parents, Spanish uses los padres, and in Latin America, talking to friends, people very often say los papás: mis papás, my parents. In Spain, mis papás sounds childish outside the family, and mis padres is the normal choice. But the word that looks like parents, los parientes (pah-RYEHN-tehs), means relatives: all the aunts, uncles, cousins and in-laws together.

Whose is it? De instead of apostrophe s

After lunch, Nico takes the phone to show Sofía the dog asleep under the table.

• Sofía: ¿Es el perro de Nico? (Is it Nico's dog?)
• Maya: No, es la perra de los abuelos. Se llama Canela. (No, it's my grandparents' dog. She's called Canela.)
• Sofía: ¿Y la casa es de tu abuela? (And is the house your grandmother's?)
• Maya: Sí, es la casa de mis abuelos. (Yes, it's my grandparents' house.)

Every possession in that exchange is built the same way: the thing, then de, then the owner. El perro de Nico is Nico's dog; la casa de mis abuelos is my grandparents' house. Canela is a female dog, so she is la perra, and her name is the Spanish word for cinnamon. You can also put the owner after the verb: La casa es de mi abuela (The house is my grandmother's).

One small spelling change. When de meets the article el, the two words squeeze into one: de + el = del. So the grandfather's dog is el perro del abuelo, never de el abuelo. The feminine la never squeezes: la perra de la abuela.

Why this matters: English speakers reach for apostrophe s without thinking, and there is nothing in Spanish to reach for. Every time you want to say someone's thing, flip it: the thing de the person.

My, your, his, our: the possessives

When it is already clear who you are talking about, Spanish uses a short possessive word instead of de. Maya has been using them all afternoon: mi abuela, mis tíos, su esposa. Here they are together.

Here is the rule that surprises English speakers. A Spanish possessive agrees with the thing owned, not with the owner. Mis primos has an s because there are several cousins, not because of anything about me. Nuestra perra is feminine because Canela is female, even if the owners saying it are Nico and his grandfather. The owner decides which word you choose, mi or nuestro; the thing decides its ending.

Tu without an accent mark is your; tú with one is you. You met this pair in Lesson 2, and here is a sentence with both: Tú tienes tu libro (You have your book).

Su and sus do a lot of work: his, her, its, their, and your when you speak to usted or ustedes. Usually the conversation makes the owner clear. When it does not, swap su for de and the owner: instead of su casa, say la casa de ella (her house) or la casa de ellos (their house). And in Spain, talking to two cousins together as vosotros, Maya would say vuestra abuela, your grandmother.

Friends are family too

Before Leo hangs up, Sofía has a question for him.

• Sofía: Leo, ¿Maya es tu prima o tu amiga? (Leo, is Maya your cousin or your friend?)
• Leo: ¡Las dos cosas! Es mi prima y mi amiga. Pero tú eres mi mejor amiga. (Both! She's my cousin and my friend. But you're my best friend.)

Mejor, better or best, stays the same for a boy and a girl: mi mejor amigo, mi mejor amiga.

Common misconceptions

• Mis parientes means my parents. It means my relatives. Parents are mis padres, or mis papás in much of Latin America.
• Spanish has something like apostrophe s. It does not. Nico's dog is el perro de Nico, and the grandfather's dog is el perro del abuelo.
• The possessive agrees with the owner. It agrees with the thing owned: mis primos because there are several cousins; nuestra perra because the dog is female.
• Los hermanos can only mean brothers. A masculine plural covers a mixed group, so los hermanos can be brothers and sisters, and los tíos can be aunts and uncles.
• Su always means his. Su can mean his, her, its, their, or your to usted or ustedes. When that is unclear, use de él, de ella or de ellos.

Introduce your people: say it, then write it

Say it. Find a family photo, or picture the people you live with, and introduce each one aloud as Maya did: Esta es mi mamá. Este es mi hermano; tiene diez años. Then answer three questions aloud: ¿Cuántos hermanos tienes? ¿Cómo se llama tu mejor amigo o tu mejor amiga? ¿Tienes una mascota? (Do you have a pet?) Finish by describing one thing that belongs to someone else with de: la bicicleta de mi hermano, el perro de mis abuelos.

Write it. The activity below asks you to write six sentences about your family and friends, real or invented, and to translate six short phrases that test de and the possessives.

Looking back

• Family words come in pairs: el abuelo, la abuela; el tío, la tía; el primo, la prima; el hijo, la hija; el nieto, la nieta; el sobrino, la sobrina.
• A masculine plural covers a mixed group: los abuelos, los tíos, los primos, los hermanos, los padres.
• ¿Cuántos hermanos tienes? Tengo un hermano. Soy hijo único, or hija única.
• Los padres, or los papás in much of Latin America, are parents. Los parientes are relatives.
• Possession is the thing, de, the owner: la casa de mis abuelos. De + el becomes del.
• Possessives: mi, tu, su, nuestro, vuestro, su, with -s for several things and nuestra, vuestra for feminine ones. They agree with the thing owned.

Sources

1. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 5.3: Vocabulario: La familia. In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
2. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 5.7: Gramática: Los posesivos. In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
3. Larsen Serigos, J., and Trovato, A. (n.d.). Possessive determiners. In Spanish Grammar in Context. COERLL, The University of Texas at Austin. grammar.spanishintexas.org
4. Wiktionary contributors. (n.d.). papá (usage note on papás and padres in Latin America and Spain); hijo único. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org

An email from a stranger in Mexico City

In the second week of the school year, Maya's Spanish teacher in Chicago, señor Ruiz, pairs his class with a class at Leo's school in Mexico City. Each student gets a pen pal, and on Monday morning Maya's first email arrives. It is from Valentina, a girl in Leo's class.

• ¡Hola, Maya! Me llamo Valentina y tengo doce años. (Hi, Maya! My name is Valentina and I'm twelve.)
• Soy baja y morena. Tengo el pelo largo y rizado, y los ojos cafés. (I'm short and dark-haired. I have long, curly hair and brown eyes.)
• Soy alegre, un poco tímida y muy trabajadora. (I'm cheerful, a little shy and very hard-working.)
• Mi hermano Mateo es alto, rubio y muy simpático, pero es un poco perezoso. (My brother Mateo is tall, blond and very nice, but he's a bit lazy.)
• Mis papás son simpáticos y muy trabajadores. ¿Cómo eres tú? (My parents are nice and very hard-working. What are you like?)

Put Valentina's sentences next to their English translations and you can see every difference between the two languages' adjectives at once. An adjective is a word that describes a noun: tall, curly, shy. English puts it before the noun and never changes it: a tall boy, a tall girl, tall parents. Spanish usually puts it after the noun, and it changes its ending to match the person or thing it describes. Valentina is tímida and trabajadora; Mateo is alto and perezoso; her parents are simpáticos and trabajadores.

Hair and eyes use tener, not ser: Tengo el pelo largo (I have long hair), Tiene los ojos verdes (He has green eyes). Spanish says the hair and the eyes, not my hair and my eyes, just as it said levanten la mano in the classroom. And a note on colour: the Real Academia's dictionary notes that café for brown is used mostly in the Americas, so in Mexico brown eyes are ojos cafés, while in Spain you will usually hear ojos marrones.

English adjectives and Spanish adjectives, side by side

Here is the comparison this lesson is built on. Each row is one way the two languages treat an adjective differently, with an example from Valentina's email.

Reading down the Spanish column, one idea runs through every row. The core of it: a Spanish adjective takes its gender and number from the noun it describes, the way a shadow takes its shape from the person. It has no gender of its own, which is why a dictionary lists only the masculine singular form, alto, and leaves the other forms to you.

Four-form and two-form adjectives

Not every adjective has four endings. How many it has depends on how its masculine singular form ends. The ¡Chévere! textbook sorts them into four-form and two-form adjectives, and nationality adjectives add a twist.

Plurals work exactly like nouns: add -s after a vowel, -es after a consonant. And the accent rules from Lesson 2 still apply: joven is JO-ven, and rule 1 predicts that, but jóvenes is pushed on the same jo, now three syllables from the end, so the plural takes a mark, just like exámenes.

Nationalities deserve their own look, because English speakers give them capital letters and Spanish does not. Valentina is mexicana; Maya is estadounidense, from the United States, a word that ends in -e and so has only two forms; a girl from Spain is española, and a boy is español. You write the country with a capital, México, España, and the nationality without one.

Adjectives for personality

Maya writes back that evening. Her reply uses the other half of the adjective list, the words for what someone is like inside.

• Soy alta y pelirroja, y tengo el pelo corto. (I'm tall and red-haired, and I have short hair.)
• Soy bastante sociable y muy habladora, pero no soy paciente. (I'm quite sociable and very chatty, but I'm not patient.)
• Mi hermano Nico es pequeño, rubio y muy cómico. Es inteligente, pero un poco perezoso, ¡como tu hermano! (My brother Nico is small, blond and very funny. He's smart, but a little lazy, like your brother!)
• Mi perra... bueno, la perra de mis abuelos, es grande, vieja y muy cariñosa. (My dog... well, my grandparents' dog, is big, old and very affectionate.)

Pelirrojo is built from pelo, hair, and rojo, red, and the rr of rojo keeps its roll in the middle of the new word. Bastante (bahs-TAHN-teh) means quite, and with muy (very) and un poco (a little) it lets you turn any adjective up or down: muy tímida, bastante tímida, un poco tímida. Un poco works best with words that are not compliments: un poco perezoso sounds kinder than just perezoso.

Textbook lists often include words such as gordo (fat) and feo (ugly). They are as unkind in Spanish as they are in English when said about a person, so describe people the way you would want to be described.

Where the adjective goes: after, with a few that go before

Most descriptive adjectives follow the noun: una chica tímida, un perro grande, los ojos verdes. A few kinds go in front.

• Numbers and amounts go first, as in English: dos hermanos, muchos amigos (many friends), poco tiempo (little time). Mucho agrees like any four-form adjective: muchas amigas.
• Bueno and malo can go first, and shorten before a masculine singular noun: un buen amigo (a good friend), un mal día (a bad day). Before a feminine noun they keep their ending: una buena amiga.
• Grande changes its meaning when it moves. After a noun it means big: una casa grande, a big house. Before a singular noun it shortens to gran and means great: una gran amiga, a great friend. So Maya's grandparents' dog is una perra grande; a wonderful friend is una gran amiga, whatever her height.

¿Cómo eres? and ¿Cómo es?

Valentina closed her email with ¿Cómo eres tú? That question is the key to this whole lesson.

All three use forms of ser, the verb to be: eres, es, son. Be careful, because ¿Cómo estás?, which you learned for greetings, uses the other verb for to be, estar, and asks something different: how you are right now, today. ¿Cómo eres? asks what you are like, the kind of person you are. Spanish has two verbs where English has one, and the next lesson is about exactly that.

Common misconceptions

• Adjectives go before the noun, as in English. Most go after: una chica alta, un libro interesante. Numbers, mucho, and the short forms buen, mal and gran go before.
• Every adjective has a feminine form ending in -a. Adjectives in -e, -ista and most consonants have one form for both: una chica inteligente, un chico optimista, una amiga joven.
• A group with boys and girls takes the feminine if most are girls. Any mix takes the masculine plural: mis primos son simpáticos.
• Nationalities take capital letters. Only the country does: México, but mexicana; España, but español.
• Grande always means big. Before a noun it becomes gran and means great: un gran libro, a great book.

Describe out loud, then in writing

Say it. Answer Valentina's question aloud: ¿Cómo eres tú? Give two sentences about your looks, with ser and with tener el pelo or tener los ojos, and two about your personality, with muy, bastante or un poco. Then describe one friend and one family member the same way, changing every ending to match. Last, say these three pairs aloud and hear the difference: un perro grande, un gran perro; una casa grande, una gran casa.

Write it. The activity below asks you to write a reply to Valentina describing yourself and two people you know, and to correct five phrases that break the rules of this lesson.

The takeaway

• Spanish adjectives agree in gender and number with the noun: un chico alto, una chica alta, unos chicos altos, unas chicas altas.
• Adjectives in -o have four forms; those in -e, -ista and most consonants have two; -dor adjectives and nationalities in a consonant have four: trabajadora, española.
• A mixed group takes the masculine plural: mis papás son simpáticos.
• Most adjectives follow the noun. Numbers, mucho and poco go before; so do buen, mal and gran, and gran means great.
• Hair and eyes use tener with the article: Tengo el pelo corto y los ojos cafés.
• ¿Cómo eres? asks what you are like. Answer with ser, and adjust with muy, bastante and un poco.

Sources

1. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 2.17: Gramática: Concordancia de adjetivos. In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
2. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 5.16: Vocabulario: Adjetivos descriptivos. In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
3. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 5.17: Gramática: Los países y las nacionalidades. In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
4. Larsen Serigos, J., and Trovato, A. (n.d.). Adjectives: Formation and placement. In Spanish Grammar in Context. COERLL, The University of Texas at Austin. grammar.spanishintexas.org
5. Real Academia Española and Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española. (n.d.). Café (adjective: brown, used mostly in the Americas; compare marrón). In Diccionario de la lengua española (23rd ed., online edition; consulted 24 September 2026).

Worksheet 7, question 1

On a Tuesday afternoon in Mexico City, Leo, Sofía and Pablo are doing homework together at Sofía's kitchen table. Their teacher, maestra Ortiz, has given them a worksheet with ten sentences and a blank in each: ser or estar? The first sentence is Madrid ___ en España. Pablo writes es without looking up.

• Pablo: Es fácil. Ser es para las cosas permanentes y estar es para las cosas temporales. Madrid no cambia, entonces es. (It's easy. Ser is for permanent things and estar is for temporary things. Madrid doesn't change, so it's es.)
• Sofía: No, no. La maestra dice que ser es para lo que una cosa es, y estar es para dónde está y cómo está. Madrid está en España. (No, no. The teacher says ser is for what a thing is, and estar is for where it is and how it is. Madrid está en España.)
• Leo: Pues, las dos reglas parecen buenas. ¿Cuál es correcta? (Well, both rules seem good. Which one is right?)

That is the dispute of this lesson. English has one verb, to be, where Spanish has two, ser (sehr) and estar (ehs-TAHR). Every learner needs a rule for choosing between them, and Pablo and Sofía have brought the two most popular rules to the table. Both are taught; both sound sensible; and they give different answers to question 1. The fair way to settle it is to test both rules on real sentences and see which one keeps agreeing with how Spanish speakers actually talk. Before the test, you need the two verbs themselves, and the words for the people who do them.

The people: subject pronouns

A subject pronoun is a short word that stands for the person doing something: I, you, she, they. You have met most of the Spanish ones already. Here they all are.

Two things surprise English speakers. First, Spanish often leaves the pronoun out, because the verb's ending already says who is meant: Soy de Chicago can only mean I am from Chicago, so yo is not needed. People add the pronoun for emphasis or contrast, as Maya did in Lesson 3 with ¿Y tú? Second, there is no word for it as a subject. It is big is just Es grande.

The two verbs, form by form

Ser and estar are both irregular, which means their forms have to be learned rather than worked out. You have been using pieces of both since Lesson 3: soy, eres, es, son on one side; estoy, estás, está, están on the other.

The ai of estáis is the sound of English eye, and the oy of estoy is the oy of boy. Four forms of estar carry accent marks, and Lesson 2's rules explain each one: estás, está, estáis and están are all pushed on their last syllable, which rules 1 and 2 do not predict. Estamos is pushed second-to-last and ends in s, exactly as rule 1 expects, so it has no mark.

Pablo's rule on trial: permanent or temporary

Now the test. Here are six sentences from the worksheet, every one of them correct Spanish, with what Pablo's rule predicts beside what Spanish speakers actually say.

Pablo's rule is right twice and wrong four times. It is not useless: for adjectives about people, like tall and tired, it usually lands on the right verb, which is why so many learners are taught it. But a city that has not moved in centuries takes estar, and a day that is over by midnight takes ser. The Wiktionary entry for ser, written for learners, says the same thing directly: the difference between the two verbs is often misread as permanent against temporary, and that reading leads to the wrong verb.

Sofía's rule on trial: what it is, against where and how it is

Sofía's rule, the one maestra Ortiz teaches, says: ser tells you what something is, its identity and its characteristics; estar tells you where something is and how it is at the moment, its condition or mood. Run the same six sentences through it.

Six out of six. Pablo is not convinced yet, so Sofía reads him the last sentence on the worksheet: La fiesta de Leo ___ en mi casa (Leo's party ___ at my house). Pablo, cautious now, says está: a party is somewhere, and where is estar. Sofía checks the answer key. It is es. Her own rule, as she stated it, would also have said está.

Here is what the worksheet is teaching. When the subject is an event, a party, a class, a match, a wedding, ser tells you where and when it happens. The Real Academia's dictionary lists this as one of the meanings of ser, to happen or take place, with examples like ¿Dónde fue la boda? (Where was the wedding?) and El partido fue a las seis (The match was at six). Location with estar is for things and people: la casa, Madrid, Leo. So the fairest statement of the winning rule has one extra clause.

Bottom line: use ser to say what something or someone is, what they are like, where they are from, what time or day it is, and when and where an event takes place. Use estar to say where a person or thing is, and how someone or something is right now: tired, happy, sick, bored, busy.

The everyday cases, sorted

Here is the rule turned into the cases you will meet most often.

These are the words for conditions and feelings that go with estar, and they are worth learning as a set.

When the verb changes the meaning

Some adjectives work with both verbs, and the verb changes what they mean. This is the strongest evidence for Sofía's rule, because the same word describes what someone is like with ser and how they are at the moment with estar.

So when Pablo, who has been doing homework for an hour, says Estoy aburrido, he means he is bored. If he said Soy aburrido, he would be telling everyone that he is a boring person.

Common misconceptions

• Ser is for permanent things and estar for temporary ones. This works for some adjectives, but it gets Madrid está en España, Hoy es lunes and Somos estudiantes wrong. Ask what the sentence does: say what something is, or where and how it is.
• Location always takes estar. The location of people and things does. Where an event takes place uses ser: La clase es en el salón 12.
• You must always say yo, tú and the other pronouns. The verb ending already shows the person, so Spanish usually leaves them out: Soy de Chicago. Estoy cansada.
• Soy aburrido means I'm bored. It means I'm boring. I'm bored is Estoy aburrido.
• Feelings take ser because you feel them strongly. Feelings and moods take estar however strong they are: Estoy muy contenta.

Argue it aloud, then write

Say it. Conjugate both verbs aloud, down the table and back up: soy, eres, es, somos, sois, son; estoy, estás, está, estamos, estáis, están. Then describe yourself in four sentences, saying for each one which half of the rule it uses: Soy de... (origin), Soy... (a characteristic), Estoy en... (where you are now), Estoy... (how you feel today).

Write it. The activity below gives you maestra Ortiz's worksheet to complete, with the reason for each choice, and asks you to write four sentences of your own.

Where this leaves us

• Subject pronouns: yo, tú, usted, él, ella, nosotros, vosotros, ustedes, ellos, ellas. Spanish often leaves them out, and it has no word for it as a subject.
• Ser: soy, eres, es, somos, sois, son. Estar: estoy, estás, está, estamos, estáis, están.
• Ser says what someone or something is and is like, their origin, the time and the day, and when and where an event takes place.
• Estar says where a person or thing is, and how someone or something is right now.
• Permanent against temporary is a shortcut that fails on Madrid está en España, Hoy es lunes and Somos estudiantes.
• Some adjectives change meaning with the verb: es aburrido, boring; está aburrido, bored.

Sources

1. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 9.11: Gramática: Ser y Estar I / ¿Cómo? In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
2. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 11.15: Gramática: Ser y Estar II. In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
3. Larsen Serigos, J., and Trovato, A. (n.d.). Ser "to be". In Spanish Grammar in Context. COERLL, The University of Texas at Austin. grammar.spanishintexas.org
4. Wiktionary contributors. (n.d.). ser (Spanish verb: usage notes on essence and state, and on location). Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
5. Real Academia Española and Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española. (n.d.). Ser (the sense suceder, tener lugar, with ¿Dónde fue la boda? and El partido fue a las seis). In Diccionario de la lengua española (23rd ed., online edition; consulted 24 September 2026).

Maya's Wednesday, in her own words

Valentina's second email ends with a question: ¿Cómo es un día normal en tu escuela? (What is a normal day at your school like?) Maya answers on a Wednesday night in September, after dinner.

• Desayuno a las siete con mi hermano Nico. (I have breakfast at seven with my brother Nico.)
• Tomo el autobús a las siete y media y llego a la escuela a las ocho menos cuarto. (I take the bus at half past seven and I get to school at a quarter to eight.)
• En la clase de español hablamos mucho y escuchamos canciones. (In Spanish class we talk a lot and listen to songs.)
• A la hora del almuerzo, mi amiga Priya estudia conmigo en la biblioteca. (At lunchtime, my friend Priya studies with me in the library.)
• Por la tarde practico fútbol. Mis papás trabajan hasta las seis. (In the afternoon I practise soccer. My parents work until six.)
• Regreso a casa a las cinco y cuarto. Mi papá cocina y todos cenamos a las siete. (I get home at a quarter past five. My dad cooks and we all have dinner at seven.)
• Después miro la tele o escucho música. Los miércoles por la noche no estudio. (Afterwards I watch TV or listen to music. On Wednesday nights I don't study.)
• ¿Y tú? ¿A qué hora llegas a la escuela? (And you? What time do you get to school?)

Maya uses twelve different verbs in that email, and every one of them belongs to the same family: their dictionary forms all end in -ar. Look at hablamos and escuchamos, trabajan, estudia, llegas. The front of each word stays the same and the end changes. This lesson gives you the procedure that produces every one of those forms, and then runs it twice so you can see how a change in who is doing something changes the result.

A few more words from the email: el autobús (ehl ow-toh-BOOS), the bus, where au is the ow of English cow; la biblioteca, the library; la canción, the song, with its plural canciones; conmigo, with me; and después, afterwards. And la tele is short for la televisión.

What a verb's ending tells you

The form of a verb you find in a dictionary is called the infinitive. In English it is the form with to: to speak. In Spanish it is one word with a telltale ending: hablar. Regular Spanish verbs come in three families, named after those endings, -ar, -er and -ir, and the -ar family is the biggest of the three.

Cut the ending off an infinitive and what is left is the stem: habl- from hablar. The stem carries the meaning, speak. Then you add a new ending, and that ending carries the person: who is speaking. Changing a verb's ending to match its subject is called conjugating it. English does a tiny bit of this, I speak but she speaks. Spanish does it for every person.

The procedure in four steps

1. Start with the infinitive. Find the verb's dictionary form and check that it ends in -ar.
2. Cut off -ar. What remains is the stem.
3. Decide who is doing it. Turn the subject into one of the six persons: yo; tú; él, ella or usted; nosotros; vosotros; ellos, ellas or ustedes.
4. Add that person's ending: -o, -as, -a, -amos, -áis, -an.

Worked example one: estudiar, all the way down

Step 1: estudiar, to study, ends in -ar. Step 2: cut the -ar and the stem is estudi-. Steps 3 and 4, for each of the six persons:

Listen to where the push falls. In four forms it sits on the stem, ehs-TOO-dyoh, and the stress rules predict it, so there is no accent mark. In the nosotros and vosotros forms it moves onto the ending. Estudiamos still fits rule 1, but estudiáis is pushed on its last syllable, so it is the only form with a mark.

Key idea: the stem says what happens and the ending says who does it. Because the ending already names the person, Spanish can drop the pronoun: Estudio en la biblioteca can only mean I study in the library.

Worked example two: the subject changes and the ending flips

Now keep the verb and change only the subject. Maya wants to tell Valentina that she and her friends take the bus together, and she starts to write Mis amigos y yo tom... Here is the procedure again, with the difference in step 3.

1. The infinitive is tomar, to take.
2. The stem is tom-.
3. Who is doing it? Mis amigos y yo, my friends and I. The words mis amigos on their own would be ellos, they. But the moment yo joins the group, the group is we: nosotros.
4. The nosotros ending is -amos: Mis amigos y yo tomamos el autobús (My friends and I take the bus).

One change to the input, adding y yo, flipped the ending from -an to -amos. The same thing happens with other subjects that look like one person and turn out to be another.

Usted is the one that catches people out. It means you, so it feels as though it should take the tú ending -as. It does not: usted always takes the same form as él and ella, just as ¿Cómo está usted? did in Lesson 3. So Maya would ask her teacher ¿Usted habla francés? (Do you speak French?) but her friend ¿Tú hablas francés?

One procedure, dozens of verbs

The same four steps work for every regular -ar verb. Here are some you can use straight away.

Try the procedure on one before you read on. Enseñar, to teach: stem enseñ-, and for the teacher, él or ella: enseña. Señor Ruiz enseña español (Mr. Ruiz teaches Spanish). For a group of teachers: enseñan.

What the present tense means

One Spanish form covers three English ones. Estudio can mean I study, I am studying, or I do study, and the situation tells you which. Maya's email uses the present mostly for habits, the things she does every Wednesday, which is the present tense's main job. It also works for right now, ¿Qué miras? (What are you watching?), and, with a word for time, for the near future: Mañana regreso a las cinco (Tomorrow I'll be back at five).

Saying no, and asking questions

To make a sentence negative, put no straight in front of the verb: No estudio los miércoles por la noche (I don't study on Wednesday nights). English needs an extra word, don't or doesn't; Spanish needs only no, in the right place.

A yes or no question uses the same words as a statement. What changes is the punctuation in writing and the tune of your voice in speech, which rises at the end.

• Valentina: ¿Hablas francés? (Do you speak French?)
• Maya: No, no hablo francés, pero mi mamá habla un poco. (No, I don't speak French, but my mom speaks a little.)
• Valentina: ¿Tu papá cocina todos los días? (Does your dad cook every day?)
• Maya: Sí, cocina casi todos los días. (Yes, he cooks almost every day.)

Notice the two no's in Maya's first answer. The first answers the question, like no in English; the second makes the verb negative.

Where the procedure stops working

Here is a test of the procedure that fails, and it is worth seeing why. Estar ends in -ar. Run the four steps on it and you get esto, estas, esta, estamos, estáis, estan. But you already know the real forms from the last lesson: estoy, estás, está, estamos, estáis, están. Only two of the six came out right.

The procedure is for regular verbs, the ones that follow the pattern. Estar is irregular, and so are ser and ir (to go), which the Spanish Grammar in Context reference lists as irregular in all their forms. The good news is that irregular -ar verbs are few, and the regular ones number in the hundreds.

Common misconceptions

• You need two words for I am studying. The simple present already covers it: Estudio. Spanish does have a form like estoy estudiando, but you do not need it to say what you are doing.
• Yo hablar español. The infinitive is the dictionary form, not a sentence form. With yo, the verb must be conjugated: Yo hablo español.
• The -o of hablo means a boy is speaking. Here -o means I. Maya writes hablo, and so does Leo.
• Mis amigos y yo takes the they ending. Any group that includes yo is nosotros: Mis amigos y yo hablamos.
• No goes after the verb, as in hablo no. It goes directly in front: no hablo.

Talk through your day, then write it

Say it. Conjugate hablar, estudiar and trabajar aloud, all six persons each, and tap the table on the syllable you push. Then tell yourself what you do on a normal school day, with times from Lesson 6: Desayuno a las siete. Llego a la escuela a las ocho. Finish by asking a family member or a friend three yes or no questions in Spanish, such as ¿Cocinas los domingos? (Do you cook on Sundays?), and answering one negatively yourself.

Write it. The activity below asks you to conjugate three verbs in full and to write your own answer to Valentina's question about a normal school day.

Pulling it together

• The infinitive is the dictionary form: hablar. Cut off -ar to find the stem: habl-.
• Add the ending for the person: -o, -as, -a, -amos, -áis, -an. Only the vosotros form carries a mark.
• Work out the person before choosing the ending: usted takes the él form, and any group with yo takes nosotros.
• The present tense covers I study, I am studying and I do study, and, with a time word, the near future.
• No goes directly before the verb. A yes or no question keeps the same words, adds ¿ and ?, and rises at the end.
• The procedure works for regular verbs only. Estar, ser and ir are irregular.

Sources

1. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 3.8: Gramática: Conjugación de verbos en -ar. In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
2. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 3.3: Vocabulario: Verbos en -ar. In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
3. Larsen Serigos, J., and Trovato, A. (n.d.). -ar verbs (regular), present tense. In Spanish Grammar in Context. COERLL, The University of Texas at Austin. grammar.spanishintexas.org
4. Larsen Serigos, J., and Trovato, A. (n.d.). Introduction to present tense (uses of the present; irregular verbs). In Spanish Grammar in Context. COERLL, The University of Texas at Austin. grammar.spanishintexas.org
5. Larsen Serigos, J., and Trovato, A. (n.d.). Basic negation: No. In Spanish Grammar in Context. COERLL, The University of Texas at Austin. grammar.spanishintexas.org

7:25 on a Monday, and no timetable

It is the first Monday of the new school year at Leo's secondary school in Mexico City. Classes start at 7:30. At 7:25, Leo opens his folder in the corridor and finds it empty: his new timetable, el horario (ehl oh-RAH-ryoh), is on the kitchen table at home. Sofía and Pablo are in all his classes this year, so he asks them.

• Leo: ¡No tengo mi horario! ¿Qué clase tenemos ahora? (I haven't got my timetable! What class do we have now?)
• Sofía: La primera clase es matemáticas, con el profesor Díaz. (The first class is maths, with Mr. Díaz.)
• Leo: ¿Y dónde es? (And where is it?)
• Pablo: Es aquí, en el salón doce. Casi todas las clases son en el salón doce. (It's here, in room twelve. Almost all the classes are in room twelve.)
• Leo: ¿Y después de matemáticas? (And after maths?)
• Sofía: Después tenemos inglés, y la tercera clase es historia, con la maestra Ortiz. El recreo es a las diez. (Then we have English, and the third class is history, with Ms. Ortiz. Break is at ten.)

Here is the problem, and it is Leo's for the whole morning. He has half a timetable in his head and the rest in other people's sentences. Can he rebuild his Monday, subject by subject and hour by hour, from what his friends tell him in Spanish? Every clue he gets uses a piece of the last seven lessons: the clock, ser for events, ordinals, the classroom words. Try to fill in the day yourself as the clues arrive, before you look at the solution.

Profesor and maestro both mean teacher, with profesora and maestra for a woman, and Leo's school uses both. When a student speaks about a teacher, the title takes el or la: el profesor Díaz, la maestra Ortiz. When speaking to them, there is no article: Buenos días, profesor Díaz.

More clues, as the morning goes on

At 10:00, in the break, Leo gathers the rest of the day.

• Leo: ¿Qué clases tenemos después del recreo? (What classes do we have after break?)
• Pablo: Primero ciencias, en el laboratorio. Este año estudiamos biología. (First science, in the lab. This year we're studying biology.)
• Sofía: Y luego educación física, a las once y diez. La clase es en el patio. (And then PE, at ten past eleven. The class is in the yard.)
• Leo: ¿Y la última clase? (And the last class?)
• Sofía: Hay dos más: español a las doce, y la última, a la una menos diez, es música. (There are two more: Spanish at twelve, and the last one, at ten to one, is music.)
• Pablo: ¡Música! Es mi materia favorita. (Music! It's my favourite subject.)

Notice two things. First, every class period in Leo's school is fifty minutes long, so each clue that gives one time lets you work out the next. Second, Leo's class called español is not a foreign language class. For Leo it is what English class is for a student in Chicago: reading, writing and literature in his own language.

The solved timetable

Here is Leo's Monday, rebuilt entirely from the clues. Check your own version against it.

One clue had to be worked out rather than read. Sofía never said when science starts. But the break starts at 10:00 and PE starts at 11:10, and a class lasts fifty minutes, so science must run from 10:20 to 11:10, which makes the break twenty minutes long. That is the kind of reasoning a timetable in any language asks of you.

The subjects on a timetable

Here are the subjects on Leo's timetable and the others you are likely to meet, in Spanish-speaking schools or on your own timetable.

Most of these are cognates, words that look like their English partners, but the stress often falls somewhere else. Química and física are pushed three syllables from the end, so they carry marks; biología and geografía put a beat on the í, as día does. Languages are masculine and written in lowercase: el inglés, el español. Matemáticas and ciencias are plural, which matters in the next section. The word for a school subject itself is la materia (mah-TEH-ryah) or la asignatura (ah-seeg-nah-TOO-rah).

First, second, third: the ordinal numbers

Sofía said la primera clase and la tercera clase. Words for positions in a list are called ordinals, and a timetable is full of them.

Ordinals are adjectives, so they agree: el segundo día, la segunda clase. And two of them shrink before a masculine singular noun, the way bueno became buen in Lesson 9: el primer día (the first day), el tercer año (the third year). Before a feminine noun they keep their ending: la primera clase, la tercera hora. Cuarto, fourth, is also the word for a quarter you met in y cuarto: the fourth part of an hour.

Talking about classes: tener, ser and de

Three patterns from Leo's morning will cover almost everything you want to say about a timetable.

• Tener for what you have: Tengo matemáticas a las siete y media (I have maths at half past seven). ¿Qué clases tienes los lunes? (What classes do you have on Mondays?)
• Ser for when and where a class is: La clase de historia es a las nueve y diez. La clase es en el salón doce (The history class is at ten past nine. The class is in room twelve). A class is an event, so its time and place take ser, as the party did in the last lesson.
• De to join two nouns: la clase de inglés (the English class), el profesor de historia (the history teacher), el libro de ciencias (the science book). English puts the describing noun first, English class; Spanish puts it last, after de.

For your favourite, use ¿Cuál es tu materia favorita? (What is your favourite subject?). Spanish uses cuál here, which asks which one out of a set, rather than qué. The answer uses ser: Mi materia favorita es la música.

Easy, hard, useful: what students say about their subjects

At lunch, Leo tells Maya about his first day on a video call.

• Maya: ¿Qué tal las clases? (How are the classes?)
• Leo: Las matemáticas son difíciles, pero el profesor Díaz es muy simpático. La historia es interesante. Y el inglés es fácil... ¡gracias a ti! (Maths is hard, but Mr. Díaz is very nice. History is interesting. And English is easy... thanks to you!)

Las matemáticas is plural, so it takes son and a plural adjective: difíciles. El inglés is singular: es fácil. Fácil (FAH-seel) and difícil (dee-FEE-seel) are two-form adjectives, and their marks behave like exámenes: difícil ends in l and is pushed on fí, which rule 2 does not predict, so it is marked; the plural difíciles is pushed three syllables from the end, so it keeps the mark. Other useful words: interesante (interesting), útil (useful), divertido (fun), aburrido (boring, with ser).

So what?: once you can say what you have, when and where it is, and what you think of it, you can hold a whole conversation about school, which is the first thing any Spanish-speaking student your age will ask you about.

School words that trip people up

• La librería is a bookshop, where you buy books. The library, where you borrow them, is la biblioteca.
• La tarea (tah-REH-ah) is homework. La prueba is a test or quiz and el examen an exam. Your mark is la nota or la calificación.
• El aula, another word for classroom, is feminine even though it takes el. A feminine noun that begins with a stressed a takes el in the singular, so the two a sounds do not run together: el aula, but las aulas and la mejor aula.

Common misconceptions

• Librería means library. It means bookshop. A library is una biblioteca.
• La inglés clase, like English class. The describing noun comes last, after de: la clase de inglés.
• Las matemáticas es difícil. Matemáticas is plural, so it takes son and a plural adjective: Las matemáticas son difíciles.
• La primer clase. Primer and tercer are only for masculine singular nouns: el primer día, but la primera clase.
• Languages take a capital letter, like English. They are lowercase in Spanish: el inglés, el español, el francés.

Your timetable aloud, then on paper

Say it. Read Leo's solved timetable aloud as sentences: A las siete y media tengo matemáticas en el salón doce. Then do the same for your own Monday. Finish by answering aloud: ¿Cuál es tu materia favorita? ¿Por qué? (Why?), with an adjective that agrees: Mi materia favorita es la historia; es muy interesante.

Write it. The activity below asks you to write out two days of your own timetable in Spanish, six sentences about your classes, and four questions for a new classmate.

What you now know

• El horario is the timetable. Subjects: las matemáticas, el inglés, el español, la historia, las ciencias, la educación física, la música, el arte, la informática, and more.
• Ordinals are adjectives: la primera clase, el segundo día. Primero and tercero become primer and tercer before a masculine singular noun.
• Tengo matemáticas a las ocho. La clase de historia es a las nueve, en el salón doce: a class's time and place take ser.
• De joins two nouns, describing noun last: la clase de inglés, el profesor de historia.
• ¿Cuál es tu materia favorita? Mi materia favorita es la música. Adjectives agree: Las matemáticas son difíciles.
• La librería is a bookshop and la biblioteca a library; el aula is a feminine word that takes el.

Sources

1. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 4.3: Vocabulario: La universidad (school places, subjects, el horario, la tarea). In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
2. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 4.8: Gramática: Preguntas con ¿qué? y ¿cuál? In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
3. Wiktionary contributors. (n.d.). Appendix: Spanish numerals (ordinals and their shortened forms). Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
4. Wiktionary contributors. (n.d.). aula (usage note on el before a stressed a); librería (bookshop). Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org

Two classes, one survey

Señor Ruiz in Chicago and maestra Ortiz in Mexico City have given their classes the same five-question survey, la encuesta (lah ehn-KWEHS-tah), and every student is sending their answers to their pen pal. Valentina's arrive first.

• ¿Qué comes en el recreo? Como una torta de jamón. (What do you eat at break? I eat a ham sandwich.)
• ¿Qué bebes en el desayuno? Bebo leche con chocolate. (What do you drink at breakfast? I drink chocolate milk.)
• ¿Qué lees por diversión? Leo cómics y novelas de misterio. (What do you read for fun? I read comics and mystery novels.)
• ¿Corres en educación física? Sí, corremos mucho. (Do you run in PE? Yes, we run a lot.)
• ¿Qué aprendes en ciencias? Aprendemos sobre las células. (What are you learning in science? We're learning about cells.)

And here are Maya's.

• Como un sándwich de queso y una manzana en el almuerzo. (I eat a cheese sandwich and an apple at lunch.)
• Bebo jugo de naranja. (I drink orange juice.)
• Leo novelas gráficas. (I read graphic novels.)
• Corro los martes y los jueves. (I run on Tuesdays and Thursdays.)
• En ciencias aprendemos sobre los volcanes. (In science we're learning about volcanoes.)

Every question and every answer is built on a verb whose infinitive ends in -er: comer, beber, leer, correr, aprender. You already know how to conjugate -ar verbs. This lesson puts the -er verbs right beside them, so you can see that you have already learned almost everything you need.

Two words in the answers change from country to country. Valentina's torta is a sandwich made in a bread roll, which is what the word means in Mexico and Guatemala; in much of South America una torta is a cake, and in Spain the same sandwich is un bocadillo. And Maya's jugo de naranja, the word used in Latin America, would be zumo de naranja in Spain.

The two sets of endings, side by side

Here is the table this lesson is built around: one -ar verb and one -er verb, conjugated in parallel.

Reading the table

Read down the last column and the whole lesson is in it. The procedure is the same one you used in Lesson 11: find the infinitive, cut off the ending, decide who is doing it, add the ending. The only new thing is the ending itself, and it differs from the -ar ending by a single vowel. Wherever an -ar verb has a, an -er verb has e. The yo form does not change at all, because it had no a to begin with.

The stress follows the same pattern too. In como, comes, come and comen the push falls on the stem, KOH-moh, KOH-mehs; in comemos and coméis it moves to the ending. And just as in habláis, only the vosotros form, coméis, carries a written mark.

Remember: -er endings are the -ar endings with e in place of a: -o, -es, -e, -emos, -éis, -en. If you know hablar, you know comer.

The one danger in the table is the reverse swap. The a endings belong to -ar verbs, and when a learner puts them on an -er verb, the result is a different verb form entirely: coma and comamos exist, but they belong to a later chapter of grammar and do not mean he eats or we eat. So Valentina eats, come; she does not coma.

A second comparison: one person, two families

Now hold the person still and change the family. Maya describes her Saturday.

• Los sábados desayuno tarde, como pan tostado y bebo jugo. (On Saturdays I have breakfast late, I eat toast and I drink juice.)
• Después, Nico y yo caminamos al parque y corremos un poco. (Then Nico and I walk to the park and run a bit.)
• Por la tarde, mi mamá trabaja y mi papá lee el periódico. (In the afternoon, my mom works and my dad reads the newspaper.)

Before you choose an ending, then, you ask two questions, not one: who is doing it, and which family is the verb from? Nosotros with an -ar verb is -amos; nosotros with an -er verb is -emos.

More -er verbs to use today

Leer and creer have a stem that ends in e, so their forms put two e's side by side, and you say both, as Lesson 1 taught for any two vowels: leo, lees (LEH-ehs), lee (LEH-eh), leemos (leh-EH-mohs), leéis, leen (LEH-ehn). And yes, the yo form of leer is spelled exactly like Leo's name, so Leo lee is a real sentence: Leo reads.

Two verbs that lead to another verb

Two of these verbs are especially useful because another verb can follow them in its infinitive form, unchanged.

• Deber + infinitive says what someone should or must do: Debo estudiar para la prueba (I should study for the quiz). Debemos leer el capítulo tres (We must read chapter three).
• Aprender a + infinitive says what someone is learning to do: Nico aprende a nadar (Nico is learning to swim). Aprendo a cocinar (I'm learning to cook). Do not forget the little a.

Only the first verb is conjugated. The second stays exactly as it appears in the dictionary: debo estudiar, never debo estudio.

Not every -er verb plays by the rules

You already know three verbs that end in -er but do not follow the table. Ser is one: its yo form is soy, not so. Tener is another: tengo, tienes, tiene. And entender, to understand, which you met in No entiendo, changes its stem: entiendo, entiendes. The Spanish Grammar in Context reference sorts verbs like these into irregular groups, stem changers and verbs irregular in the yo form. Comprender means the same as entender and is regular, so if you ever freeze, comprendo is always safe.

Common misconceptions

• -er verbs use the same endings as -ar verbs. They swap a for e: comes, not comas; comemos, not comamos.
• Every verb ending in -er is regular. Ser, tener and entender are not. Learn their forms separately.
• Debo estudio, with both verbs conjugated. After deber, the second verb stays in the infinitive: debo estudiar.
• Leo lee is a typing mistake. It is a complete sentence: Leo reads. The yo form of leer, leo, is also spelled like the name.
• Torta means cake everywhere. In Mexico and Guatemala it is a sandwich in a roll; in much of South America it is a cake.

Answer the survey: aloud, then in writing

Say it. Conjugate comer and leer aloud side by side with hablar, one person at a time: hablo, como, leo; hablas, comes, lees. Then answer the five survey questions aloud for yourself, in full sentences. Last, say two things you should do this week with debo and one thing you are learning to do with aprendo a.

Write it. The activity below asks you to fill in a table of -ar and -er forms, fix five sentences that mix up the endings, and write your own answers to the survey.

The short version

• Regular -er verbs: cut off -er and add -o, -es, -e, -emos, -éis, -en.
• Those are the -ar endings with e for a. The yo form, -o, is the same in both families.
• Ask two questions before choosing an ending: who does it, and is the verb -ar or -er?
• Useful -er verbs: comer, beber, leer, correr, aprender, comprender, vender, creer, deber, responder.
• Deber + infinitive: Debo estudiar. Aprender a + infinitive: Aprendo a nadar.
• Ser, tener and entender end in -er but are irregular.

Sources

1. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 5.13: Gramática: Conjugación de verbos regulares en -er/-ir. In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
2. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 5.12: Vocabulario: Verbos regulares de -er/-ir. In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
3. Larsen Serigos, J., and Trovato, A. (n.d.). -er verbs (regular), present tense. In Spanish Grammar in Context. COERLL, The University of Texas at Austin. grammar.spanishintexas.org
4. Larsen Serigos, J., and Trovato, A. (n.d.). Introduction to present tense (stem changers and verbs irregular in the yo form). In Spanish Grammar in Context. COERLL, The University of Texas at Austin. grammar.spanishintexas.org
5. Wiktionary contributors. (n.d.). torta (Mexico, Guatemala: a sandwich in a roll; South America: cake); jugo and zumo. Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org

A message from the hill above the port

Since 1883, a small car on rails has carried people up and down Cerro Concepción, one of the steep hills of Valparaíso (bahl-pah-rah-EE-soh), a port city on the Pacific coast of Chile. It was the first of the city's ascensores (ah-sehn-SOH-rehs), short, steep railways built so that people on the hills could reach the port and the shops below without the climb. Tomás is twelve and lives near the top of that hill. His class has started an email exchange with señor Ruiz's class in Chicago, and his first message has just arrived. Maya reads it to the class, one part at a time.

Before she starts, look at the í in Valparaíso. As Lesson 2 showed with país, the mark on the i splits it from the a in front of it, so the name has five beats: Val-pa-ra-í-so.

Part one: a yellow house on a hill

• ¡Hola, Maya y clase del señor Ruiz! (Hi, Maya and Mr. Ruiz's class!)
• Me llamo Tomás y tengo doce años. (My name is Tomás and I'm twelve.)
• Vivo en Valparaíso, una ciudad con un puerto muy grande. (I live in Valparaíso, a city with a very big port.)
• Mi mamá, mi hermana Isidora y yo vivimos en una casa amarilla en el cerro Concepción. (My mom, my sister Isidora and I live in a yellow house on Cerro Concepción.)
• Por la mañana abro la ventana y miro el mar. (In the morning I open the window and look at the sea.)

One verb has already appeared in two forms: vivo, I live, and vivimos, we live. Both come from vivir (bee-BEER), to live. Its infinitive ends in -ir, which makes it a member of the third and last family of regular Spanish verbs, after the -ar verbs of Lesson 11 and the -er verbs of Lesson 13. Abro, I open, belongs to the same family: its infinitive is abrir (ah-BREER). In both say-it guides the v and the b sound the same, as Lesson 1 promised, so vivir starts like the English word bee.

Part two: down to the plan and up again

• Valparaíso tiene muchos cerros. (Valparaíso has lots of hills.)
• Abajo, al lado del puerto, está la parte plana de la ciudad. Aquí se llama el plan. (Down below, next to the port, is the flat part of the city. Here it is called the plan.)
• Isidora y yo asistimos a un colegio en el plan. (Isidora and I attend a school in the plan.)
• Por la mañana bajamos en el ascensor, y por la tarde subimos. (In the morning we go down in the ascensor, and in the afternoon we go up.)
• A veces el ascensor no funciona y subimos por la escalera. ¡Uf! (Sometimes the ascensor isn't working and we go up by the stairs. Phew!)

Tomás uses a pair of opposites here, one from each of two families. Subir (soo-BEER), to go up, is an -ir verb; bajar (bah-HAHR), to go down, is an -ar verb. Bajamos and subimos sit in the same sentence, and their endings, -amos and -imos, tell you at once which family each one comes from.

The plan is a real local word, not something Tomás made up. The ascensores of Valparaíso link the high part of the city with the plan, the strip of flat land by the bay that holds the port and the city centre. Chile's heritage council, the Consejo de Monumentos Nacionales, records that the hills made it so hard to reach the port that the city built ascensores to connect its neighbourhoods, that the one on Cerro Concepción came first, in 1883, and that the ascensores were declared historic monuments in 1998. The old port quarter was added to UNESCO's World Heritage list in 2003, and since 1990 Chile's National Congress has met in Valparaíso rather than in the capital, Santiago.

Part three: emails, lunch and a friend's cookies

• En el colegio escribimos mucho. (At school we write a lot.)
• En la clase de inglés escribimos correos a estudiantes de otros países. (In English class we write emails to students in other countries.)
• Cada semana recibimos correos de Chicago. (Every week we receive emails from Chicago.)
• En el almuerzo comparto mi comida con mi amigo Benjamín. (At lunch I share my food with my friend Benjamín.)
• Benjamín abre su mochila y siempre comparte sus galletas. (Benjamín opens his backpack and always shares his cookies.)

Part four: the evening, and three questions for Chicago

• Por la tarde mi mamá escribe en su computador. Escribe artículos para una revista. (In the afternoon my mom writes on her computer. She writes articles for a magazine.)
• Isidora lee un libro y yo escribo este correo. (Isidora reads a book and I write this email.)
• Por la noche decidimos qué música escuchamos. (At night we decide what music to listen to.)
• ¿Y ustedes? ¿Dónde viven? ¿Suben muchas escaleras? ¿Reciben correos de otros países? (And you? Where do you live? Do you climb a lot of stairs? Do you get emails from other countries?)
• Un abrazo desde Valparaíso. Tomás (A hug from Valparaíso. Tomás)

Un abrazo (oon ah-BRAH-soh), a hug, is how friends end a letter or a message in Spanish, where English might write best wishes or take care. And one word in this part belongs to Chile. Lesson 7 showed that a computer is la computadora in Mexico and much of Latin America and el ordenador in Spain. Tomás's mother writes on el computador, the masculine form used chiefly in Chile and Colombia. Everyone will understand all three.

The words from Tomás's email

Two of these need care when you say them. In cerro, the double r is the rolled rr of Lesson 2, and the single r at the start of recibir is rolled too, because an r that begins a word always is. In correo, the e and the o each get a beat of their own: koh-RREH-oh, three beats, not two.

The -ir endings beside the -er endings

Now the table this lesson is built around: vivir conjugated beside comer from Lesson 13.

Four of the six rows have nothing in the last column. An -ir verb takes exactly the -er endings for yo, tú, él and ellos, so vive looks just like come, and viven just like comen. Only in nosotros and vosotros does the i of the infinitive show through: vivimos, vivís. Say vivimos bee-BEE-mohs, with the push on the middle syllable. Vivís is bee-BEES: the written mark puts the push on the last syllable, just as in habláis and coméis.

The point: -ir verbs share the -er endings in four persons out of six. Only nosotros and vosotros are different: -imos and -ís, where -er verbs have -emos and -éis.

All three families on one page

With vivir, you have met every regular pattern of the Spanish present tense. Here they are together.

Read across a row and you see one person in three families: hablamos, comemos, vivimos. Read down a column and you see one family's whole pattern. The yo form ends in -o in all three, and after that the family's vowel takes over: a for -ar, e for -er, and for -ir an e that turns into i in nosotros and vosotros.

Working backwards, from a form to the dictionary

When you read Spanish, the verb arrives already conjugated, and you need its infinitive to look it up. Tomás's email makes good practice. Take subimos. The ending -imos belongs only to -ir verbs, so the infinitive is sub- plus -ir: subir. Take bajamos. The ending -amos belongs only to -ar verbs, so the infinitive is bajar. Now take abre. The ending -e could come from an -er verb or an -ir verb, so you try both, abrer and abrir, and only abrir is in the dictionary.

The table shows a useful trick. The yo, tú, él and ellos forms cannot tell an -er verb from an -ir verb, but the nosotros form always can. If you are not sure whether a verb works like comer or like vivir, think of its we form: leemos gives away leer, and escribimos gives away escribir.

Asistir a means attend, and a plus el makes al

Look again at Isidora y yo asistimos a un colegio en el plan. An English reader sees assist and guesses help, but asistir is a false friend, like parientes in Lesson 8 and librería in Lesson 12. Its everyday meaning is to attend, to go to something regularly: a school, a class, a meeting.

• Asisto a la clase de arte los lunes. (I go to art class on Mondays.)
• ¿Asistes a un colegio grande? (Do you go to a big school?)
• Leo asiste a una escuela en la Ciudad de México. (Leo goes to a school in Mexico City.)

For ordinary help, Spanish uses a different verb, the -ar verb ayudar (ah-yoo-DAHR): Ayudo a mi abuela (I help my grandmother).

Asistir takes the little word a before the place or the event, and that a has one habit to learn. When it meets the article el, the two squeeze into one word, al, exactly as de and el make del in Lesson 8: a + el = al. So Tomás attends el colegio, and he says Asisto al colegio (I go to school). With la, los and las nothing squeezes: Asisto a la escuela (I go to school). Isidora y yo bajamos al plan (Isidora and I go down to the plan) works the same way.

-ir verbs that do not follow the table

A few very common verbs end in -ir and still break the pattern. The Spanish Grammar in Context reference from the University of Texas lists decir (deh-SEER), to say, and venir (beh-NEER), to come, among the verbs that are irregular in the yo form: digo (I say), vengo (I come). It lists ir (eer), to go, among the handful of verbs that are irregular in every form: voy, vas, va (I go, you go, he goes). You will use ir in Lesson 18, where it lets you talk about plans. For now, if a verb ends in -ir and its yo form looks strange, it is one of these, not a mistake in your table.

Common misconceptions

• -ir verbs have endings of their own in every form. Only nosotros and vosotros differ from the -er endings: vivimos and vivís. Vives, vive and viven look exactly like comes, come and comen.
• Vivemos and escribemos are fine. They put an -er ending on an -ir verb, and neither is a word. The nosotros ending of every regular -ir verb is -imos.
• Asistir means to help. Its everyday meaning is to attend: Asisto a un colegio. For help, say ayudar.
• A el colegio. A and el always join: al colegio. A la, a los and a las stay as they are.
• Every verb that ends in -ir is regular. Ir, decir and venir are not. Their yo forms, voy, digo and vengo, have to be learned on their own.

Write back to Tomás: aloud, then on paper

Say it. Read Tomás's email aloud, part by part. Then conjugate vivir, escribir and subir aloud beside comer, one person at a time: como, vivo; comes, vives; and so on, leaning on the i in vivimos and escribimos. Last, answer his three questions out loud for yourself: ¿Dónde vives? ¿Subes muchas escaleras? ¿Recibes correos de otros países? (Where do you live? Do you climb a lot of stairs? Do you get emails from other countries?)

Write it. The activity below asks you to write -ir forms, repair five sentences, and then write a reply to Tomás.

What to remember

• Regular -ir verbs: cut off -ir and add -o, -es, -e, -imos, -ís, -en.
• Those are the -er endings except in nosotros (-imos, not -emos) and vosotros (-ís, not -éis).
• To find an infinitive from a form, read the ending. If it could be -er or -ir, think of the nosotros form.
• Useful -ir verbs: vivir, abrir, subir, asistir a, escribir, recibir, compartir, decidir.
• Asistir a means to attend, and a + el = al: Asisto al colegio. Ayudar means to help.
• Ir, decir and venir end in -ir but are irregular: voy, digo, vengo.
• In Valparaíso the ascensores climb from the flat plan to the hills; the first, on Cerro Concepción, opened in 1883.

Sources

1. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 5.13: Gramática: Conjugación de verbos regulares en -er/-ir. In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
2. Larsen Serigos, J., and Trovato, A. (n.d.). -ir verbs (regular), present tense. In Spanish Grammar in Context. COERLL, The University of Texas at Austin. grammar.spanishintexas.org
3. Larsen Serigos, J., and Trovato, A. (n.d.). Introduction to present tense (irregular in the yo form: decir, venir; irregular in all forms: ir). In Spanish Grammar in Context. COERLL, The University of Texas at Austin. grammar.spanishintexas.org
4. Consejo de Monumentos Nacionales de Chile. (n.d.). Ascensor Concepción. Monumentos Nacionales. monumentos.gob.cl
5. Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Valparaíso (the plan and the ascensores, the 2003 World Heritage listing, and the National Congress since 1990). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org

Five sentences, four bugs

On Sunday night Valentina sends Maya one question: ¿Qué te gusta comer y qué te gusta hacer? (What do you like to eat and what do you like to do?) Maya types five sentences back. Here they are, with what she meant to say in brackets. Only one of them is right.

1. Yo gusto los tacos. (She meant: I like tacos.)
2. Me gusta las fresas. (She meant: I like strawberries.)
3. Me gustan nadar y leer. (She meant: I like swimming and reading.)
4. Mi hermano Nico le gusta el fútbol. (She meant: My brother Nico likes soccer.)
5. Me gusta el chocolate. (I like chocolate.)

A minute later, Valentina answers.

• ¡Jaja! El número cinco está perfecto. (Haha! Number five is perfect.)
• Los otros tienen errores pequeños. (The others have small mistakes.)
• Mira: me gustan los tacos, me gustan las fresas, me gusta nadar y leer, y a tu hermano le gusta el fútbol. (Look: I like tacos, I like strawberries, I like swimming and reading, and your brother likes soccer.)
• ¡A mí también me gustan las fresas! (I like strawberries too!)

Valentina fixed all four without saying why. Each of Maya's mistakes came from a sensible idea, and each idea breaks at a different step. This lesson traces them one at a time, using the verb gustar (goos-TAHR), the verb Spanish uses for liking things.

Bug 1: Yo gusto los tacos, and what gustar really means

Here is Maya's reasoning, step by step. Gustar means to like. It ends in -ar, so it works like hablar. I am the one doing the liking, so I take the yo form, gusto. Every step would be right for hablar. The reasoning fails at the very first one.

Gustar does not work like to like. It works like to please, or to be pleasing. Spanish turns the English sentence round: the thing you like is the one doing the pleasing, and you are the person it pleases. Wiktionary's entry puts it in one line: Me gusta esta manzana, I like this apple, can be analysed as this apple pleases me. Here is Valentina's correction, word by word.

So Me gustan los tacos means I like tacos, and word for word it says to me are pleasing the tacos. The tacos are the subject of the sentence, the thing the verb agrees with. The person who likes them is not the subject at all: she appears as the small word me (meh), which here means to me. The form gusto does exist, but it means I am pleasing, which is why Valentina laughed. Maya's sentence sounds like a girl announcing that she pleases the tacos.

Worth holding on to: with gustar, the thing liked is the subject and chooses the verb form. The person who likes it is shown by a short word in front: me, te, le, nos, os or les.

Bug 2: Me gusta las fresas, and counting the things liked

Maya's second sentence starts well, with me. Her reasoning this time: the verb is always gusta, because me gusta is a phrase I already know. The step that fails is always. Since the thing liked is the subject, the verb changes when the thing changes number. One thing pleases you, so gusta. Two or more things please you, so gustan (GOOS-tahn). The ¡Chévere! textbook adds that two separate things joined by y count as more than one.

Look at the articles, too. English says I like chocolate, with no the. Spanish keeps the article: me gusta el chocolate, me gustan las fresas. The Spanish Grammar in Context reference from the University of Texas lists this as a regular difference between the languages: Spanish uses el, la, los and las with verbs of liking such as gustar and encantar, as in Me gustan mucho los animales (I like animals a lot).

Bug 3: Me gustan nadar y leer, and activities

This time Maya applied the rule from bug 2 perfectly: two things, so gustan. The reasoning fails because activities do not count like things. When what you like is something you do, an infinitive such as nadar (nah-DAHR), to swim, or leer, to read, the verb is gusta, however many activities you list.

• Me gusta nadar. (I like swimming. Word for word: to me is pleasing to swim.)
• Me gusta nadar y leer. (I like swimming and reading.)
• A Nico le gusta dibujar, cantar y ver películas. (Nico likes drawing, singing and watching films.)

Notice that only the third-person forms of gustar ever appear. The textbook's table for activities has just one verb form in it, gusta, and changes only the small word in front: me gusta, te gusta, le gusta, nos gusta, os gusta, les gusta.

Bug 4: Mi hermano Nico le gusta el fútbol, and naming the person

Maya's reasoning: le means to him, so I put Nico first and le after him. She was close. Spanish really does keep le even when the person is named, which surprises English speakers. What is missing is the little word a. The person is pleased, so he is always to someone, and when you name him you say a Nico, to Nico.

• A mi hermano Nico le gusta el fútbol. (My brother Nico likes soccer.)
• A Valentina le gustan las fresas. (Valentina likes strawberries.)
• A mis abuelos les gusta mucho el café. (My grandparents like coffee a lot.)
• A Leo y a mí nos gusta la música. (Leo and I like music.)

Two details. The le stays when Nico is named: A Nico gusta el fútbol is wrong. And each person on a list gets an a of their own: a Leo y a mí.

A video call: ¿Te gusta...?

The next evening, Maya and Valentina play a quick game on a video call: one asks about a food or a hobby, the other answers as fast as she can.

• Valentina: ¿Te gusta el pescado? (Do you like fish?)
• Maya: No, no me gusta nada. ¿Y a ti? (No, I don't like it at all. And you?)
• Valentina: A mí tampoco. ¿Te gustan las verduras? (Me neither. Do you like vegetables?)
• Maya: Me gustan un poco. Pero me encantan las papas fritas. (I like them a little. But I love fries.)
• Valentina: ¡A mí también! ¿Y el helado? (Me too! And ice cream?)
• Maya: Me gusta mucho, pero me gusta más el chocolate. (I like it a lot, but I like chocolate more.)
• Valentina: ¿Qué te gusta hacer los sábados? (What do you like to do on Saturdays?)
• Maya: Me gusta nadar, dibujar y escuchar música. ¿Y a ti? (I like swimming, drawing and listening to music. And you?)
• Valentina: Me gusta bailar y ver películas con mi hermana. No me gusta cantar. ¡Canto muy mal! (I like dancing and watching films with my sister. I don't like singing. I sing really badly!)
• Maya: A mí sí me gusta cantar. ¿Y a tu mamá? ¿Qué le gusta? (I do like singing. And your mom? What does she like?)
• Valentina: A mi mamá le encanta leer. (My mom loves reading.)

In bailar, the a and i slide together into one beat, said like the English word eye, the same sound you met in hay. And the h of helado is silent, like every Spanish h.

The whole pattern on one page

Read the table from the right. Only two forms of the verb ever appear, gusta and gustan, and the thing liked chooses between them. The person lives in the short word, which you never leave out. Grammar books call me, te, le, nos, os and les indirect object pronouns: small words for the person to whom or for whom something happens. The a phrase is optional. The ¡Chévere! textbook notes that most speakers leave it out, and use it to stress the person, as in A mí sí me gusta cantar (I do like singing), or to make clear who le or les means. Le gusta leer could mean he, she or you likes reading; A ella le gusta leer settles it: she does. Mí carries its accent mark, as in Lesson 2's para mí.

Saying no, saying how much, and answering back

• No goes in front of the short word: No me gusta el pescado. (I don't like fish.)
• Mucho and un poco say how much; nada after a no means not at all: No me gusta nada. (I don't like it at all.)
• Más says which you like better: Me gusta más el chocolate. (I like chocolate more.)
• Encantar (ehn-kahn-TAHR) works exactly like gustar and means to love a thing or an activity: Me encanta el helado. Me encantan las fresas. (I love ice cream. I love strawberries.)

Answering someone else's like is one more place where the pattern matters. If Valentina says Me gusta el helado and you like it too, the reply is A mí también (Me too). If she says No me gusta el pescado and you agree, it is A mí tampoco (Me neither). To disagree, flip the word: A mí no (I don't), A mí sí (I do). Yo también is the reply to a sentence whose subject is yo, such as Yo como pizza (I eat pizza). With gustar, the person is a mí, so the reply is too.

Words that change from country to country

Two foods in the video call have other names elsewhere. Maya's papas fritas are the Latin American word; in Spain the potato is la patata, so the fries are las patatas fritas. And Valentina's fresas would be frutillas in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. A girl in Buenos Aires would say Me encantan las frutillas.

Liking people: me cae bien

Gustar works with people too, but carefully. Wiktionary's entry gives Me gusta Olivia the sense I like Olivia romantically, so Me gusta Pablo, said about a classmate, can sound like a crush. To say that you like someone as a friend, a teacher or a cousin, Spanish uses caer bien (kah-EHR byehn), which is built exactly like gustar, with the person liked as the subject:

• Me cae bien tu amiga. (I like your friend.)
• Me caen bien tus primos. (I like your cousins.)
• ¿Te cae bien la nueva profesora? (Do you like the new teacher?)

Common misconceptions

• Gustar means to like, so it conjugates like hablar: yo gusto. It works like to be pleasing. The thing liked is the subject: Me gustan los tacos.
• Me gusta is a fixed phrase that never changes. The verb agrees with the thing liked: gusta for one thing, gustan for more than one.
• Two activities need gustan. Activities always take gusta: Me gusta nadar y leer.
• Once you name the person, the le can go. It stays, and the name takes an a: A Nico le gusta el fútbol.
• Me gusta chocolate, with no article. Spanish keeps the article after verbs of liking: Me gusta el chocolate.
• Me gusta is the way to say you like a classmate. For a friend or a teacher, say me cae bien.

Your likes aloud, then in writing

Say it. Play Maya and Valentina's game aloud with yourself or a partner: ask ¿Te gusta...? or ¿Te gustan...? about six foods and four hobbies, answer each in a full sentence, and answer back with a mí también, a mí tampoco, a mí sí or a mí no. Then say one thing each person in your family likes, starting A mi madre le gusta... or A mis hermanos les gustan...

Write it. The activity below asks you to choose the right pieces for gustar, repair five sentences, and write your own likes and dislikes.

Looking back

• Gustar works like to please: the thing liked is the subject, and the person is shown by me, te, le, nos, os or les.
• Gusta for one thing or for any number of activities; gustan for two or more things.
• Name the person with a, and keep the short word too: A Nico le gusta el fútbol. A mí, a ti and the rest add emphasis or clarity.
• Keep the article: me gusta el chocolate. Say how much with mucho, un poco and no... nada; say what you love with me encanta.
• Reply with a mí también, a mí tampoco, a mí sí or a mí no.
• For people you like as friends, use me cae bien.
• Papas fritas in Latin America are patatas fritas in Spain; fresas are frutillas in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay.

Sources

1. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 8.7: Gramática: El verbo gustar + sustantivos. In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
2. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 6.14: Gramática: El verbo gustar + infinitivo. In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
3. Larsen Serigos, J., and Trovato, A. (n.d.). Definite articles (to express likes and dislikes). In Spanish Grammar in Context. COERLL, The University of Texas at Austin. grammar.spanishintexas.org
4. Larsen Serigos, J., and Trovato, A. (n.d.). Indirect object pronouns. In Spanish Grammar in Context. COERLL, The University of Texas at Austin. grammar.spanishintexas.org
5. Wiktionary contributors. (n.d.). gustar (Spanish: structure and usage notes, the romantic sense, and caer bien for liking a person). Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org

Ten euros, two breakfasts, one menu

At half past nine on a Saturday morning in April, Maya and her father sit down at a small round table in a café two streets from the Puerta del Sol, the square at the centre of Madrid. Her father puts a ten-euro note on the table and sets her a challenge: order breakfast for both of them, in Spanish, without going over ten euros. The waiter brings la carta (lah KAHR-tah), the menu. Here it is. The café and its prices are invented for this lesson.

That leaves Maya two problems. What do these prices mean, with commas in them? And which two breakfasts fit inside ten euros?

Reading a price with a comma in it

The first surprise is the comma. In Spain, as in much of Europe, a comma does the job of the English decimal point, so 1,80 € is one euro and eighty cents, the amount an English menu would write as €1.80. Mexico, like the United States, uses a point, so the comma deserves a second look whenever you read a price in Spain. And the euro sign, €, comes after the number: English puts it in front, but the European Union's own style guide puts it after the amount in most other languages. A euro is divided into one hundred cents, called céntimos (SEHN-tee-mohs) in Spain.

To say a price aloud, give the euros, then the cents, with or without con (with) between them. El euro (ehl EHW-roh, with the e and the u sliding into one beat) is masculine, so one euro is un euro, just as Lesson 4 gave you un libro, and twenty-one euros is veintiún euros.

When everybody already knows the price is in euros, you may hear only the two numbers: dos noventa (two ninety).

Doing the sums in Spanish

Maya's first plan is everything she likes best: for herself, the chocolate and the churros; for her father, a café con leche, an orange juice and a ham sandwich. She adds it up the way Leo's maths teacher did in Lesson 4, with más (plus) and son (equals).

• Dos euros cincuenta más dos noventa son cinco euros cuarenta. (Two fifty plus two ninety is five forty.)
• Un euro ochenta más tres veinte más cuatro cincuenta son nueve euros cincuenta. (One eighty plus three twenty plus four fifty is nine fifty.)
• Cinco cuarenta más nueve cincuenta son catorce euros noventa. (Five forty plus nine fifty is fourteen ninety.)

Catorce noventa: almost five euros too much. Her father's juice and sandwich are the problem, so she swaps both for one tostada con tomate.

• Un euro ochenta más dos cuarenta son cuatro euros veinte. (One eighty plus two forty is four twenty.)
• Cinco cuarenta más cuatro veinte son nueve euros sesenta. (Five forty plus four twenty is nine sixty.)
• Diez menos nueve sesenta son cuarenta céntimos. (Ten minus nine sixty is forty cents.)

Nueve sesenta. It fits, with forty cents to spare.

In short: read the comma as a decimal point, say the euros before the cents, and do the sum before you order, not after.

Ordering, with a waiter who says vosotros

• Camarero: Buenos días. ¿Qué tomáis? (Good morning. What will you have?)
• Maya: Buenos días. Para mí, un chocolate caliente y una ración de churros, por favor. (Good morning. For me, a hot chocolate and a serving of churros, please.)
• Camarero: Muy bien. ¿Y para el señor? (Very good. And for the gentleman?)
• Maya: Para mi padre, un café con leche y una tostada con tomate. (For my father, a coffee with milk and toast with tomato.)
• Papá: Gracias, hija. (Thanks, sweetheart. Word for word: thanks, daughter.)
• Camarero: ¿Algo más? (Anything else?)
• Maya: No, nada más, gracias. (No, nothing else, thank you.)

Twenty minutes later the churros are gone, and Maya catches the waiter's eye.

• Maya: Perdone, ¿nos trae la cuenta, por favor? (Excuse me, could you bring us the bill, please?)
• Camarero: Ahora mismo. (Right away.)
• Maya: ¿Cuánto es? (How much is it?)
• Camarero: Son nueve euros con sesenta. (That's nine euros sixty.)
• Maya: Aquí tiene. (Here you are.)
• Camarero: Y aquí tiene la vuelta, cuarenta céntimos. ¡Gracias! (And here's your change, forty cents. Thank you!)
• Maya: Gracias a usted. ¡Adiós! (Thank you. Goodbye!)

Four things in that conversation are worth slowing down for.

• ¿Qué tomáis? Tomar (toh-MAHR) means to take, and in a café it means to have. Tomáis is its vosotros form: the waiter is speaking to Maya and her father together, the way Lesson 3 said people in Spain speak to a group. In Mexico City the same question to two people would be ¿Qué toman?, with the ustedes form.
• Para mí and para mi padre. The accent mark is the whole difference between for me and for my, as Lesson 2 showed: mí is me, mi is my.
• Perdone (pehr-DOH-neh) is a polite way to catch someone's attention, using the usted form of the verb behind the perdón of Lesson 3. ¿Nos trae la cuenta? (nohs TRAH-eh lah KWEHN-tah) is word for word do you bring us the bill?, and it is the usual way to ask for it.
• ¿Cuánto es? (KWAHN-toh ehs), how much is it?, is the same question Leo's teacher asked about sums in Lesson 4. The answer starts with son, because a price of more than one euro is plural: Son nueve euros con sesenta. For exactly one euro, it is Es un euro.

Listen to the waiter, too. He is from Madrid, so he says gracias as GRAH-thyahs, with the th of think, the distinción of Lesson 1. Maya keeps her s, GRAH-syahs, and he understands her perfectly.

The words of the café

Paying in euros, and checking the change

Maya's change arrives as two coins of twenty céntimos. Euro coins come in eight values, according to the European Central Bank: 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 and 50 céntimos, and 1 and 2 euros. Every coin has one side shared by all the countries that use the euro and a national side showing the country that issued it, so a coin made in Spain looks different on one face from a coin made in France. The bank is clear that this makes no difference to spending: any euro coin can be used anywhere in the euro area.

Checking change is the same sum backwards. Say what you paid, take away the price, and say what should come back: Diez euros menos nueve sesenta son cuarenta céntimos (Ten euros minus nine sixty is forty cents).

The same breakfast in Mexico City

The following month Leo and his mother stop at a café near their apartment in Mexico City. Listen for what changes.

• Mesero: Buenos días. ¿Qué desean? (Good morning. What would you like?)
• Leo: Quisiera un chocolate caliente y unos churros, por favor. (I'd like a hot chocolate and some churros, please.)
• Tía Carmen: Para mí, un café con leche y un jugo de naranja. (For me, a coffee with milk and an orange juice.)
• Leo: ¿Nos trae la cuenta, por favor? (Could you bring us the bill, please?)
• Mesero: Son ciento veinte pesos. (That's a hundred and twenty pesos.)
• Leo: Aquí tiene. (Here you are.)
• Mesero: Aquí está su cambio. (Here's your change.)

Leo uses one new word, quisiera (kee-SYEH-rah), I would like. It is a soft, polite way to begin an order, and it works in any Spanish-speaking country.

Wiktionary marks camarero as the word for waiter in Spain, and mesero as the word in Mexico, Central America and parts of South America; it lists vuelta, cambio and vuelto as words for change. Zumo and jugo, and bocadillo and torta, are old friends from Lesson 13. Every one of these words is understood in both cities. Using the local one simply makes you sound as if you belong.

A famous cup of chocolate

If Maya's father wanted the best-known chocolate con churros in Madrid, he would walk to the Chocolatería de San Ginés, in a narrow passage right next to the Puerta del Sol. Madrid's official tourism website calls it the city's most famous café for chocolate con churros and says it has served them since 1894. Their chocolate comes in una taza (OO-nah TAH-sah), a cup, and the churros are for dipping.

Common misconceptions

• 2,50 € is two hundred and fifty euros. In Spain the comma is the decimal point: two euros fifty. A thousand is written without a comma.
• Dos euro. Euro has a plural like any noun: un euro, dos euros, veintiún euros.
• Para mi un café. For me needs the accent mark: para mí. Without it, mi means my.
• The waiter is always el camarero. That is Spain. In Mexico it is el mesero, and both are understood everywhere.
• ¿Qué tomáis? is a mistake for ¿Qué toman? It is the vosotros form, normal in Spain for a group, and you should expect to hear it there.

Your order: aloud, then on paper

Say it. Read every price on the menu aloud, in euros and céntimos. Then play both parts of the café conversation: order for yourself and for one other person with para mí and para mi..., ask ¿Algo más? as the waiter, ask for the bill, say the total, and count back the change.

Write it. The activity below asks you to write prices in words, plan a breakfast for two that fits a budget, and write the whole conversation with the waiter.

Summing up

• In Spain, 1,80 € means one euro eighty: a decimal comma and the sign after the number. One euro is a hundred céntimos.
• Say euros first, then cents: dos euros (con) cincuenta. Euro is masculine: un euro, veintiún euros.
• Add with más and son, take away with menos, and check the total before you order.
• Order with para mí, para mi padre or quisiera, end with por favor, and answer ¿Algo más? with nada más, gracias.
• Ask for the bill with ¿Nos trae la cuenta, por favor? and the price with ¿Cuánto es?
• Madrid: el camarero, el zumo, el bocadillo, la vuelta, ¿Qué tomáis? Mexico City: el mesero, el jugo, la torta, el cambio, ¿Qué desean?

Sources

1. Madrid Destino, Ayuntamiento de Madrid. (n.d.). Chocolatería de San Ginés. esMADRID, official tourism website of Madrid. esmadrid.com
2. European Central Bank. (n.d.). Coins (the eight denominations, the common and national sides, and use anywhere in the euro area). ecb.europa.eu
3. Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Decimal separator (countries using the decimal comma, including Spain, and the decimal point, including Mexico). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
4. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 10.3: Vocabulario: Comida (drinks, cups and meals). In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
5. Wiktionary contributors. (n.d.). camarero (Spain: waiter; synonyms mesero, mozo); vuelta (change, with cambio and vuelto). Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org

Twelve days in May, and one cat nobody can find

For twelve days at the beginning of May, people in the old quarter of Córdoba, a city in the south of Spain, open their patios to anyone who wants to walk in and look at the flowers. On the first Saturday of the fiesta, Maya and her father arrive by train from Madrid to stay with her father's old friend Pilar and Pilar's daughter Lucía, who is twelve. Lucía meets Maya at the door looking worried.

• Lucía: ¡Hola, Maya! ¡Bienvenida! Esta es mi casa. (Hi, Maya! Welcome! This is my house.)
• Maya: ¡Hola! ¿Qué pasa? (Hi! What's the matter?)
• Lucía: No encuentro a Mora, mi gata. ¿Me ayudas? Te enseño la casa y buscamos a Mora. (I can't find Mora, my cat. Will you help me? I'll show you the house and we'll look for Mora.)

So the tour of the house turns into a search, room by room. Two verbs do almost all the work: hay, which says what there is in each room, and estar, which says where something is.

First stop: the patio

• Lucía: Primero, el patio. En el patio hay una fuente y muchas macetas con flores. (First, the patio. In the patio there is a fountain and lots of flowerpots with flowers.)
• Maya: ¡Qué bonito! ¿Cuántas macetas hay? (How pretty! How many flowerpots are there?)
• Lucía: Hay más de cien. Mi abuela cuida las plantas todo el año. (There are more than a hundred. My grandmother looks after the plants all year.)
• Maya: ¿Mora está en el patio? (Is Mora in the patio?)
• Lucía: No, no está aquí. Hay mucha gente en el patio hoy, por la fiesta. (No, she isn't here. There are lots of people in the patio today, because of the fiesta.)

You met hay (eye, like the English word eye) in Lesson 7: it means there is or there are. A patio (PAH-tyoh) in Córdoba is an open courtyard inside the house, with the rooms around it, and una maceta (mah-SEH-tah) is a flowerpot. Lucía is from Spain, so she says it mah-THEH-tah, with the th of think.

Downstairs: the kitchen, the dining room and the living room

• Lucía: Esta es la cocina. Hay una mesa, cuatro sillas y una nevera grande. (This is the kitchen. There is a table, four chairs and a big fridge.)
• Maya: ¿Está Mora debajo de la mesa? (Is Mora under the table?)
• Lucía: No. Al lado de la cocina está el comedor, y enfrente del comedor está el salón. (No. Next to the kitchen is the dining room, and opposite the dining room is the living room.)
• Maya: En el salón hay un sofá, un sillón y una televisión. ¡Pero no hay gata! (In the living room there is a sofa, an armchair and a television. But there's no cat!)
• Lucía: Mora no está encima del sofá, y no está detrás del sillón. (Mora isn't on the sofa, and she isn't behind the armchair.)

Upstairs: the bedrooms and the bathroom

• Lucía: Arriba hay tres dormitorios y un baño. (Upstairs there are three bedrooms and a bathroom.)
• Lucía: Mi dormitorio está a la derecha del baño. En mi dormitorio hay una cama, un armario, una mesa y una lámpara. (My bedroom is to the right of the bathroom. In my bedroom there is a bed, a wardrobe, a desk and a lamp.)
• Maya: ¿Mora está debajo de la cama? (Is Mora under the bed?)
• Lucía: ¡No! Y no está en el armario. ¿Dónde está? (No! And she's not in the wardrobe. Where is she?)

Back to the patio

Downstairs again, Maya hears a small sound from the corner of the patio, where the biggest flowerpots stand together.

• Maya: ¡Lucía, mira! Mora está allí, en una maceta grande, entre las flores, detrás de la fuente. (Lucía, look! Mora is over there, in a big flowerpot, among the flowers, behind the fountain.)
• Lucía: ¡Mora! ¡Qué gata tan mala! (Mora! What a naughty cat!)
• Abuela: Las gatas siempre están donde están las flores. (Cats are always where the flowers are.)

The rooms and the furniture

Pilar's house also has the rooms the ¡Chévere! textbook lists for any house: la cocina, el comedor, el baño, el dormitorio, and a living room it calls la sala. Lucía says el salón for the same room, and both words are correct.

Hay: what there is

Hay comes from the verb haber, and the Spanish Grammar in Context reference from the University of Texas makes the point that matters most: in this meaning, there is or there are, it has a single form. English changes is to are; Spanish does not.

• Hay una fuente. (There is a fountain.)
• Hay tres dormitorios. (There are three bedrooms.)
• ¿Cuántas macetas hay? (How many flowerpots are there?)
• No hay ascensor. (There's no lift.)

Notice what follows hay: un, una, a number, a word like mucha or muchas, or a noun with no article at all, as in No hay ascensor. Hay introduces things. It tells the listener that something exists in a place, often something they did not know about.

Estar: where someone or something is

Lucía's other verb is estar, the verb of Lesson 10, which the ¡Chévere! textbook uses for the location of people and things. Here are its forms again.

Unlike hay, estar changes with its subject: one cat está, four chairs están. And its subject is usually a particular person or thing that both speakers already know about: Mora, mi dormitorio, las sillas, el baño.

Hay or está? The test Lucía passed

Put the two verbs side by side and the difference is clear.

What matters here: hay introduces something, usually with un, una, a number or no article. Estar locates something already known, usually with el, la, a possessive like mi, or a name. So you will hear Hay un gato, but El gato está, and never Hay el gato.

One more case finishes the picture. Lesson 12 showed that an event, like a class, takes ser for where it happens. The same goes for a party or a concert: La fiesta es en el patio (The party is in the patio). People and things take estar; events take ser.

Where exactly: the words of place

Lucía and Maya used a whole set of small phrases to say exactly where Mora was not, and then where she was. Most of them end in de, and when de meets el it becomes del, as Lesson 8 showed: al lado del baño, enfrente del comedor, encima del sofá.

The patios of Córdoba

The fiesta Maya walked into is real. UNESCO, which added the Fiesta of the Patios to its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2012, describes it like this: for twelve days at the beginning of May, Córdoba celebrates its patio houses, homes in the old quarter built around a shared courtyard and filled with plants. During the fiesta the people who live there welcome visitors in for free to admire the patios and the skill it takes to make them, and the patios also host traditional singing, flamenco guitar and dancing. The old centre of the city is itself on UNESCO's World Heritage list, since 1984.

Try describing a patio with this lesson's tools: En el patio hay una fuente. Las macetas están en las paredes. Hay flores rojas, blancas y rosas. (In the patio there is a fountain. The flowerpots are on the walls. There are red, white and pink flowers.) Colours get their own lesson soon; for now, flores rojas is red flowers, with the colour after the noun, the way Lesson 9 placed adjectives.

One room, three names

Bedrooms are the room whose name travels least. Lucía says el dormitorio, which is understood everywhere. Leo, in Mexico City, calls his bedroom la recámara (lah rreh-KAH-mah-rah), the word Wiktionary gives for Mexico, Colombia and Panama, and many speakers say el cuarto or la habitación. If you ask ¿Dónde está el baño?, on the other hand, you will be understood in every Spanish-speaking country.

Common misconceptions

• Hay changes for plurals. It does not: hay una cama, hay tres camas.
• Hay el gato en el patio. A known cat takes estar: El gato está en el patio. Hay goes with un, una, numbers and no article.
• Ser for where a thing is: la cocina es al lado del comedor. Things and people take estar: la cocina está al lado del comedor. Only events, such as La fiesta es en el patio, take ser.
• Debajo la mesa, al lado el baño. The de belongs to the phrase: debajo de la mesa, and de + el makes del: al lado del baño.
• Encima de and enfrente de mean the same. Encima de is on top of; enfrente de is opposite or facing.

Show someone round: aloud, then on paper

Say it. Walk through your own home, or picture it, and say aloud what there is in each room with hay, then where three things are with estar and a word of place: Mi cama está al lado de la ventana. (My bed is next to the window.) Then hide something small, a pencil or a coin, and describe where it is without pointing.

Write it. The activity below asks you to choose between hay and estar, place things with the words of place, and describe a home of your own.

The takeaway

• Rooms: la cocina, el comedor, el salón or la sala, el dormitorio (la recámara in Mexico), el baño, el patio; arriba and abajo.
• Hay means there is or there are and has one form: hay una fuente, hay cien macetas, no hay ascensor.
• Estar says where a known person or thing is, and changes with its subject: Mora está, las sillas están.
• Hay with un, una, numbers or no article; estar with el, la, mi or a name. Never hay el.
• Events take ser for where they happen: La fiesta es en el patio.
• Words of place: en, encima de, debajo de, al lado de, enfrente de, delante de, detrás de, entre, a la derecha de, a la izquierda de, cerca de, lejos de. De + el = del.
• Córdoba's Fiesta of the Patios fills twelve days at the start of May and has been on UNESCO's intangible heritage list since 2012.

Sources

1. UNESCO. (2012). Fiesta of the patios in Cordova (Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, inscribed 2012). ich.unesco.org
2. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 7.3: Vocabulario: En la casa. In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
3. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 7.7: Gramática: El verbo estar + preposiciones / ¿Dónde? In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
4. Larsen Serigos, J., and Trovato, A. (n.d.). Haber: to have, or there is/there are. In Spanish Grammar in Context. COERLL, The University of Texas at Austin. grammar.spanishintexas.org
5. Wiktionary contributors. (n.d.). recámara (Colombia, Mexico, Panama: bedroom; synonyms cuarto, dormitorio, habitación). Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org

Friday, 6:15 in the evening: a group chat called Sábado

At 6:15 on a Friday evening, Leo's phone buzzes with the first message in a group chat that Sofía has just named Sábado (Saturday). Pablo is in it, and so is Maya, back home in Chicago.

• Sofía: ¿Qué vamos a hacer mañana? (What are we going to do tomorrow?)
• Pablo: Yo voy a jugar fútbol en el parque a las diez. Mi equipo va a ganar. (I'm going to play soccer in the park at ten. My team is going to win.)
• Leo: Voy a jugar con ustedes. Después voy a nadar en la alberca del club. (I'm going to play with you. Afterwards I'm going to swim in the club pool.)
• Sofía: Yo no voy a jugar. Por la mañana voy a tocar la guitarra con mi hermano. (I'm not going to play. In the morning I'm going to play the guitar with my brother.)
• Sofía: Pero por la tarde vamos al cine, ¿no? (But in the afternoon we're going to the cinema, right?)
• Pablo: ¡Sí! La película es a las cinco. (Yes! The film is at five.)
• Leo: Maya, ¿qué vas a hacer tú? (Maya, what are you going to do?)
• Maya: Mañana voy a andar en bicicleta con Nico, y el domingo vamos a ver un partido de béisbol con mi papá. (Tomorrow I'm going to ride my bike with Nico, and on Sunday we're going to watch a baseball game with my dad.)
• Leo: ¡Qué bien! Y la semana que viene, ¿vas a jugar videojuegos con nosotros en línea? (Great! And next week, are you going to play video games with us online?)
• Maya: ¡Claro! (Of course!)

Almost every message has the same shape: a form of ir (eer), to go, then the little word a, then a verb in the infinitive. Voy a jugar, I'm going to play. Vas a hacer, you're going to do. Vamos a ver, we're going to watch. That shape is how Spanish talks about plans, and this lesson builds it step by step, the way Lesson 11 built the present tense.

First, ir itself

Lesson 14 warned that ir ends in -ir but follows no table: it is irregular in every form. Here are its present-tense forms, which you need for everything else in this lesson.

Voy rhymes with the English word boy, because the v is said like b, as always. When ir takes you to a place, the place comes after a, and a + el squeezes into al, as Lesson 14 showed: al parque, al cine, but a la alberca, a la escuela. To ask where someone is going, use ¿Adónde? (ah-DOHN-deh), to where: ¿Adónde vas? (Where are you going?)

The procedure: four steps from an idea to a plan

The ¡Chévere! textbook sums up the rule in one line: in this kind of sentence you only conjugate ir. Everything after it stays as it is in the dictionary, because a verb that comes after a little word like a is always an infinitive. The Spanish Grammar in Context reference from the University of Texas calls the result the periphrastic future: ir + a + infinitive. Periphrastic just means built from several words instead of one. In practice it takes four steps.

1. Who is going to do it? Choose the form of ir: voy, vas, va, vamos, vais or van.
2. Add a. It is never left out.
3. Add the activity as an infinitive, unchanged: jugar, nadar, ver, comer, escribir.
4. Add when, and where if you like: mañana, el sábado, a las diez, en el parque.

Worked example one: I'm going to play soccer on Saturday morning

1. Who? I am, so voy.
2. Add a: voy a.
3. The activity is to play soccer, jugar fútbol, as an infinitive: voy a jugar fútbol.
4. When? On Saturday morning, el sábado por la mañana. The time can go at the start or at the end: El sábado por la mañana voy a jugar fútbol. (On Saturday morning I'm going to play soccer.)

Only voy changed to fit the speaker. Jugar stayed jugar.

Worked example two: change one input, and watch what happens

Now run the same procedure three more times, changing one thing each time.

• Change who. Pablo and his team, not you: step 1 gives van, and nothing else moves. Pablo y su equipo van a jugar fútbol el sábado. (Pablo and his team are going to play soccer on Saturday.)
• Make it negative. No goes in front of the form of ir, and the rest stays: No voy a jugar fútbol el sábado. (I'm not going to play soccer on Saturday.) Sofía wrote exactly that: Yo no voy a jugar.
• Make it a question. Keep the words, add the marks and raise your voice at the end: ¿Vas a jugar fútbol el sábado? (Are you going to play soccer on Saturday?)

One change flips the meaning of the whole sentence: putting a place after a instead of a verb. Voy a nadar (I'm going to swim) is a plan. Voy a la alberca (I'm going to the pool) is a trip. Voy a la alberca a nadar (I'm going to the pool to swim) is both. So when you read voy a, look at the next word: a verb in the infinitive means a plan, and a place means a destination.

The upshot: conjugate ir for the person, keep the a, and leave the next verb in the infinitive. A place after a turns the plan into a journey.

Words for when

A plan needs a time. The ¡Chévere! textbook lists these as the useful words for talking about the future.

Mañana has two meanings that sit happily together: la mañana is the morning, and mañana alone is tomorrow, so mañana por la mañana is tomorrow morning. With days, the article does the work, as in Lesson 5: el sábado is on Saturday, this coming one.

Jugar: one set of forms to learn by heart

Pablo, Leo and Leo's online friends all use jugar (hoo-GAHR), to play a sport or a game. It ends in -ar, but in four of its forms the u becomes ue, so it is easiest to learn as a set.

The ue appears exactly where the push of the voice lands on the stem: JUE-go, but ju-GA-mos. After ir a, of course, none of this matters, because the verb stays jugar: Voy a jugar. And watch the yo form. It is juego. Jugo is a different word altogether, the juice of Lesson 13.

Jugar or tocar: two kinds of play

English plays soccer and plays the guitar with the same verb. Spanish does not. Jugar is for sports and games; for an instrument the verb is tocar (toh-KAHR), to touch or to play, the verb the ¡Chévere! hobbies list uses for tocar el piano and tocar la guitarra. Wiktionary lists playing an instrument as a meaning of jugar only in the Spanish of Louisiana, with tocar as the verb to use instead.

• Juego fútbol los sábados. (I play soccer on Saturdays.)
• Sofía toca la guitarra. (Sofía plays the guitar.)
• Jugamos un juego de mesa. (We play a board game.)

You will also hear two ways to name the sport. Leo says jugar fútbol; Lucía in Córdoba would say jugar al fútbol, with a + el. Both are understood everywhere, and the ¡Chévere! list itself shows both patterns: jugar videojuegos with no a, and jugar a los bolos (to go bowling) with one.

Sports and hobbies from the chat

In guitarra the u is silent, as in the Guillermo of Lesson 1: gee-TAH-rrah. And in béisbol the e and i share one beat, like the ay in say.

Piscina, alberca, pileta

Leo swims in la alberca, which is the Mexican word for a swimming pool according to Wiktionary. In Spain, and in many other places, it is la piscina (pee-SEE-nah). In Argentina it is la pileta (pee-LEH-tah). Three words, one pool, and you now know all of them.

Common misconceptions

• Voy a juego. Only ir is conjugated; the second verb stays an infinitive: Voy a jugar.
• Voy jugar. The a cannot be dropped: Voy a jugar.
• Jugar la guitarra. Instruments take tocar: Toco la guitarra.
• Yo jugo. The yo form of jugar is juego. Jugo means juice.
• Voy a el parque. A + el always join: Voy al parque.
• Voy a no jugar for I'm not going to play. The no goes in front of the form of ir: No voy a jugar.

Your weekend: aloud, then on paper

Say it. Read the group chat aloud, taking each part in turn. Then say five plans of your own for this weekend, each with a time word: Mañana voy a... El domingo por la tarde voy a... Turn two of them into negatives and one into a question for a friend. Last, conjugate jugar aloud from juego to juegan, stressing the ue.

Write it. The activity below asks you to build plans with ir a, choose between jugar and tocar, and write a message about your weekend.

Recap

• Ir: voy, vas, va, vamos, vais, van. Going to a place: Voy al parque, Vamos a la alberca. ¿Adónde vas?
• Plans: a form of ir + a + infinitive. Only ir changes: Voy a jugar, Vamos a ver, Van a ganar.
• Negative: No voy a jugar. Question: ¿Vas a jugar?
• After voy a, a verb means a plan and a place means a destination.
• Time words: esta tarde, esta noche, mañana, pasado mañana, el sábado, la semana que viene, el próximo año, el fin de semana.
• Jugar: juego, juegas, juega, jugamos, jugáis, juegan, for sports and games. Tocar for instruments.
• A swimming pool is la piscina in Spain, la alberca in Mexico and la pileta in Argentina.

Sources

1. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 7.11: Gramática: Ir + a + infinitivo (with useful vocabulary for talking about the future). In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
2. Larsen Serigos, J., and Trovato, A. (n.d.). Future (the periphrastic future, ir + a + infinitive). In Spanish Grammar in Context. COERLL, The University of Texas at Austin. grammar.spanishintexas.org
3. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 8.3: Vocabulario: Los pasatiempos. In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
4. Wiktionary contributors. (n.d.). jugar (present-tense forms; tocar for instruments). Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
5. Wiktionary contributors. (n.d.). alberca (Mexico: swimming pool; synonym piscina). Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org

A suitcase full of shorts

On the evening of 30 June, Leo lays out his suitcase on the bed in Mexico City. His soccer team flies to Buenos Aires, in Argentina, on 3 July for a youth tournament, and he has written his packing list on the back of an envelope.

• seis playeras (six T-shirts)
• cuatro pantalones cortos (four pairs of shorts)
• un traje de baño (a swimsuit)
• unos tenis (a pair of sneakers)
• una gorra (a baseball cap)
• la camiseta del equipo (the team shirt)

Sofía, who has come round to say goodbye, reads the list and starts to laugh.

• Sofía: Leo, ¿qué tiempo hace en Buenos Aires en julio? (Leo, what's the weather like in Buenos Aires in July?)
• Leo: Hace calor, ¿no? Es verano. (It's hot, isn't it? It's summer.)
• Sofía: ¡No! En Buenos Aires, julio es invierno. (No! In Buenos Aires, July is winter.)

That gives Leo a problem with two halves. First, what will the weather really be, and why is July winter in Argentina? Second, what should he pack instead, and how does he say it in Spanish?

Step 1: what the weather will really be

Sofía finds a forecast for Buenos Aires on her phone, el pronóstico (ehl proh-NOHS-tee-koh), and reads it aloud.

• Sábado: está nublado. Máxima de catorce grados, mínima de seis. (Saturday: it's cloudy. A high of fourteen degrees, a low of six.)
• Domingo: llueve, hace frío y hace viento. (Sunday: it's raining, it's cold and it's windy.)
• Lunes: hace sol, pero hace fresco. (Monday: it's sunny, but it's cool.)

The forecast is made up for this lesson, but its numbers are ordinary for the city. Argentina's national weather service, the Servicio Meteorológico Nacional, measures the climate at its central observatory in Buenos Aires, and its figures for 1991 to 2020 give an average July afternoon high of about 15.5 degrees Celsius, around 60 degrees Fahrenheit, against about 30 degrees, around 86 Fahrenheit, in January. Snow is so rare there that the city centre has seen it only three times since records began in 1906: in 1918, in 1928 and in 2007.

The weather service gives its figures in degrees Celsius, grados (GRAH-dohs), and so does a forecast in Mexico or Spain. Three landmarks will help you until you can feel them: 0 degrees is freezing, 14 is a cool day that needs a jacket, and 30 is a hot one. Hace catorce grados means it's fourteen degrees.

The words for the weather

The ¡Chévere! textbook points out that most weather sentences in Spanish are built with hace (AH-seh), from the verb hacer, to make or to do. Word for word, hace frío is it makes cold. A few are built differently, with está, or with a verb of their own.

Because frío and calor are nouns here, cold and heat, the word for very is mucho, not muy: Hace mucho frío (It's very cold, word for word it makes much cold). And to say that you feel cold, rather than that the weather is cold, Spanish uses tener: Tengo frío (I'm cold, word for word I have cold). Lesson 6 warned that tiempo is time in the sense of how long, and also the weather; in ¿Qué tiempo hace?, the hace tells you it is the weather.

Step 2: why July is winter in Buenos Aires

Leo's mistake is a natural one. In Mexico City, as in Chicago, July falls in summer. But the seasons are not tied to the months. They are tied to where you are on Earth. The planet is tilted, so for half the year the northern half leans towards the Sun and for the other half the southern half does. That is why, as the encyclopedia article on seasons puts it, the Northern and Southern Hemispheres always have opposite seasons: June, July and August are the warmest months in the north, and December, January and February are the warmest in the south. Chicago and Mexico City are north of the equator. Buenos Aires, like Tomás's Valparaíso, is south of it.

Say them: el verano (beh-RAH-noh), el otoño (oh-TOH-nyoh), el invierno (een-BYEHR-noh), la primavera (pree-mah-BEH-rah). Notice otoño has a tilde, like año. One happy result of the table: in Buenos Aires, Christmas comes in the middle of summer.

Why this matters: before you pack, or before you write to a pen pal about the weather, ask which side of the equator they live on. En julio hace frío is true in Buenos Aires and false in Chicago.

Step 3: a new packing list

Leo's mother, tía Carmen, sits down with him and the envelope.

• Tía Carmen: Necesitas ropa de invierno. ¿Qué vas a llevar? (You need winter clothes. What are you going to take?)
• Leo: ¿Un suéter? (A sweater?)
• Tía Carmen: Dos suéteres. Y una chamarra, unos pantalones largos, una bufanda y unos guantes. Y un paraguas, porque llueve. (Two sweaters. And a jacket, a pair of long trousers, a scarf and a pair of gloves. And an umbrella, because it rains.)
• Leo: ¿Guantes? ¡Pero voy a jugar fútbol! (Gloves? But I'm going to play soccer!)
• Tía Carmen: Sí, y después del partido vas a llevar guantes. (Yes, and after the match you're going to wear gloves.)

The verb llevar (yeh-BAHR) did two jobs there. The ¡Chévere! textbook gives it three meanings: to wear, to carry and to bring. ¿Qué vas a llevar? is what are you going to take?; vas a llevar guantes is you're going to wear gloves. It is a regular -ar verb: llevo, llevas, lleva, llevamos, lleváis, llevan.

Here is the new list, with a colour for everything, because Leo's mother likes to know which bag holds what.

• dos suéteres verdes (two green sweaters)
• una chamarra roja (a red jacket)
• dos pantalones largos negros (two pairs of black trousers)
• unos pantalones cortos azules, para jugar (a pair of blue shorts, for playing)
• una bufanda gris y unos guantes negros (a grey scarf and a pair of black gloves)
• tres playeras blancas (three white T-shirts)
• unos tenis blancos y unas botas marrones (a pair of white sneakers and a pair of brown boots)
• un paraguas amarillo (a yellow umbrella)
• la camiseta del equipo (the team shirt)

Leo uses camiseta only for the team shirt. For an everyday T-shirt he says playera, the word Wiktionary gives for Mexico and Guatemala, and for his jacket he says chamarra, the Mexican word for it. In Mexico, use chamarra for a jacket.

Colours, and how they agree

Colours are adjectives, so they follow the rules of Lesson 9: they come after the noun, and they agree with it. Most colours have four forms. A few, which do not end in o, have two.

To ask about colour, say ¿De qué color es...? (What colour is...?): ¿De qué color es tu chamarra? Es roja. (What colour is your jacket? It's red.) Watch the plurals that change spelling: marrón loses its accent mark in marrones, because the push stays on the same syllable and the word now ends in s, the rule of Lesson 2. Leo will also learn one new colour word in Argentina: the light blue stripes of the Argentine flag are celeste (seh-LEHS-teh), sky blue.

Arriving: new words for old clothes

In Buenos Aires, Leo stays with the family of Facundo, a boy on the home team. It is eight degrees at the airport.

• Facundo: ¡Hola, Leo! ¡Qué frío! ¿Tenés campera? (Hi, Leo! How cold! Have you got a jacket?)
• Leo: ¿Campera? Tengo una chamarra, sí. (Campera? I've got a jacket, yes.)
• Facundo: Eso, una campera. Mañana, para el partido, llevamos una remera debajo de la camiseta del equipo. (That's it, a jacket. Tomorrow, for the match, we wear a T-shirt under the team shirt.)
• Leo: ¿Remera? ¡Ah, una playera! (Remera? Oh, a T-shirt!)

Facundo's tenés is the vos form of tener, the Argentine you that Lesson 21 explains. And his two clothes words are the local ones. Wiktionary lists la campera for a jacket in Argentina and Uruguay, and la remera for a T-shirt around the Río de la Plata.

Common misconceptions

• Es frío or está frío for the weather. Weather takes hace: Hace frío. Está works only in a few fixed phrases, like está nublado.
• Hace muy frío. Frío is a noun here, so the word is mucho: Hace mucho frío.
• July is summer everywhere. South of the equator, in Buenos Aires or Valparaíso, July is winter and January is summer.
• Una chamarra rojo, unos guantes negro. Colours agree with the noun: una chamarra roja, unos guantes negros.
• Estoy frío for I'm cold. Say Tengo frío. Hace frío is the weather.
• Camiseta is the T-shirt everywhere. It is in Spain; Mexico says playera and Argentina says remera.

Weather and wardrobe: aloud, then on paper

Say it. Look out of the window and answer ¿Qué tiempo hace? in two or three sentences, with a temperature in grados if you know it. Then say what you are wearing today, with colours: Llevo una playera azul, unos pantalones negros y unos tenis blancos. (I'm wearing a blue T-shirt, black trousers and white sneakers.) Last, say what the season is where you are, and what it is in Buenos Aires right now.

Write it. The activity below asks you to write weather reports, make colours agree, and write a message to someone on the other side of the equator.

What to carry forward

• ¿Qué tiempo hace? Hace calor, frío, fresco, sol, viento, buen tiempo, mal tiempo. Está nublado. Llueve. Nieva.
• Very cold is hace mucho frío. Feeling cold is tengo frío. Temperatures are in grados Celsius: hace catorce grados.
• The seasons, el verano, el otoño, el invierno and la primavera, are opposite in the two hemispheres. July is winter in Buenos Aires, where July afternoons average about 15 degrees.
• Llevar means to wear, to carry and to bring: llevo una bufanda.
• Colours follow the noun and agree: una chamarra roja, dos suéteres verdes, unas botas marrones.
• T-shirt: camiseta in Spain, playera in Mexico, remera in Argentina. Jacket: chaqueta in Spain, chamarra in Mexico, campera in Argentina.

Sources

1. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 6.10: Vocabulario: El clima (weather expressions with hace, and the seasons). In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
2. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 6.3: Vocabulario: La ropa (articles of clothing, and llevar). In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
3. Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Climate of Buenos Aires (Servicio Meteorológico Nacional climatological normals, 1991-2020, and snowfall since 1906). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
4. Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Season (opposite seasons in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
5. Wiktionary contributors. (n.d.). chaqueta (synonyms: Mexico chamarra; Argentina and Uruguay campera). Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org

Twelve questions for a video call

Señor Ruiz's class has a video call booked with Tomás in Valparaíso for 3:30 on Thursday, Chicago time, and every student has written one question for him on a card. Before the call, señor Ruiz reads them through. Here are the first six, with what each student meant.

1. Jamal: ¿Qué es tu nombre? (He meant: What is your name?)
2. Ana: ¿Donde vives? (She meant: Where do you live?)
3. Kevin: ¿Dónde eres de? (He meant: Where are you from?)
4. Lily: ¿Por que te gusta Valparaíso? (She meant: Why do you like Valparaíso?)
5. Marcus: ¿Cuántos hermanas tienes? and Sara: ¿Quién son tus amigos? (They meant: How many sisters do you have? Who are your friends?)
6. Diego: ¿Dónde tu mamá trabaja? (He meant: Where does your mom work?)

Every card can be understood, and every one has a bug. Each bug comes from a reasonable idea about how questions work, usually an idea borrowed from English, and each breaks at a different point. This lesson traces them in order. By the end you will have all the question words of Spanish, and the rules that hold them in place.

Bug 1: ¿Qué es tu nombre?, and qué against cuál

Jamal's reasoning: what is qué, is is es, your name is tu nombre. Word by word, perfect. The step that fails is the first. When a question is built with ser, ¿Qué es...? asks for a definition, what kind of thing something is: ¿Qué es un ascensor? (What is an ascensor?) The ¡Chévere! textbook describes ¿Qué? as asking for the definition of a noun. Tomás is not going to define the word name. To ask which one, out of all the possible answers, Spanish uses ¿Cuál? (kwahl):

• ¿Cuál es tu nombre? (What is your name? Word for word: which is your name?)
• ¿Cuál es tu correo electrónico? (What is your email address?)
• ¿Cuál es tu deporte favorito? (What is your favourite sport?)

And for names there is the question you have known since Lesson 3: ¿Cómo te llamas? Before a noun, qué is the safe choice: ¿Qué deporte te gusta? (What sport do you like?) The ¡Chévere! textbook notes that a question like ¿Qué clases tomas? can take either word, with a small difference: qué asks what the classes are, cuáles asks which of all the possible classes are yours. Cuál has a plural, cuáles, for more than one.

Bug 2: ¿Donde vives?, and the accent mark on every question word

Ana's reasoning: dónde is just where, so the accent mark is decoration. But the mark does real work. In the ¡Chévere! textbook's words, all question words carry an accent mark, and when the same words are used to join two parts of a sentence, they do not. Without the mark, donde is the where of a statement: La casa donde vivo es amarilla (The house where I live is yellow). With it, it asks: ¿Dónde vives?

You have seen this pattern twice already. Lesson 2 showed how a mark tells words apart, and Lesson 13's quiz asked whether como meant I eat or how. Here is the full set of pairs.

The mark always sits on the a, e or o of the question word, never on the i or the u: qué, quién, cuál, cuándo, cómo, dónde. And every question opens with ¿ and closes with ?, as Lesson 1 showed.

Bug 3: ¿Dónde eres de?, and the little word in front

Kevin's reasoning is pure English: where are you from, so where first and from at the end. Spanish never leaves a little word like de, con, a or para stranded at the end of a question. It moves to the front, together with the question word.

Linguists call the English habit preposition stranding, and the encyclopedia article on it lists Spanish among the languages that do not allow it. You met the right pattern in your very first lessons: ¿De dónde eres? in Lesson 3 and ¿A qué hora...? in Lesson 6.

Bug 4: ¿Por que...?, and porque

Lily wrote why as one plain word, but why is two words with a mark: ¿Por qué? (pohr KEH), word for word for what? The answer, because, is the opposite: one word and no mark, porque (POHR-keh). The ¡Chévere! textbook flags the pair as one to watch.

• ¿Por qué te gusta Valparaíso? (Why do you like Valparaíso?)
• Porque hay mar, cerros y muchos colores. (Because there's the sea, hills and lots of colours.)

Bug 5: ¿Cuántos hermanas? and ¿Quién son?, and question words that agree

Marcus and Sara both treated their question word as frozen. Three question words change their form. ¿Cuánto? agrees with the noun it asks about, like an adjective, so it has four forms: cuánto, cuánta, cuántos, cuántas. Hermanas is feminine plural, so ¿Cuántas hermanas tienes? ¿Quién? (kyehn) has a plural, ¿Quiénes? (KYEH-nehs), for more than one person, so ¿Quiénes son tus amigos? And as bug 1 showed, ¿Cuál? has ¿Cuáles?

• ¿Cuántos años tienes? (How old are you? Años is masculine plural.)
• ¿Cuántas clases tienes hoy? (How many classes do you have today?)
• ¿Cuánto chocolate hay? (How much chocolate is there?)
• ¿Quién es tu profesora? ¿Quiénes son tus profesores? (Who is your teacher? Who are your teachers?)

Bug 6: ¿Dónde tu mamá trabaja?, and where the verb goes

Diego kept the English order of a statement, your mom works, and put the question word in front. Standard Spanish does something else: the verb comes straight after the question word, and the person, if you name them, comes after the verb.

• ¿Dónde trabaja tu mamá? (Where does your mom work?)
• ¿Qué come Isidora en el almuerzo? (What does Isidora eat at lunch?)
• ¿Cuándo es tu cumpleaños? (When is your birthday?)

Notice, too, that Spanish has nothing like the English do or does. Where does she work? is simply where works she?: ¿Dónde trabaja?

Here a regional difference matters. In the Spanish of the Caribbean, in places such as Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, question-word questions often keep the subject in front of the verb, so you may hear ¿Qué tú quieres? where standard Spanish says ¿Qué quieres tú? (What do you want?). The Wikipedia article on Caribbean Spanish describes exactly this. Recognise it when you hear it; for your own questions, use the standard order.

The core of it: a Spanish question opens with ¿, puts any little word like de or con first, then the question word with its accent mark, then the verb, then the person.

The interview

With the cards fixed, the call goes ahead. Here is part of it.

• Jamal: ¿Cómo te llamas? (What's your name?)
• Tomás: Me llamo Tomás Rojas. (My name is Tomás Rojas.)
• Ana: ¿Dónde vives? (Where do you live?)
• Tomás: Vivo en Valparaíso, en el cerro Concepción. (I live in Valparaíso, on Cerro Concepción.)
• Kevin: ¿De dónde es tu mamá? (Where is your mom from?)
• Tomás: Es de Santiago, la capital. (She's from Santiago, the capital.)
• Lily: ¿Por qué te gusta Valparaíso? (Why do you like Valparaíso?)
• Tomás: Porque hay mar, cerros y muchos colores. (Because there's the sea, hills and lots of colours.)
• Marcus: ¿Cuántas hermanas tienes? (How many sisters do you have?)
• Tomás: Tengo una hermana, Isidora. (I have one sister, Isidora.)
• Sara: ¿Quiénes son tus amigos? (Who are your friends?)
• Tomás: Benjamín y Josefa. Son muy simpáticos. (Benjamín and Josefa. They're very nice.)
• Diego: ¿Dónde trabaja tu mamá? (Where does your mom work?)
• Tomás: Trabaja en casa. Escribe para una revista. (She works at home. She writes for a magazine.)
• Maya: ¿Qué tiempo hace hoy en Valparaíso? (What's the weather like in Valparaíso today?)
• Tomás: Hace frío y llueve. ¡Aquí es invierno! (It's cold and raining. It's winter here!)
• Señor Ruiz: ¿Tienes preguntas para nosotros? (Do you have any questions for us?)
• Tomás: ¡Sí! ¿Cuándo vienen a Chile? (Yes! When are you coming to Chile?)

Tomás's own question uses cuándo, with vienen, the ustedes form of venir, one of the irregular -ir verbs of Lesson 14. Señor Ruiz's question uses no question word at all, and the ¡Chévere! textbook makes the point simply: a question without a question word is a yes or no question. In writing it gets its two marks; in speech, the voice rises at the end: ¿Tienes preguntas?

All the question words

¿Cómo es...? deserves a note: with ser it asks what something or someone is like, as in Lesson 9's ¿Cómo eres? With estar it asks how someone is feeling: ¿Cómo estás?

Common misconceptions

• ¿Qué es tu nombre? is a direct translation, so it must be right. With ser, qué asks for a definition. Say ¿Cuál es tu nombre? or ¿Cómo te llamas?
• The accent mark on question words is optional. It is what makes the word a question word: dónde asks, donde does not.
• ¿Dónde eres de? The little word moves to the front: ¿De dónde eres?
• Porque means why. Porque is because. Why is ¿por qué?, two words with a mark.
• Question words never change. Cuánto agrees with its noun (cuántas hermanas), and quién and cuál have plurals (quiénes, cuáles).
• Spanish needs a word for do in questions. It has none: ¿Dónde trabajas? is where do you work?

Ask away: aloud, then on paper

Say it. Read the interview aloud, taking every part. Then ask yourself one question with each word in the table, and answer it out loud in a full sentence: ¿Cuál es tu color favorito? Mi color favorito es el verde. (What's your favourite colour? My favourite colour is green.) Finish with three yes or no questions, letting your voice rise at the end.

Write it. The activity below asks you to repair six questions, work out the question behind seven answers, and write an interview of your own.

Where this leaves us

• The question words: qué, cuál, quién, dónde, adónde, cuándo, por qué, cómo, cuánto. All carry an accent mark when they ask.
• With ser, ¿Qué es...? asks for a definition and ¿Cuál es...? asks which one: ¿Cuál es tu nombre?
• ¿Por qué? asks why; porque answers because.
• Cuánto agrees with its noun; quién and cuál have the plurals quiénes and cuáles.
• Little words go first (¿De dónde? ¿Con quién? ¿A qué hora?), the verb follows the question word, and Spanish has no do.
• Caribbean Spanish often keeps the subject before the verb: ¿Qué tú quieres?
• A question with no question word expects sí or no, and rises at the end.

Sources

1. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 10.15: Gramática: Todas las preguntas. In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
2. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 4.8: Gramática: Preguntas con ¿qué? y ¿cuál? In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
3. Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Caribbean Spanish (questions without subject-verb inversion: ¿Qué tú quieres?). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
4. Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Preposition stranding (Spanish: stranding not possible). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org

Almost five hundred million first speakers

In 2023 the Instituto Cervantes, which publishes a yearly report on the state of the Spanish language, counted almost 500 million people whose mother tongue is Spanish: 6.2 per cent of everyone alive. Add the people who speak it as a second language and the people learning it, and the total passes 599 million. By number of native speakers, the report ranks Spanish second among the world's languages, after Mandarin Chinese. You have spent this year meeting some of those speakers, in Mexico City, Valparaíso, Madrid, Córdoba and Buenos Aires. This lesson lays them all out on one map and compares how they speak.

The map, described in Spanish

Here is a map of the Spanish-speaking world, described the way a geography teacher in Lima or Madrid might describe it.

• El español es la lengua oficial de veinte países y de Puerto Rico. (Spanish is the official language of twenty countries and of Puerto Rico.)
• En América del Norte está México, el país con más hablantes nativos del mundo. (In North America is Mexico, the country with the most native speakers in the world.)
• Al sur de México está Guatemala. En América Central también están Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica y Panamá. (South of Mexico is Guatemala. In Central America there are also Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama.)
• En el mar Caribe están Cuba, la República Dominicana y Puerto Rico. (In the Caribbean Sea are Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.)
• En América del Sur hay nueve países hispanohablantes: Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Perú, Bolivia, Paraguay, Chile, Argentina y Uruguay. (In South America there are nine Spanish-speaking countries.)
• Bolivia y Paraguay no tienen mar. (Bolivia and Paraguay have no coast.)
• Chile está al oeste de Argentina, y Uruguay está al este. (Chile is to the west of Argentina, and Uruguay is to the east.)
• Al otro lado del océano Atlántico están España, en Europa, y Guinea Ecuatorial, en África. (On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean are Spain, in Europe, and Equatorial Guinea, in Africa.)
• Y en los Estados Unidos viven millones de hispanohablantes. (And millions of Spanish speakers live in the United States.)

Hispanohablante is built like a word puzzle: hispano (Spanish) + habla (speaks) + -nte (one who). And notice that Spanish uses estar for where a country is, exactly as Lesson 17 used it for rooms: Chile está al oeste de Argentina.

Twenty countries and Puerto Rico, side by side

The Instituto Cervantes report lists the same twenty countries and Puerto Rico in its table of Spanish-speaking territories. Here they are, with where each lies and the word for a person from there.

Reading the table, three patterns stand out. First, the ¡Chévere! textbook points out that a nationality is an adjective, so it agrees like the adjectives of Lesson 9: Lucía es española, Facundo es argentino, Tomás e Isidora son chilenos (Lucía is Spanish, Facundo is Argentine, Tomás and Isidora are Chilean). Second, the same textbook notes that countries take capital letters in Spanish but nationalities do not, just as the days and months of Lesson 5 do not: Soy mexicana (I'm Mexican). Third, the nationalities ending in -e have only one form for he and she, like verde: él es nicaragüense, ella es nicaragüense (he is Nicaraguan, she is Nicaraguan). The two dots in nicaragüense are the diéresis of Lesson 1: say the u, nee-kah-rah-GWEHN-seh.

Where the speakers are

The same report counts how many people in each country have native command of Spanish. The four largest groups, in 2023, were these.

Spain, where the language began, comes fourth. And the United States, where Spanish is not an official language at national level, would sit just behind it: the report counts about 41.3 million people there with native command of Spanish and another 15.5 million who speak it with limited competence, and it cites projections that by 2060 the United States will be the second Spanish-speaking country in the world, after Mexico.

Bottom line: Spanish is not the language of one country with a few neighbours. It is official in twenty countries and Puerto Rico, in Europe, in Africa and across the Americas, and Mexico, not Spain, has by far the most native speakers.

Four ways to say you

Lesson 3 promised that you would meet one more word for you in this lesson. Here are all four, compared across three places Leo, Lucía and Facundo call home.

Vos (bohs) takes the place of tú for one friend. According to the encyclopedia article on voseo, it is used widely in Argentina and Uruguay, in Paraguay, in eastern Bolivia, in Chile, and in much of Central America, including El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, as well as in parts of southern Mexico; it is rare in places such as Cuba and Puerto Rico. In Argentina you hear it everywhere, from friends to advertising.

Vos has its own verb forms in the present tense, and they are easy to spot because the push of the voice lands on the last syllable, which carries a written mark. Here are the forms used in Argentina and Uruguay, beside the tú forms you know.

Two things to notice. The stem changes of tienes and juegas disappear with vos: tenés, jugás. And that is how Facundo greeted Leo in Lesson 19: ¿Tenés campera? Chile has vos forms of its own; the voseo article gives soi for you are, so do not be surprised if a friend of Tomás's says it. For your own Spanish, tú is understood everywhere; vos is for recognising, and for using once you live among people who use it.

The words that change, all in one table

All year, this course has pointed out words that change from country to country. Here they are together, with one new one: the bus. Wiktionary's entry for guagua lists the bus words by region, including camión for Mexico, micro for Argentina and Chile, and guagua itself for the Caribbean and the Canary Islands.

Slang changes most of all. Leo's friend Pablo said ¡Qué padre! (How cool!) in Lesson 3, which is Mexican. In Spain the word is guay, and in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Colombia and several other countries it is chévere (CHEH-beh-reh), which Wiktionary marks as slang for terrific or cool. That is why the textbook this course cites so often is called ¡Chévere!

None of these differences stops people understanding each other. A Mexican in Madrid who asks for un jugo gets juice, and a girl from Buenos Aires in Mexico City who asks for una frutilla gets a strawberry and, perhaps, a smile. Knowing the local word is a courtesy, not a test.

Common misconceptions

• Spanish is the language of Spain and Latin America. It is also official in Equatorial Guinea, in Africa, and tens of millions of people speak it in the United States.
• Spain has the most Spanish speakers. Mexico has by far the most; in the Instituto Cervantes figures for 2023, Spain comes fourth, after Colombia and Argentina.
• Vos is old-fashioned or rude. It is the everyday friendly you in Argentina, Uruguay and much of Central America.
• Nationalities take capital letters, as in English. Countries do; nationalities do not: Soy mexicana.
• One country's word is the correct one. Zumo and jugo, camión and autobús are all correct where they are used, and understood almost everywhere.

Your map: aloud, then on paper

Say it. With a map of the Americas in front of you, or one you draw from memory, say where ten Spanish-speaking countries are: México está en América del Norte. Chile está al oeste de Argentina. (Mexico is in North America. Chile is west of Argentina.) Then say the nationality of five people you have met in this course: Tomás es chileno. (Tomás is Chilean.) Last, read the vos table aloud, tú form then vos form, pushing hard on the last syllable of each vos form.

Write it. The activity below asks you to write nationalities, switch sentences from tú to vos, and describe a map of your own.

Putting it together

• Spanish is official in twenty countries and Puerto Rico: Mexico; six in Central America; Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean; nine in South America; Spain; and Equatorial Guinea.
• In 2023 almost 500 million people spoke it as a mother tongue and over 599 million could use it. Mexico has the most native speakers, then Colombia, Argentina and Spain; the United States has over 41 million.
• Map words: el norte, el sur, el este, el oeste, al norte de, al sur de; countries take estar for where they are.
• Nationalities are lowercase adjectives that agree: española, argentino, chilenos; costarricense and nicaragüense have one form.
• Vos replaces tú in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and much of Central America: hablás, comés, vivís, sos, tenés.
• Words change: autobús, camión, micro; zumo, jugo; patata, papa; fresa, frutilla; piscina, alberca, pileta; camiseta, playera, remera; guay, padre, chévere.

Sources

1. Instituto Cervantes. (2023). El español: una lengua viva. Informe 2023 (pp. 5-10: speakers worldwide, Table 1 of Spanish-speaking territories, and Table 2 including the United States). Centro Virtual Cervantes; the PDF is the first report listed on the linked page. cvc.cervantes.es
2. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 5.17: Gramática: Los países y las nacionalidades. In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org
3. Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Voseo (where vos is used, and its present-tense forms). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
4. Wiktionary contributors. (n.d.). guagua (bus words by region: autobús, camión, micro, guagua). Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org
5. Wiktionary contributors. (n.d.). chévere (slang for terrific or cool, with its regions and its synonyms guay, chido and padre). Wiktionary. en.wiktionary.org

Four postcards on the classroom wall

Four postcards reach señor Ruiz's classroom in Chicago in the first week of November, and on the 3rd he pins them round a map of the Americas on the wall: one from Valentina in Mexico City, one from a girl called Camila in Lima, one from Facundo in Buenos Aires, and one from a boy called Mateo in Quito, who has drawn a map on the back of his. Maya's job is to read all four and pin a string from each to the right place on the map. A year ago she could not have read a word of them. Now she can read almost everything, and this lesson follows her through it.

How Maya reads: three habits

Before the first postcard, Maya reminds herself of three habits that make a new text easier.

• Hunt for cognates. Many Spanish words look like their English partners: región (region), océano (ocean), capital, cementerio (cemetery), favorita (favourite), gigantes (giant). Read them as friends and keep going.
• Watch for false friends. A few lookalikes mean something else, like asistir (to attend) in Lesson 14. Today's is recordar (rreh-kohr-DAHR): it means to remember, not to record.
• Read twice. The first time, cover the English in brackets with your hand and guess. The second time, uncover it and check. Every sentence below has its translation in brackets, so nothing is left a mystery.

Postcard 1: Mexico City, the Day of the Dead

• ¡Hola, Maya! Hoy es el dos de noviembre, el Día de Muertos. (Hi, Maya! Today is the second of November, the Day of the Dead.)
• En México celebramos el Día de Muertos el primero y el dos de noviembre. (In Mexico we celebrate the Day of the Dead on the first and second of November.)
• El primero es para los niños y el dos es para los adultos. (The first is for children and the second is for adults.)
• En mi casa hay una ofrenda para mi abuelo. (In my house there is an ofrenda, an offering, for my grandfather.)
• En la ofrenda hay fotos, velas, flores de cempasúchil y la comida favorita de mi abuelo: ¡tamales! (On the ofrenda there are photos, candles, cempasúchil flowers and my grandfather's favourite food: tamales!)
• Las flores de cempasúchil tienen un olor especial. (Cempasúchil flowers have a special smell.)
• Esta noche mi familia y yo vamos a ir al cementerio. (Tonight my family and I are going to go to the cemetery.)
• Para nosotros es un día para recordar. (For us it is a day for remembering.)
• Un abrazo, Valentina (A hug, Valentina)

Valentina's facts match the official ones. Mexico's education ministry, the Secretaría de Educación Pública, explains in its material for schoolchildren that the Day of the Dead is held on 1 and 2 November, with the first day for children who have died and the second for adults, and that the cempasúchil flower, with its typical scent, decorates the altars. UNESCO, which added the festivity to its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008, describes families welcoming the souls of their dead relatives back for a visit, laying flower petals, candles and offerings along the path from the cemetery to their homes, and placing the person's favourite dishes beside the home altar and the grave, with flowers and paper cut-outs.

Reading check. ¿Cuándo es el Día de Muertos? (When is the Day of the Dead?) El primero y el dos de noviembre. (On the first and second of November.) ¿Qué hay en la ofrenda? (What is on the ofrenda?) Fotos, velas, flores y comida. (Photos, candles, flowers and food.) And the grammar Maya spotted: hay for what is on the altar, celebramos (an -ar verb, nosotros), and vamos a ir, a plan with ir a.

Postcard 2: Lima, a plate of ceviche

• ¡Hola desde Lima, la capital del Perú! (Hello from Lima, the capital of Peru!)
• Me llamo Camila y tengo trece años. (My name is Camila and I'm thirteen.)
• Mi comida favorita es el ceviche. (My favourite food is ceviche.)
• El ceviche es pescado crudo con jugo de limón, ají y sal. (Ceviche is raw fish with lemon juice, chili pepper and salt.)
• Los domingos mi familia come ceviche en una cevichería cerca del mar. (On Sundays my family eats ceviche at a cevichería near the sea.)
• Las recetas cambian de una región a otra. (The recipes change from one region to another.)
• Desde 2023, el ceviche está en una lista especial de la UNESCO. (Since 2023, ceviche has been on a special UNESCO list.)
• Y tú, ¿comes pescado? ¿Te gusta? (And you, do you eat fish? Do you like it?)
• Saludos, Camila (Best wishes, Camila)

Camila's description is almost word for word UNESCO's. Its entry on ceviche, added to the intangible heritage list in 2023, calls it a traditional Peruvian dish of raw fish marinated in lemon and seasoned with chili pepper and salt, served with local produce and eaten both every day and at festivals, especially the festival of Saint Peter, patron saint of fishermen. It is made at home or sold in cevicherías, and the recipe varies from region to region.

Maya laughs at the last line: she told Valentina in Lesson 15 that she does not like fish at all. Her answer to Camila will have to begin A mí no me gusta el pescado (I don't like fish), but she has decided to try ceviche anyway.

Postcard 3: Buenos Aires, with vos

• ¡Hola, Maya! Soy Facundo, el amigo de tu primo Leo. (Hi, Maya! I'm Facundo, your cousin Leo's friend.)
• Vivo en Buenos Aires, la capital de la Argentina. (I live in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina.)
• La gente de Buenos Aires se llama porteña, porque la ciudad tiene un puerto. (People from Buenos Aires are called porteños, because the city has a port.)
• En el centro está el Obelisco, en la avenida 9 de Julio. Es de 1936. (In the centre is the Obelisco, on Avenida 9 de Julio. It's from 1936.)
• Los sábados, mis abuelos bailan tango en un salón de baile. (On Saturdays my grandparents dance tango in a dance hall.)
• El tango es de Buenos Aires y de Montevideo, la capital de Uruguay. (Tango comes from Buenos Aires and from Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay.)
• Aquí la Navidad es en verano, ¡con mucho calor! (Here Christmas is in summer, and it's very hot!)
• ¿Vos tenés fotos de la nieve en Chicago? (Have you got photos of the snow in Chicago?)
• Abrazos, Facundo (Hugs, Facundo)

Facundo's facts check out too. Wiktionary defines porteño as a person from the port city of Buenos Aires, and adds that in Chile the same word means someone from Valparaíso, so Tomás is a porteño as well. The Obelisco, where the avenues 9 de Julio and Corrientes cross, was put up in 1936 to mark four hundred years since the city's first founding. And UNESCO, which added tango to its intangible heritage list in 2009 for Argentina and Uruguay together, says it grew up among the working people of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, on the Río de la Plata, and is still danced in the traditional dance halls of both cities. Christmas in summer is Lesson 19's opposite seasons at work.

Maya notices the grammar: Es de 1936 uses ser for where something comes from in time, está for where the Obelisco is, and ¿Vos tenés...? is the vos form of Lesson 21. Leo, in Mexico City, would have written ¿Tú tienes...?

Postcard 4: Quito, a map of Ecuador

Mateo's postcard is a map he has drawn himself, with sentences written around the edges.

• Este es mi mapa del Ecuador. (This is my map of Ecuador.)
• En español, ecuador quiere decir equator, y la línea del ecuador pasa por mi país. (In Spanish, ecuador means equator, and the equator line runs through my country.)
• Al norte está Colombia, y al este y al sur está el Perú. Al oeste está el océano Pacífico. (To the north is Colombia, and to the east and south is Peru. To the west is the Pacific Ocean.)
• Mi país tiene cuatro regiones: la Costa, la Sierra, la Amazonía y las islas Galápagos. (My country has four regions: the Coast, the Highlands, the Amazon and the Galápagos Islands.)
• Quito, la capital, está en la Sierra, en las montañas. (Quito, the capital, is in the Sierra, in the mountains.)
• La ciudad más grande es Guayaquil, en la Costa. (The biggest city is Guayaquil, on the Coast.)
• Las islas Galápagos están en el océano Pacífico, a unos mil kilómetros de la costa. (The Galápagos Islands are in the Pacific Ocean, about a thousand kilometres from the coast.)
• Su nombre viene de las tortugas gigantes: en español, un galápago es una tortuga. (Their name comes from the giant tortoises: in Spanish, a galápago is a tortoise.)
• Hasta pronto, Mateo (See you soon, Mateo)

The encyclopedia article on Ecuador confirms every line: the country's name literally means equator, from its official name, República del Ecuador; it borders Colombia to the north and Peru to the east and south, with the Pacific to the west; it has four main regions, the coast, the highlands, the Amazon and the islands; Quito is the capital and Guayaquil the largest city; and the Galápagos lie about 1,000 kilometres west of the mainland. The article on the Galápagos Islands adds that they are named after their giant tortoises, galápagos in Spanish. Notice that región loses its accent mark in regiones, the same rule as marrones in Lesson 19.

Key idea: a real text is mostly words you already know, held together by grammar you already know. Find the cognates, check the false friends, and let ser, estar, hay and the verb endings tell you who is doing what and where.

The year's grammar, found in four postcards

Common misconceptions

• The Day of the Dead is Mexican Halloween. It has its own dates, 1 and 2 November, and its own meaning: families welcome back the souls of their relatives with flowers, candles and their favourite food.
• Ceviche is cooked fish. It is raw fish marinated in lemon juice, with chili pepper and salt.
• Tango belongs to Argentina alone. UNESCO lists it for Argentina and Uruguay, born in Buenos Aires and Montevideo.
• Ecuador is only the name of a line. It is also the country named after that line, which runs through it.
• Recordar means to record. It is a false friend: it means to remember.

Read aloud, then write your own postcard

Say it. Read all four postcards aloud, slowly, then once more at normal speed. Then, without looking, tell the four places to an imaginary classmate in Spanish, one sentence each: En México, el Día de Muertos es el primero y el dos de noviembre. (In Mexico, the Day of the Dead is on the first and second of November.)

Write it. The activity below asks you to answer questions about the postcards, hunt for the year's grammar inside them, and write a postcard about a place, a food or a festival you know.

Pulling it together

• Read with three habits: hunt for cognates, watch for false friends such as recordar, and read twice.
• Mexico: the Day of the Dead on 1 November (children) and 2 November (adults), with ofrendas, candles and cempasúchil; on UNESCO's list since 2008.
• Peru: ceviche, raw fish marinated in lemon with chili pepper and salt, eaten every day and at festivals; on UNESCO's list since 2023.
• Argentina: porteños, the Obelisco of 1936, and tango, shared with Uruguay and on UNESCO's list since 2009.
• Ecuador: named after the equator, four regions, Quito in the highlands, and the Galápagos about 1,000 kilometres out in the Pacific.

Sources

1. UNESCO. (2008). Indigenous festivity dedicated to the dead (Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity; originally proclaimed 2003). ich.unesco.org
2. Secretaría de Educación Pública. (n.d.). Día de muertos, una costumbre muy mexicana. Nueva Escuela Mexicana Digital, Gobierno de México. nuevaescuelamexicana.sep.gob.mx
3. UNESCO. (2023). Practices and meanings associated with the preparation and consumption of ceviche, an expression of Peruvian traditional cuisine. ich.unesco.org
4. UNESCO. (2009). Tango (Argentina and Uruguay). ich.unesco.org
5. Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Ecuador (the name, borders, four regions, Quito and Guayaquil, and the Galápagos). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org

Ninety seconds and a phone

The final task of the year fits on a single card, which señor Ruiz hands out on the last Friday in May. It says: Me presento (I introduce myself). Ninety seconds, recorded on a phone. Then a dialogue with a partner, recorded too. Maya reads it twice and says what half the class is thinking: "I don't know enough Spanish for ninety seconds." She is wrong, and this lesson proves it, step by step, the way Lesson 11 built a verb and Lesson 18 built a plan.

Before you start, look at how real people do it. The University of Texas at Austin keeps a collection called Spanish Proficiency Exercises: short videos of native speakers performing beginner tasks. Two of them are this lesson's task exactly. In Beginning task 8, speakers from Mexico City, Madrid and Quito introduce themselves and a friend; in task 9, speakers from Mexico, Bogotá and Lima describe themselves. The site explains that each task has a simplified, scripted version spoken slowly, and then unscripted clips in which some people talk fast, some slowly, and some in the dialect of their own region. Watch the simplified one first.

Step 1: gather what you already know, module by module

Maya's first move is to empty her head onto paper. She goes through the course one module at a time and writes one or two sentences she can already say about herself.

Already that is more than twelve sentences, and every one of them comes from a lesson you have done.

Step 2: write it, then check it like an editor

Next Maya puts the sentences in an order that flows: hello and name, age and birthday, where she is from and where she lives, family, what she is like, her day, her likes, her plans, a question, goodbye. Then she reads it through once for each item on this checklist, one item at a time, which catches far more than one reading for everything.

1. Agreement. Does every el, la, un, una and every adjective match its noun? Tímida, not tímido, for a girl (Lessons 7 and 9).
2. Ser or estar. Ser for who she is and where she is from; estar for where things are and how she feels (Lessons 10 and 17).
3. Verb endings. Does each verb match its person: tomo, como, vivo for yo (Lessons 11, 13 and 14)?
4. Gustar. Gusta for one thing or for activities, gustan for more than one thing (Lesson 15).
5. Plans. A form of ir, then a, then an infinitive (Lesson 18).
6. Marks. Accent marks on question words and on words like años and también, a tilde on every ñ, and ¿ and ¡ at the start (Lessons 1, 2 and 20).

Worked example one: Maya's introduction, start to finish

• ¡Hola! Me llamo Maya, eme, a, ye, a. (Hi! My name is Maya, M, A, Y, A.)
• Tengo trece años y mi cumpleaños es el nueve de octubre. (I'm thirteen and my birthday is the ninth of October.)
• Soy de Chicago y vivo en un apartamento con mis papás, Elena y Daniel, y mi hermano Nico. (I'm from Chicago and I live in an apartment with my parents, Elena and Daniel, and my brother Nico.)
• Mi tía Carmen y mi primo Leo viven en la Ciudad de México. (My aunt Carmen and my cousin Leo live in Mexico City.)
• Soy alegre, un poco tímida y muy curiosa. (I'm cheerful, a little shy and very curious.)
• Todos los días tomo el autobús a la escuela a las siete y media. (Every day I take the bus to school at half past seven.)
• Mi mejor amiga se llama Priya. Por la tarde practicamos fútbol. (My best friend is called Priya. In the afternoon we practise soccer.)
• En el almuerzo como un sándwich de queso y bebo jugo de naranja. (At lunch I eat a cheese sandwich and drink orange juice.)
• Me gusta dibujar y escuchar música, y me encantan las papas fritas, pero no me gusta nada el pescado. (I like drawing and listening to music, and I love fries, but I don't like fish at all.)
• En invierno hace mucho frío en Chicago y nieva. (In winter it's very cold in Chicago and it snows.)
• Este verano voy a visitar a mi primo Leo en México. (This summer I'm going to visit my cousin Leo in Mexico.)
• ¿Y tú? ¿Cómo te llamas? ¿De dónde eres? (And you? What's your name? Where are you from?)
• ¡Hasta luego! (See you later!)

Thirteen lines, about sixty to ninety seconds at a comfortable speed. Notice how much of the year is packed in: tener for age (Lesson 4), dates (Lesson 5), ser for origin and character (Lessons 9 and 10), -ar, -er and -ir verbs (Lessons 11, 13 and 14), gustar and encantar (Lesson 15), weather (Lesson 19), ir a (Lesson 18) and questions (Lesson 20).

Step 3: mark it for sound

Now Maya prints her text and marks it with a pencil, using the rules of the first module. She underlines the stressed syllable in any long word: cum-ple-A-ños, a-par-ta-MEN-to, cu-RIO-sa. She circles every rr and every r at the start of a word, which must roll, and checks that pero (but) keeps its single tapped r, so that it does not turn into perro (dog), as Lesson 2 warned. She puts a dot over each silent h (hasta) and each ll and y that sounds like the y in yes (me llamo, Maya). And she checks the five vowels stay short and pure, never sliding into English diphthongs: no, not noh-oo.

Then she practises in a particular way. She reads the text aloud once, slowly. After that, instead of reading it again and again, she covers it and says it from memory, using only a list of key words on a card (Maya, trece, Chicago, Nico, tímida, autobús, sándwich, dibujar, frío, verano, ¿y tú?), and checks the text afterwards to see what she missed. That choice has evidence behind it. A large review of study techniques by the psychologist John Dunlosky and colleagues, published in 2013, rated practice testing, meaning recalling material and then checking, as one of the most useful techniques, and rated rereading among the least.

So what?: the way to make a text yours is to pull it out of your memory again and again, not to stare at it. Every time you say it from the key words, it sticks a little better.

Step 4: record, listen, record again

• Find a quiet room, open the voice recorder on a phone or computer, and record the whole introduction in one take. Do not stop for a mistake: go on, as the unscripted speakers in the Texas videos do.
• Listen back with your text in front of you. Mark three things to fix, no more: perhaps an r that did not roll, a stress on the wrong syllable, a vowel that slid.
• Record a second take. Keep the better one.
• Keep the recording for yourself, your teacher or your family. Do not post it online without a parent's or carer's permission.

Worked example two: the dialogue, and a change of listener

The second half of the task is a conversation. Maya's partner is Andrés, a new student who has just arrived from Bogotá. Here is their dialogue, written with tú because they are classmates.

• Maya: ¡Hola! Me llamo Maya. ¿Cómo te llamas? (Hi! My name is Maya. What's your name?)
• Andrés: Me llamo Andrés. Mucho gusto. (My name is Andrés. Nice to meet you.)
• Maya: Encantada. ¿De dónde eres? (Nice to meet you. Where are you from?)
• Andrés: Soy de Bogotá, en Colombia. ¿Y tú? (I'm from Bogotá, in Colombia. And you?)
• Maya: Soy de aquí, de Chicago. ¿Cuántos años tienes? (I'm from here, from Chicago. How old are you?)
• Andrés: Tengo trece años. (I'm thirteen.)
• Maya: ¡Yo también! ¿Qué clases tienes hoy? (Me too! What classes do you have today?)
• Andrés: Tengo matemáticas, ciencias y español. ¡La clase de español es fácil para mí! (I have maths, science and Spanish. Spanish class is easy for me!)
• Maya: ¡Qué suerte! ¿Te gusta el fútbol? (Lucky you! Do you like soccer?)
• Andrés: Sí, me encanta. (Yes, I love it.)
• Maya: Priya y yo practicamos por la tarde. ¿Vas a jugar con nosotros el sábado? (Priya and I practise in the afternoon. Are you going to play with us on Saturday?)
• Andrés: ¡Claro! ¿A qué hora? (Of course! What time?)
• Maya: A las diez, en el parque. Hace frío, ¡lleva un suéter! (At ten, in the park. It's cold, bring a sweater!)
• Andrés: Gracias. ¡Hasta el sábado! (Thanks. See you on Saturday!)

Maya answers Tengo trece años with ¡Yo también!, and that is right: Andrés's sentence has yo as its subject, so the reply is yo también. Had he said Me gusta el fútbol, the reply would have been a mí también, as Lesson 15 showed.

Now change one input: the listener. After class, Maya meets Andrés's mother, señora Gómez, an adult she does not know, so she switches to usted, as Lesson 3 taught. And if she were talking to Facundo in Buenos Aires, she would hear vos. The content stays the same; the forms change.

Two details in the table are worth a second look. With gustar, vos uses the same te as tú: ¿Te gusta? And usted takes the él and ella forms everywhere: se llama, es, tiene, le gusta. If Maya were in Madrid talking to two friends at once, she would use vosotros: ¿De dónde sois?

Step 5: check yourself with can-do statements

Language teachers in the United States describe progress with can-do statements, published by the national organisations ACTFL and NCSSFL. They sort communication into three modes: interpretive (understanding what you hear and read), interpersonal (conversations, where people negotiate meaning) and presentational (presenting to an audience). Your introduction is presentational; your dialogue is interpersonal; the postcards of Lesson 22 were interpretive. ACTFL stresses that can-do statements describe what you can do consistently over time, not a task done once and ticked off. So listen to your recording and ask yourself honestly:

• I can greet someone, give my name and spell it.
• I can give my age, my birthday, where I am from and where I live.
• I can describe myself, my family and my home.
• I can say what I do on a normal day, what I like and dislike, and what I am going to do.
• I can describe the weather and the season.
• I can ask at least three questions, and choose tú, usted or vos for the person in front of me.
• A listener can understand each sentence the first time.

Then put a date in your calendar a month from now and record the introduction again, from the key words, without looking at the old text. The same 2013 review rated spreading practice out over time, rather than cramming it into one session, among the most useful techniques too. Compare the two recordings. The second one will be better, and you will hear it.

Common misconceptions

• Me llamo es Maya. Me llamo already means my name is: Me llamo Maya, or Mi nombre es Maya.
• Soy trece años. Age takes tener: Tengo trece años (Lesson 4).
• Estoy de Chicago. Where you are from takes ser: Soy de Chicago (Lesson 10).
• A good recording has no mistakes. The goal is to be understood. Native speakers in unscripted recordings restart sentences and speak at different speeds; aim for clear, not perfect.
• Reading the text aloud twenty times is the best practice. Saying it from memory and then checking works better than rereading.

Your turn: aloud, then on paper

Say it. Make your key-word card, say your introduction from it three times on three different days, then record it. Rehearse the dialogue with a partner, or play both parts yourself, then switch it to usted for an adult.

Write it. The activity below asks you to write your own introduction, your own dialogue, and an usted version of part of it, with a full model answer to compare against.

What you now know

• A self-introduction is built module by module: greeting and name, age and birthday, origin and home, family and character, daily life, likes, weather, plans, and a question.
• Check a draft one item at a time: agreement, ser or estar, verb endings, gustar, ir a, accent marks and question marks.
• Mark the text for stress, rolled r, silent h and pure vowels, then practise by recalling from key words, not by rereading.
• Record, listen, fix three things, record again; and keep the recording private unless a parent or carer says otherwise.
• A dialogue changes with its listener: tú for a classmate, usted for an adult you do not know, vos in Argentina, vosotros for a group of friends in Spain.
• Can-do statements describe what you can do consistently, so record again a month later and compare.

Sources

1. Kelm, O. R. (n.d.). Beginning task 08: Introduce yourself and a friend to others. In Spanish Proficiency Exercises. The University of Texas at Austin. laits.utexas.edu
2. Kelm, O. R. (n.d.). Beginning task 09: Describe yourself to others. In Spanish Proficiency Exercises. The University of Texas at Austin. laits.utexas.edu
3. ACTFL. (n.d.). NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements (the interpretive, interpersonal and presentational modes). American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. actfl.org
4. Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., and Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4-58.
5. Brown, E., Escudero, A., Montoya, M. C., and Small, E. (n.d.). 1.4: Vocabulario: Bienvenidos a la clase (greetings and introductions). In ¡Chévere! Introductory Spanish I. OER SUNY; Humanities LibreTexts. human.libretexts.org