Spanish for Beginners

Welcome to Spanish. The best news for a beginner is that Spanish is phonetic: with a few rules, you can read almost any word out loud correctly, because letters almost always make the same sound. English vowels wander (think of the "a" in cat, father, and about), but Spanish vowels are steady and pure. Master these five sounds and you are halfway to a good accent.

The five vowels

Each Spanish vowel has one clean sound. Say them crisply and do not let them glide into a second sound the way English often does. The IPA symbols are given once here because the five vowels are the one place where they genuinely help: each symbol stands for exactly one steady sound.

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

Try reading these aloud, one clean sound per vowel: casa (house), peso (weight or the currency), libro (book), mono (monkey), música (music). Notice how the vowels stay pure even when several appear in a row: Europa is "eh-oo-ROH-pah".

The big contrast with English

English quietly weakens almost every unstressed vowel into a lazy "uh" sound (linguists call it schwa). Say banana in English: only the middle "a" gets a real vowel, and the other two collapse into "uh". Spanish never does this. In banana, all three a's are the same full "ah". This is the single biggest habit to unlearn. Two more English habits to switch off: do not add a puff of air after p, t, and k (Spanish papa sounds closer to English "pop-ah" than "puh-HA-puh"), and keep every final vowel crisp, so noche (night) ends in a clear "eh", not "ee" or "uh".

Two vowels together: diphthongs

Spanish vowels come in two strengths. The strong vowels are a, e, and o; the weak vowels are i and u. When a weak vowel sits next to another vowel, the two blend into one syllable called a diphthong, and each vowel still keeps its pure sound, just said quickly together.

Pair	Sounds like	Example	English
ie	"yeh"	siete	seven
ue	"weh"	bueno	good
ei	"ay" in say	seis	six
ai	"eye"	aire	air
au	"ow" in cow	auto	car
oi	"oy" in boy	oigo	I hear

Two strong vowels do not blend; they stay in separate syllables, so museo (museum) is mu-SE-o, three syllables. And when a written accent sits on a weak vowel, it breaks the blend apart: día (day) is DEE-ah, two syllables, and país (country) is pah-EES.

A few friendly consonants

Most consonants are close to English, but a handful surprise beginners. The letter h is always silent: hola (hello) is said "OH-lah". The letter j makes a strong "h" sound from the back of the throat: jamón (ham) is "hah-MOHN". The pair ll usually sounds like the English "y": llamar (to call) is "yah-MAR". The tilde letter ñ sounds like the "ny" in canyon: español is "es-pah-NYOL". Finally, r is a quick tap of the tongue, and rr is a rolled trill, as in perro (dog) versus pero (but).

Two quieter differences are worth hearing early. Spanish t and d are dental: the tongue touches the back of the top teeth, not the ridge behind them, which makes tú (you) sound softer than English "too". And between vowels, d relaxes toward the soft "th" in English father, so nada (nothing) sounds close to "NAH-thah". Nobody will misunderstand you if you use an English d, but hearing this explains why native speech sounds the way it does.

Do not worry about sounding perfect. Spanish speakers understand learners easily, and clean vowels matter far more than a perfect rolled r. Read every new word out loud in this course and your ear and mouth will train together.

Word stress and the written accent

Spanish tells you where to stress a word with two simple rules. A word that ends in a vowel, in -n, or in -s is stressed on the next-to-last syllable, as in casa (CA-sa, house) and hablan (HA-blan, they speak). A word ending in any other consonant is stressed on the last syllable, as in hablar (ha-BLAR, to speak) and feliz (fe-LIZ, happy). When a word breaks these rules, a written accent marks the stressed vowel, as in árbol (tree), lápiz (pencil), and música (music).

The accent mark does not change the vowel sound; it only shows where to push your voice. It can also separate two words spelled alike, such as sí (yes) and si (if), or tú (you) and tu (your). Reading the accent aloud from day one builds a reliable habit.

A few more sound rules

Beyond single letters, some pairs behave in fixed ways. Learn these and almost nothing on the page will surprise you.

Letters	Sound	Example	English
ch	ch in church	chico	boy
gue, gui	hard g, silent u	guitarra	guitar
güe, güi	hard g, the u is heard	pingüino	penguin
v and b	the same soft b	vaca	cow
z	s in Latin America	zapato	shoe
y	ee when it stands alone	y	and

Two points deserve a note. First, v and b sound alike in Spanish, so vaca (cow) and baca (roof rack) are said the same way. Second, the two dots in ü, as in pingüino (penguin) and vergüenza (shame), tell you to pronounce the u that would otherwise fall silent after the letter g.

One language, two main accents

Spanish is pronounced a little differently across its huge map, and two differences are worth knowing from day one. In most of Spain, z and the soft c of ce and ci are pronounced like the "th" in think, so gracias is "GRA-thyas" and zapato is "tha-PA-to"; Spaniards call this distinción. In all of Latin America, the Canary Islands, and much of Andalucía, those same letters are simply "s", a pattern called seseo, so gracias is "GRA-syas". Both are correct, educated Spanish. Separately, in Argentina and Uruguay the ll and y take on a "sh" or "zh" sound, so llamar sounds like "shah-MAR" in Buenos Aires. This course uses Latin American "s" in its pronunciation hints, but you should recognize both.

Your first useful words

You can already read these correctly using pure vowels. Keep each vowel clean and short.

Spanish	English	Spanish	English
sí	yes	no	no
gracias	thank you	por favor	please
agua	water	casa	house
amigo	friend	señor	sir, Mr.
día	day	noche	night
bueno	good	siete	seven

Read these aloud

Each line applies the rules above, with the English meaning in parentheses.

• Me llamo Sofía. (My name is Sofía; the ll is a y sound.)
• El chico bebe agua. (The boy drinks water; ch as in church.)
• La guitarra es española. (The guitar is Spanish; the u in gui is silent.)
• ¿Cómo estás? (How are you? Note the opening question mark and the accents.)
• Muchas gracias, señor. (Thank you very much, sir; the ñ is a ny sound.)
• Buenos días, amigo. (Good morning, friend; ue and í-a both follow the vowel rules.)

A short dialogue

Two people meet and one spells a name aloud. Read each Spanish line out loud, then check the English underneath it.

• Ana: ¡Hola! ¿Cómo te llamas? (Hello. What is your name?)
• Íñigo: Me llamo Íñigo. (My name is Íñigo.)
• Ana: ¿Cómo se escribe? (How do you spell it?)
• Íñigo: i con acento, eñe, i, ge, o. (í, ñ, i, g, o.)
• Ana: ¡Mucho gusto! (A pleasure to meet you.)

Three things to notice. First, the h of hola is completely silent, so the dialogue opens on a pure "OH-lah". Second, Spanish writes an upside-down mark at the start of every question and exclamation, so your voice knows to rise before the sentence begins. Third, Íñigo's name stacks two special letters, an accented í and an ñ, and both follow the rules you already know: the accent marks stress, and the ñ is "ny".

Common misconceptions

• The h is sometimes pronounced. In native Spanish words the h is always silent, so hola (hello) and hora (hour) both begin with the vowel sound.
• b and v are different sounds. They are pronounced the same in Spanish; spelling, not sound, tells them apart.
• Spanish vowels glide like English ones. They stay pure and short, so the o in no never drifts toward an oo sound.
• The written accent changes the vowel. It only marks stress: papá (dad) and papa (potato) share the same a sound but stress different syllables.
• You must roll the rr perfectly to be understood. A clean tap will do while you practice; context carries you, and the trill improves with weeks of reading aloud.
• Unstressed vowels can relax to "uh". This is the classic English-speaker error. Every Spanish vowel keeps its full sound whether stressed or not.

Recap

• Spanish is highly phonetic, so letters map to steady, predictable sounds.
• The five vowels stay pure and never glide into a second sound, even unstressed.
• Weak vowels i and u blend with neighbors into diphthongs; an accent on the weak vowel breaks the blend.
• The h is silent, ll sounds like y, ñ sounds like ny, and rr is a rolled trill.
• Stress falls on the next-to-last syllable for words ending in a vowel, n, or s, and a written accent marks every exception.
• Spain's "th" for z and soft c (distinción) and Latin America's "s" (seseo) are both correct standards.

Sources

1. "Spanish Phonology." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
2. "Spanish Orthography." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
3. "Spanish Alphabet Pronunciation." SpanishDictionary.com ↗, Curiosity Media, spanishdict.com.
4. Real Academia Española. Diccionario de la lengua española. 23rd ed., dle.rae.es.
5. "Centro Virtual Cervantes." Instituto Cervantes, cvc.cervantes.es.
6. Spanish Grammar in Context. COERLL, University of Texas at Austin, grammar.spanishintexas.org.
7. "Spanish Grammar." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.

The Spanish alphabet, the abecedario, has the same 26 letters as English plus the extra letter ñ, for 27 in all. Knowing the letter names lets you spell your name on the phone, read signs, take down an email address, and use a dictionary. Here are the letters with how their names are pronounced. Read the whole table aloud once now, using the pure vowels from the last lesson; every letter name follows the sound rules you already know.

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

A few names have stories worth knowing. The letter y is officially called ye, but many speakers, especially in Latin America, still use the older name i griega, "Greek i", and both are understood everywhere. In parts of Latin America you will also hear be larga ("long b") for b and ve corta ("short v") for v, because the two letters sound identical and speakers need a way to tell them apart when spelling. The letters k and w live almost entirely in borrowed words such as kilo and web. And x usually sounds like "ks" as in examen (exam), but in México and other Mexican place names it keeps an old-fashioned spelling of the throaty j sound: "MEH-hee-ko".

The letters c, g, qu, and gu together

A handful of letters change their job depending on the vowel that follows. This is the single most useful spelling pattern in Spanish, so it repays a close look. The letter c is a k before a, o, u but an s before e or i. To keep the k sound before e or i, Spanish switches to qu and the u goes silent. The letter g is a hard g before a, o, u but a throaty h before e or i, and it uses gu to keep the hard sound before e or i.

Spelling	Sound	Example	English
ca, co, cu	k	casa	house
ce, ci	s	cine	cinema
que, qui	k, silent u	queso	cheese
ga, go, gu	hard g	gato	cat
ge, gi	throaty h	gente	people
gue, gui	hard g, silent u	guerra	war

The letter j makes the same throaty h in every position, so jamón (ham) and gente (people) begin with the same sound. That is why spelling matters: two words can sound identical yet be written differently, such as cocer (to cook) and coser (to sew), which match exactly in Latin American pronunciation. In most of Spain, where soft c is the "th" of distinción, the pair actually sounds different, which is a nice reminder that spelling and accent travel together.

How to build it: from sound to spelling

Suppose you hear the word "GHEE-tah-rah" (guitar) and want to write it. Work through the decisions the way a Spanish speaker does. First, the opening sound is a hard g before an "ee" vowel, and plain gi would read as a throaty h, so you must write gui with a protective silent u: gui-. Next, "tah" is simply ta. Finally the "rah" uses the strong rolled r between vowels, which Spanish writes as rr: guitarra. The same logic runs in reverse when you read: see gue or gui, silence the u; see güe or güi with the two dots, pronounce it.

Now try "KEH-so" (cheese). The k sound before e cannot be written ce (that would read "SEH") or ke (k is reserved for borrowings), so Spanish reaches for que: queso. This is why ¿Qué? (What?) and quien (who) all carry a silent u. Once this pattern clicks, dictation stops being guesswork.

Spelling aloud on the phone

Spelling a name is one of the first real tasks you will face. To ask, say ¿Cómo se escribe? (How is it spelled?) or ¿Cómo se deletrea? (How do you spell it out?). For a double letter you add the word doble, so ll is doble ele and rr is doble erre. For an accented letter you say the letter plus con acento, as in i con acento for í. For email addresses you will need arroba for the @ sign and punto for the dot, so "ana@correo.com" is read "ana, arroba, correo, punto, com".

Spanish	English
¿Cómo se escribe?	How is it spelled or written?
Se escribe con hache.	It is written with an h.
con acento	with an accent mark
en mayúscula	in capital letters
en minúscula	in lowercase
arroba	the @ sign
punto	dot, period
guion	hyphen, dash

Read these aloud

Each line uses the spelling rules, with the English meaning in parentheses.

• Mi nombre se escribe con jota. (My name is spelled with a j.)
• Guillermo lleva ge, u, i. (Guillermo has g, u, i; the u is silent.)
• La palabra queso lleva cu, u, e, s, o. (The word queso is q, u, e, s, o.)
• Sofía se escribe con i con acento. (Sofía is written with an accented i.)
• Barcelona empieza con be. (Barcelona begins with the letter b.)
• El nombre lleva doble ele. (The name has a double l.)
• Mi correo es luz, arroba, correo, punto, com. (My email is luz@correo.com.)

A short dialogue

A clerk takes down a surname over the phone. Read the Spanish aloud first, then check the English.

• Empleado: ¿Cuál es su apellido? (What is your surname?)
• Cliente: García. (García.)
• Empleado: ¿Cómo se escribe? (How do you spell it?)
• Cliente: ge, a, erre, ce, i con acento, a. (g, a, r, c, í, a.)
• Empleado: ¿Y su nombre? (And your first name?)
• Cliente: Joaquín. jota, o, a, cu, u, i con acento, ene. (Joaquín. j, o, a, q, u, í, n.)
• Empleado: Muchas gracias. (Thank you very much.)

Notice three things. The clerk uses su (your, formal) because this is a business call. García needs i con acento because the stress falls on the í, breaking the normal next-to-last-syllable rule you learned in Lesson 1. And Joaquín shows the silent u of qu being spelled out loud anyway: writing and sound are separate layers, and spelling aloud always follows the writing.

A note on names and culture

Spelling matters socially in the Spanish-speaking world because most people carry two surnames: traditionally the father's first surname followed by the mother's first surname. The writer Gabriel García Márquez was García (from his father) Márquez (from his mother), and calling him "Mr. Márquez" is technically the wrong surname. Married women in most Spanish-speaking countries keep their own surnames. On forms you will see nombre (first name), primer apellido (first surname), and segundo apellido (second surname), so being able to spell all three aloud is a genuinely everyday skill.

Common misconceptions

• ch and ll are separate letters of the alphabet. Since 2010 the language academy counts them as two-letter combinations, not single letters, so the alphabet has 27 letters.
• The u in que and gui is pronounced. It is silent and only there to protect the hard sound; it is heard again only when written with two dots, as ü.
• b and v are spelled interchangeably. They sound alike but each word has a fixed spelling, so tubo (tube) and tuvo (he had) differ only in writing.
• You can drop the silent h when writing. It must still be written; hola without the h would simply be a spelling mistake.
• The letter names are interchangeable with the sounds. Letter names are words of their own: the name of q is "cu" even though the letter never makes that sound by itself. When you spell aloud you use names, not sounds.
• k does not exist in Spanish. It does, but almost only in loanwords such as kilo and kárate; native words spell the k sound with c or qu.

Recap

• The abecedario has 27 letters, the 26 of English plus ñ.
• c is k before a, o, u but s before e, i; qu keeps the k sound with a silent u.
• g is hard before a, o, u but a throaty h before e, i; gu keeps the hard sound.
• Spell aloud with ¿Cómo se escribe?, add doble for double letters, con acento for accents, and arroba and punto for email addresses.
• The h is silent but always written, and b and v sound alike yet keep fixed spellings.
• Most Spanish speakers use two surnames, father's then mother's, and forms ask for both.

Sources

1. "Spanish Orthography." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
2. "Spanish Phonology." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
3. Real Academia Española. Diccionario de la lengua española. 23rd ed., dle.rae.es.
4. "Spanish Alphabet." SpanishDictionary.com ↗, Curiosity Media, spanishdict.com.
5. "Centro Virtual Cervantes." Instituto Cervantes, cvc.cervantes.es.
6. "Spanish Language." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
7. "Spanish Grammar." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.

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

Spanish	Pronunciation	English
Buenos días	BWEH-nos DEE-as	Good morning
Buenas tardes	BWEH-nas TAR-des	Good afternoon
Buenas noches	BWEH-nas NO-ches	Good evening / Good night
Adiós	ah-DYOS	Goodbye
Hasta luego	AS-ta LWEH-go	See you later
Hasta mañana	AS-ta ma-NYA-na	See you tomorrow

Two details are worth noticing already. First, días is masculine, so it takes buenos, while tardes and noches are feminine and take buenas; the greeting itself is quietly teaching you gender agreement, which Lesson 6 covers in full. Second, all three greetings are plural in Spanish, literally "good days", "good afternoons". In shops and elevators across Spain and Latin America you will also hear a clipped, friendly Buenas on its own, which covers any time of day.

How are you?

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

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

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

Choosing between tu and usted

Spanish has two words for "you", and choosing between them is a real social decision English never asks you to make. Use tú with friends, family, classmates, and children. Use usted to show respect to strangers, elders, customers, and people in authority. When in doubt with an adult you have just met, usted is the safe, polite choice; the other person may then invite you to switch with Puedes tutearme ("You can call me tú"). The choice also changes the verb: ¿Cómo estás? goes with tú, while ¿Cómo está usted? drops the -s. Titles travel with usted: señor (Mr., sir), señora (Mrs., ma'am), and señorita (Miss) come before a surname, as in Buenos días, señora Ortiz.

One more map fact: in Argentina, Uruguay, and much of Central America, speakers replace tú with vos (with its own verb forms, like ¿Cómo estás vos?), a pattern called voseo. You do not need to produce it in this course, but you should recognize it when an Argentine friend greets you.

More ways to ask how it is going

Beyond the standard question, Spanish speakers use several warm, casual openers. They all invite a short, friendly answer, and you can reply with a quick phrase rather than a full sentence.

Spanish	English
¿Qué tal?	How is it going?
¿Cómo te va?	How are things for you?
¿Qué pasa?	What is up? (very casual)
Todo bien.	All good.
Nada nuevo.	Nothing new.
Más o menos.	So-so.

Introducing yourself

Once you have greeted someone, you can give your name and say you are pleased to meet them. Notice that mucho gusto never changes, but encantado adds an -a when a woman says it.

Spanish	English
Me llamo Ana.	My name is Ana. (I call myself Ana)
Soy Ana.	I am Ana.
¿Cómo te llamas?	What is your name? (informal)
¿Cómo se llama usted?	What is your name? (formal)
Mucho gusto.	Nice to meet you.
Encantado / Encantada.	Delighted. (said by a man / a woman)

How to build it: introducing yourself

Take the English thought "My name is Ana" and assemble the Spanish. Spanish does not usually say "my name is"; it says "I call myself": the verb is llamar (to call), and the little word me (myself) goes in front of it, giving me llamo. Then the name simply follows: Me llamo Ana. To ask the same thing of a friend, swap me for te (yourself) and use the tú verb form: ¿Cómo te llamas?, literally "How do you call yourself?". With a stranger, use the usted form: ¿Cómo se llama usted?. The shortcut Soy Ana ("I am Ana") is also correct and very common; it uses the verb ser, which you will conjugate fully in the next lesson.

Sentences you can use today

Read these aloud, with the English meaning in parentheses.

• Hola, ¿qué tal? (Hi, how is it going?)
• Me llamo Pedro y soy de España. (My name is Pedro and I am from Spain.)
• Encantada de conocerte. (Delighted to meet you, said by a woman.)
• Buenas noches, hasta mañana. (Good night, see you tomorrow.)
• Perdón, ¿cómo se llama usted? (Excuse me, what is your name?)
• Muchas gracias por todo. (Thank you very much for everything.)
• De nada, con gusto. (You are welcome, gladly.)

Notice how a whole friendly exchange can be built from small pieces: a greeting, a name, a question about how the other person is, and a courteous closing. Even a two-line conversation with a neighbor or a clerk marks you as polite and makes the next exchange easier.

A short dialogue

Two adults meet for the first time, so they use the formal usted. Read the Spanish aloud, then check the English.

• Sr. Ramos: Buenas tardes. Me llamo Carlos Ramos. (Good afternoon. My name is Carlos Ramos.)
• Sra. Ortiz: Mucho gusto, señor Ramos. Soy Elena Ortiz. (Nice to meet you, Mr. Ramos. I am Elena Ortiz.)
• Sr. Ramos: Encantado. ¿Cómo está usted? (Delighted. How are you?)
• Sra. Ortiz: Muy bien, gracias. ¿Y usted? (Very well, thank you. And you?)
• Sr. Ramos: Bien, gracias. (Fine, thanks.)

Three comprehension notes. Carlos says encantado with -o because he is a man; Elena would say encantada. Both stick to usted forms (está, usted) because they have just met in a professional setting. And the exchange closes the loop politely: a question about well-being is always returned with ¿Y usted? or ¿Y tú? rather than left hanging.

And here is the same meeting, informally

• Lucas: ¡Hola! ¿Qué tal? Soy Lucas. (Hi! How is it going? I am Lucas.)
• Marta: ¡Hola, Lucas! Me llamo Marta. Mucho gusto. (Hi, Lucas! My name is Marta. Nice to meet you.)
• Lucas: ¿Cómo te va? (How are things?)
• Marta: Todo bien. ¿Y tú? (All good. And you?)
• Lucas: Bien. ¡Nos vemos! (Fine. See you around!)

Compare the two conversations line by line: the content is identical, but every "you" word changed. Students the same age default to tú from the first hello, so Lucas asks ¿Cómo te va? and Marta answers with ¿Y tú?.

Several ways to say goodbye

Just as with hellos, Spanish offers a range of farewells for different moods and distances. Adiós is the standard goodbye, while chao (also spelled chau) is a relaxed, friendly bye borrowed from Italian. When you expect to see the person again soon, the hasta family is very common, and nos vemos literally means we will see each other.

Spanish	English
Adiós.	Goodbye.
Chao.	Bye. (casual)
Hasta luego.	See you later.
Hasta pronto.	See you soon.
Hasta mañana.	See you tomorrow.
Nos vemos.	See you. (we will see each other)

A cultural note helps you fit in. In much of the Spanish-speaking world, friends and family greet with a light cheek kiss (one kiss in most of Latin America, two in Spain, usually between women or a woman and a man) or a warm handshake, and it is polite to greet each person in a small group rather than wave to everyone at once. A simple Hola, buenos días to a shopkeeper as you enter is expected and appreciated, and skipping it can read as cold. Mealtimes get their own courtesy: buen provecho (enjoy your meal) is said to people who are eating, even strangers at the next table in many countries.

Common misconceptions

• Buenas noches means only good night at bedtime. It works both as an evening greeting when you arrive and as a farewell when you leave.
• Mucho gusto changes for gender. It stays the same for everyone; only encantado and encantada change to match the speaker.
• tú and usted are interchangeable. Usted signals respect, so using tú with an elder or a stranger can sound too familiar.
• You can drop the accents and opening mark in writing. Correct Spanish needs the opening ¿ and the accents on cómo and estás.
• Buenos goes with every greeting. Learners often say "buenos tardes"; because tardes and noches are feminine, only días takes buenos.
• ¿Qué tal? needs a long answer. It is a light opener; a two-word Todo bien is a complete, natural reply.

Recap

• Greet by time of day with buenos días, buenas tardes, and buenas noches.
• Ask how someone is with ¿Qué tal?, ¿Cómo te va?, or the formal ¿Cómo está usted?
• Give your name with me llamo or soy, and answer an introduction with mucho gusto.
• Use tú with friends and family, usted with strangers and elders, and expect vos in Argentina and much of Central America.
• por favor, gracias, de nada, and perdón are the courtesy words you will use most.

Sources

1. "Centro Virtual Cervantes." Instituto Cervantes, cvc.cervantes.es.
2. "Plan curricular del Instituto Cervantes: Gramatica, niveles A1-A2." Instituto Cervantes, cvc.cervantes.es.
3. "Hola." Diccionario de la lengua española, Real Academia Española, dle.rae.es.
4. "Usted." Diccionario de la lengua española, Real Academia Española, dle.rae.es.
5. "Spanish Language." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
6. "Spanish Grammar." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
7. "Interrogative Word." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.

To say who does something, Spanish uses subject pronouns. Here they are with their meanings and rough pronunciations. Note that Spanish has several words for "you" depending on formality and number.

Pronoun	Pronunciation	Meaning
yo	yoh	I
tú	too	you (informal, singular)
él / ella / usted	el / EH-ya / oos-TED	he / she / you (formal)
nosotros / nosotras	no-SO-tros	we (masculine / feminine)
vosotros / vosotras	bo-SO-tros	you all (informal, used in Spain)
ellos / ellas / ustedes	EH-yos / oos-TEH-des	they (m / f) / you all

Two of these rows repay a second look. The feminine plurals nosotras and ellas are used only for all-female groups; one man in the group switches it back to nosotros or ellos. And usted, though it means "you", grammatically behaves like "he" or "she": it grew out of the old courtesy phrase vuestra merced, "your grace", and you speak to someone in usted the way you would speak about a third person. That is why the formal question is ¿Cómo está usted? with the él/ella verb form.

The dropped pronoun: a big contrast with English

English must say its subject: "am" alone is not a sentence. Spanish verbs carry the subject inside the ending, so the pronoun usually stays silent. Soy estudiante already means "I am a student" without saying yo; somos amigos can only mean "we are friends", because somos is unmistakably the nosotros form. Spanish speakers add the pronoun mainly for emphasis or contrast: Yo soy de Lima, pero él es de Bogotá ("I am from Lima, but he is from Bogotá"). Saying yo with every sentence sounds as odd in Spanish as stressing "I" in every English sentence.

Conjugating ser (to be)

One of the two Spanish verbs for "to be" is ser. It is irregular, so memorize its forms. This is the complete present-tense paradigm; every person is covered.

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

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

To make any of these negative, put no directly before the verb: No soy profesor (I am not a teacher), Ella no es de México (She is not from Mexico). There is no Spanish equivalent of the English helper "do not"; the bare no does all the work.

The many jobs of ser

It helps to see the full range of what ser does, because English uses one verb to be for jobs that Spanish splits between ser and estar. Ser covers identity and the traits that define a thing over time. A handy way to remember its uses is by category: description, occupation, characteristic, time and date, origin, and relationship. Each category answers the question, what is this in its essence, rather than how is it doing right now.

Use of ser	Example	English
Identity	Yo soy Ana.	I am Ana.
Occupation	Ella es profesora.	She is a teacher.
Characteristic	El libro es interesante.	The book is interesting.
Time and date	Hoy es lunes.	Today is Monday.
Origin	Somos de España.	We are from Spain.
Relationship	Él es mi hermano.	He is my brother.

Talking about jobs and origins

Two of the most common uses are saying what someone does and where they are from. Note that Spanish drops the word for a before a profession: you say Soy médico, not the equivalent of I am a doctor. For origin, ser pairs with de plus a place. One more contrast with English: nationality words are not capitalized in Spanish. She is Colombian, but ella es colombiana, lowercase c.

Profession	English	Origin	English
el profesor / la profesora	teacher	mexicano / mexicana	Mexican
el médico / la médica	doctor	español / española	Spanish
el estudiante / la estudiante	student	colombiano / colombiana	Colombian
el ingeniero / la ingeniera	engineer	argentino / argentina	Argentine

How to build it: from English thought to Spanish sentence

Take the English sentence "She is a doctor from Mexico" and assemble it in Spanish, decision by decision. First, the subject: she is ella, but Spanish will happily drop it if the context is clear; keep it this once for practice. Second, the verb: "is" describing a profession is essence, so the verb is ser, and the él/ella form is es. Third, the profession: Spanish drops the "a", and doctor for a woman is doctora, so far Ella es doctora. Fourth, origin: "from Mexico" is de México. Result: Ella es doctora y es de México, or more compactly, Ella es una doctora mexicana, where the nationality adjective mexicana agrees with the feminine subject. Every choice you made, verb selection, verb form, dropped article, gender agreement, is one of the moving parts this module trains.

Now reverse one variable: "I am a doctor from Mexico" only changes the verb form, Soy doctora y soy de México for a woman, Soy doctor y soy de México for a man. The endings do the work English pronouns do.

Example sentences

Read these aloud, with the English meaning in parentheses.

• Yo soy profesora y mi esposo es médico. (I am a teacher and my husband is a doctor.)
• Nosotros somos estudiantes de español. (We are students of Spanish.)
• Ella es de Colombia, así que es colombiana. (She is from Colombia, so she is Colombian.)
• Hoy es martes y ya es tarde. (Today is Tuesday and it is already late.)
• Tú eres muy amable. (You are very kind.)
• Ustedes no son de aquí, ¿verdad? (You all are not from here, right?)

A short dialogue

Two students get to know each other. Read the Spanish aloud, then check the English.

• Marta: Hola, ¿quién eres? (Hi, who are you?)
• Luis: Soy Luis. Soy ingeniero. (I am Luis. I am an engineer.)
• Marta: ¿De dónde eres? (Where are you from?)
• Luis: Soy de Argentina. ¿Y tú? (I am from Argentina. And you?)
• Marta: Yo soy española, de Madrid. Mis padres son profesores. (I am Spanish, from Madrid. My parents are teachers.)
• Luis: ¡Qué bien! Nosotros somos estudiantes aquí. (Great! We are students here.)

Three comprehension notes. Luis answers Soy de Argentina with no pronoun at all, because soy can only mean "I am". Marta says española, the feminine form, because she is a woman, and keeps it lowercase. And her sentence Mis padres son profesores shows son agreeing with a plural subject, plus the dropped article before a profession.

Describing people and things with ser

Because ser expresses lasting traits, it is the verb you reach for when you describe what someone or something is really like. Physical descriptions such as tall, short, and young, and personality traits such as kind, funny, and serious, all use ser. The adjective must agree with the person or thing, so a woman es alta while a man es alto, and two friends son simpáticos.

Compare a few full sentences. Mi profesor es alto y serio means my teacher is tall and serious, two stable traits. La casa es grande y blanca means the house is big and white, describing the thing itself. Mis amigas son inteligentes y divertidas means my friends are smart and fun, matching a feminine plural subject. In each case ser tells the listener about essence, not about a passing mood or a location, which you will express with estar instead.

Common misconceptions

• ser and estar are interchangeable because both mean to be. Ser states essence, identity, and origin; estar states conditions and location, which the next lesson covers in full.
• You must always say the subject pronoun. Spanish usually drops it because the verb ending already shows who acts; add it for emphasis or contrast, as in Yo soy Ana, y tú, ¿quién eres?
• Es means only he is. The single form es covers he is, she is, and the formal you are.
• vosotros is used everywhere. The informal you all, vosotros, is mainly used in Spain; Latin America uses ustedes for a group.
• Usted takes the tú verb form. Learners often say "usted eres"; usted always takes the él/ella form: usted es.
• Professions need un or una. Saying "soy un estudiante" is a classic English-speaker error; plain soy estudiante is the natural form unless an adjective follows (soy un estudiante serio).

Recap

• The subject pronouns are yo, tú, él, ella, usted, nosotros, vosotros, ellos, ellas, and ustedes.
• Spanish often drops the pronoun because the verb ending shows the subject; add it only for emphasis or contrast.
• Ser is irregular: soy, eres, es, somos, sois, son, and usted takes es, not eres.
• Use ser for identity, occupation, characteristics, time, origin, and relationships, and negate with a bare no before the verb.
• Drop the word for a before a profession, and write nationalities in lowercase: Soy estudiante; ella es colombiana.

Sources

1. "Personal Pronouns in Spanish." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
2. "Subject Pronouns in Spanish." SpanishDictionary.com ↗, Curiosity Media, spanishdict.com.
3. "Ser." Diccionario de la lengua española, Real Academia Española, dle.rae.es.
4. "ser." Wiktionary, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wiktionary.org.
5. "Romance Copula." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
6. "Spanish Verbs." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
7. "Spanish Grammar." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.

Spanish has a second verb that also translates as "to be": estar. Where ser describes what something is, estar describes how or where something is right now. English rolls both jobs into one verb, which is exactly why this pair takes practice: every time English says "is", Spanish quietly asks you which kind of "is" you mean. Here is the present tense.

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

Watch the spelling: four of the six forms carry a written accent (estás, está, estáis, están) because the stress falls on the last syllable, breaking the normal rule from Lesson 1. Writing "esta" without the accent turns the verb into the word for "this", so the little mark is doing real work here.

When to use estar

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

Ser or estar?

The choice can change the meaning of the sentence. Compare these:

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

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

The distinction is old: both verbs come from Latin, ser mostly from esse ("to be") and estar from stare ("to stand"). It can help to hear estar as "to stand": how do you stand right now, and where do you stand? English even keeps a cousin of stare in words like "state" and "status", which is exactly what estar reports.

How to build it: choosing the verb step by step

Take the English thought "The soup is cold" and build the Spanish. First decision: which "is"? Cold soup is a current condition, not the soup's identity (it was hot twenty minutes ago), so the verb is estar. Second: the subject la sopa is third-person singular, so the form is está. Third: the adjective must agree with the feminine noun sopa, so cold is fría. Result: La sopa está fría. Now flip the meaning: "Ice cream is cold" describes what ice cream inherently is, so ser wins: El helado es frío. Same adjective, different verb, and the sentence changed from a complaint to a definition.

One more: "Where are you?" Location means estar; the person is tú, so: ¿Dónde estás? The answer follows the same track: Estoy en el parque. (I am at the park.)

Feelings and conditions with estar

The richest use of estar is describing how someone feels or what state something is in right now. These are conditions that can change from hour to hour, which is exactly why estar, not ser, is the right verb. Learn a set of feeling words and pair each with the correct estar form, and remember that the adjective still agrees with the person, so a man está cansado and a woman está cansada.

Spanish	English	Spanish	English
contento / contenta	happy	triste	sad
enfermo / enferma	sick	cansado / cansada	tired
ocupado / ocupada	busy	nervioso / nerviosa	nervous
enojado / enojada	angry	preocupado / preocupada	worried
tranquilo / tranquila	calm	emocionado / emocionada	excited

Note that triste ends in -e, so it has one form for everyone: él está triste, ella está triste. Adjectives ending in -o/-a switch with the person, a pattern Lesson 7 develops fully.

When one adjective has two meanings

Here is the part that surprises many learners. Some adjectives change their meaning entirely depending on whether you use ser or estar. With ser they describe an essential trait; with estar they describe a current condition or an impression. The pairs below are worth memorizing, because choosing the wrong verb can change your message completely.

With ser	Meaning	With estar	Meaning
es aburrido	is boring	está aburrido	is bored
es listo	is clever	está listo	is ready
es rico	is rich	está rico	tastes delicious
es malo	is a bad person	está malo	is ill
es verde	is green in color	está verde	is unripe

Example sentences

Read these aloud, with the English meaning in parentheses.

• Estoy muy cansada hoy. (I am very tired today, said by a woman.)
• El restaurante está cerca de aquí. (The restaurant is near here.)
• La sopa está caliente. (The soup is hot right now.)
• Madrid está en España. (Madrid is in Spain; location always uses estar.)
• Mi hermana está embarazada. (My sister is pregnant.)
• Estamos nerviosos por el examen. (We are nervous about the exam.)

A short dialogue

Two friends check in on each other. Read the Spanish aloud, then check the English.

• Ana: Hola, ¿cómo estás? (Hi, how are you?)
• Beto: Estoy un poco cansado. ¿Y tú? (I am a little tired. And you?)
• Ana: Estoy bien, gracias. ¿Dónde está María? (I am fine, thanks. Where is María?)
• Beto: Está en casa; está enferma. (She is at home; she is sick.)
• Ana: ¡Qué pena! ¿Están preocupados sus padres? (What a shame! Are her parents worried?)
• Beto: Un poco, pero ella es fuerte. (A little, but she is strong.)

Three comprehension notes. Every question and answer about mood and place runs on estar: estás, estoy, está, están. Beto's last line switches to es fuerte because being strong is María's lasting trait, not today's condition; the dialogue uses both verbs correctly in one breath. And cansado ends in -o because Beto is a man; Ana would say cansada.

Saying where things are

Because estar owns the idea of location, it teams up naturally with position words to say exactly where something sits. Learn a few of these prepositions and you can place any object or person in a room. Common ones are cerca de (near), lejos de (far from), al lado de (next to), encima de (on top of), debajo de (under), delante de (in front of), detrás de (behind), and entre (between).

Notice how the pattern stays the same: subject, a form of estar, then the position word plus the place. El gato está debajo de la mesa means the cat is under the table. La farmacia está al lado del banco means the pharmacy is next to the bank, with de and el joining into del. Los niños están entre la escuela y el parque means the children are between the school and the park. In every case the verb is estar, because you are giving a location.

One refinement for later: when you say where an event takes place, Spanish switches to ser: La fiesta es en mi casa (The party is at my house). Things and people are located with estar; happenings are located with ser. At this stage, just file the example away; the estar rule covers everything you can touch.

Common misconceptions

• Permanent things use ser, so a city or country uses ser for its location. Location of things and people always uses estar, even for something as fixed as a country: México está en América. Permanence is not the test; category is.
• embarazada means embarrassed. It is a false friend: estar embarazada means to be pregnant. To say embarrassed, use avergonzado or tener vergüenza.
• estar is only for very brief states. It also covers conditions that last a while, such as being sick for a week; what matters is that they are conditions, not defining traits.
• An adjective means the same thing with ser and estar. Many change: rico is rich with ser but delicious with estar.
• When unsure, default to ser because English "is" feels basic. First-semester students overuse ser; if the sentence answers "how?" or "where?", it needs estar. "Soy cansado" is the classic error for estoy cansado.
• Both verbs can appear together for safety. Never stack them; "estoy es cansado" is not Spanish. Pick one verb per clause based on the meaning.

Recap

• Estar is irregular: estoy, estás, está, estamos, estáis, están, four of them with written accents.
• Use estar for location and for feelings or conditions that can change.
• Use ser for identity, origin, and lasting traits, as in the previous lesson.
• Some adjectives shift meaning: es aburrido is boring, but está aburrido is bored.
• Location of things and people always takes estar, even for cities and countries; only events take ser for place.

Sources

1. "Romance Copula." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
2. "Ser vs. Estar." SpanishDictionary.com ↗, Curiosity Media, spanishdict.com.
3. "Estar." Diccionario de la lengua española, Real Academia Española, dle.rae.es.
4. "estar." Wiktionary, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wiktionary.org.
5. "Spanish Verbs." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
6. "Spanish Grammar." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
7. "Plan curricular del Instituto Cervantes: Gramatica, niveles A1-A2." Instituto Cervantes, cvc.cervantes.es.

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

This is a real contrast with English, which marks gender only on people and a few pronouns. In Spanish, gender is a filing system that every noun belongs to, and the payoff is precision: because articles and adjectives carry the noun's gender and number, a Spanish sentence can track which thing you mean even when the words move around. The cost is memory, and the fix is a habit: never learn "mesa", learn la mesa.

Helpful endings

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

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

There are exceptions worth memorizing: el día (the day) is masculine though it ends in -a, and la mano (the hand) is feminine though it ends in -o. Words ending in -ción or -dad are feminine, such as la nación (the nation) and la ciudad (the city).

The four "the" and four "a"

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

	Masculine singular	Feminine singular	Masculine plural	Feminine plural
the (definite)	el	la	los	las
a / some (indefinite)	un	una	unos	unas

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

Two tiny contractions complete the article family. When a (to) or de (of, from) meets el, they fuse: a + el becomes al, and de + el becomes del. So you go al mercado (to the market) and come del banco (from the bank). The feminine article never contracts: a la escuela, de la casa.

A starter set of everyday nouns

Here are common nouns you will meet constantly, each with its article and a pronunciation hint. Say each one aloud, article included.

Spanish	Pronunciation	English	Spanish	Pronunciation	English
el libro	el LEE-bro	the book	la mesa	la MEH-sa	the table
el cuaderno	el kwa-DER-no	the notebook	la silla	la SEE-ya	the chair
el teléfono	el te-LEH-fo-no	the phone	la puerta	la PWER-ta	the door
el coche	el KO-che	the car	la llave	la YA-veh	the key
el reloj	el reh-LOH	the clock, watch	la flor	la flor	the flower

Notice that el coche and la llave end in -e and give no visual clue; their articles are simply part of what you memorize. Nouns for people usually offer both genders: el profesor / la profesora, el estudiante / la estudiante (same word, article does the work), and -ista words like el artista / la artista stay the same for both.

More clues to a noun's gender

The -o and -a rule is only the start. The ending of a noun often reveals its gender, and a handful of extra patterns will let you guess right most of the time. Most nouns ending in -or and -aje are masculine, while endings like -ción, -sión, -dad, -tad, and -tud are reliably feminine. Days, months, colors, and numbers are treated as masculine.

Ending	Usual gender	Example	English
-or	masculine	el color	the color
-aje	masculine	el viaje	the trip
-ción, -sión	feminine	la canción	the song
-dad, -tad	feminine	la libertad	the freedom
-tud	feminine	la actitud	the attitude
-ma (from Greek)	masculine	el problema	the problem

Making nouns plural

The plural rules are short and dependable. Add -s to a word ending in a vowel, and -es to a word ending in a consonant, and change the article to match. A word ending in -z changes the z to c before adding -es, so lápiz becomes lápices and luz becomes luces. Watch the written accent too: la canción loses its accent in the plural las canciones, because the stress now falls naturally.

Singular	Plural	English
el libro	los libros	the book(s)
la ciudad	las ciudades	the city / cities
el lápiz	los lápices	the pencil(s)
la canción	las canciones	the song(s)

One more rule: a mixed group takes the masculine plural. Two cats, one male and one female, are los gatos; a group of male and female friends is los amigos. Only an all-female group uses las.

How to build it: assembling a noun phrase

Take the English phrase "some difficult songs" and build it. Start from the noun: song is canción, feminine because of -ción. Pluralize: consonant ending, so add -es and drop the accent, canciones. Choose the article: "some" plus feminine plural is unas. Add the adjective difficult, difícil, which must also go plural: difíciles. Result: unas canciones difíciles. Every word in the phrase now wears the same feminine-plural uniform, which is exactly what the next lesson trains in detail.

Example sentences

Read these aloud, with the English meaning in parentheses.

• El problema es difícil. (The problem is difficult; problema is masculine.)
• La ciudad es muy grande. (The city is very big.)
• Tengo unos lápices y unas plumas. (I have some pencils and some pens.)
• El agua está fría. (The water is cold; agua is feminine but takes el.)
• Los mapas están en la mesa. (The maps are on the table; mapa is masculine.)
• Vamos al mercado del centro. (We are going to the downtown market; note al and del.)

A short dialogue

A customer buys fruit at a market stall. Read the Spanish aloud, then check the English.

• Cliente: Buenos días. ¿Tiene manzanas? (Good morning. Do you have apples?)
• Vendedor: Sí, aquí están las manzanas. (Yes, here are the apples.)
• Cliente: Quiero un kilo y una botella de agua. (I want a kilo and a bottle of water.)
• Vendedor: Aquí tiene. Son dos euros. (Here you go. That is two euros.)
• Cliente: Muchas gracias. (Thank you very much.)

Three comprehension notes. The seller says las manzanas because he is pointing at specific, definite apples on the stall. The customer says un kilo (masculine) but una botella (feminine), matching each noun's own gender. And agua after de needs no article at all, just like English "a bottle of water".

Using the articles

Spanish reaches for the definite article in places where English leaves it out. When you talk about something in general, Spanish keeps the article: Me gusta el café means I like coffee, and Los perros son leales means dogs are loyal, even though English drops the the. The article also appears with days of the week to mean on that day, as in Trabajo los lunes, I work on Mondays.

There are also moments when Spanish drops an article that English would keep. After the verb ser, a profession usually appears bare: Ella es doctora means she is a doctor, with no word for a. The indefinite articles un, una, unos, and unas otherwise work much like a and some, so un libro is a book and unos libros is some books. Getting a feel for these small differences makes your sentences sound natural rather than translated word for word.

Finally, the el agua pattern: when a feminine noun begins with a stressed "ah" sound, the singular article switches to el purely for sound, the way English switches "a" to "an". The noun stays feminine, so adjectives keep their feminine form: el agua fría, el águila majestuosa (the majestic eagle), el hambre (hunger). In the plural the normal article returns: las aguas, las águilas.

Common misconceptions

• Every noun ending in -a is feminine. Many words of Greek origin ending in -ma are masculine, such as el problema, el tema, el idioma, and el programa.
• Every noun ending in -o is masculine. A few are feminine, including la mano (hand) and la foto, short for la fotografía.
• el agua is masculine because it uses el. It is feminine; el appears only before a stressed a-sound to ease pronunciation, and the adjective stays feminine, as in el agua fría.
• You can memorize a noun without its article. Always learn the article with the noun, since the gender controls the articles and adjectives around it.
• Gender means the object is somehow male or female. It is pure grammar. El vestido (the dress) is masculine and la corbata (the tie) is feminine; no logic about the object will predict this.
• "De el" is written out. Learners often write "de el libro"; the contraction del is mandatory, as is al for a + el.

Recap

• Every noun is masculine or feminine, and the article must match it.
• Endings give strong clues: -or and -aje are usually masculine; -ción, -dad, and -tud are feminine.
• Greek-origin -ma words like problema and tema are masculine.
• Add -s after a vowel and -es after a consonant; -z becomes -ces, as in lápices.
• a + el contracts to al, de + el contracts to del, and mixed groups take the masculine plural.
• Learn each noun together with el or la so its gender is never in doubt.

Sources

1. "Spanish Nouns." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
2. "Spanish Determiners." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
3. "Masculine and Feminine Nouns in Spanish." SpanishDictionary.com ↗, Curiosity Media, spanishdict.com.
4. "Spanish Grammar." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
5. Real Academia Española. Diccionario de la lengua española. 23rd ed., dle.rae.es.
6. "Centro Virtual Cervantes." Instituto Cervantes, cvc.cervantes.es.
7. "Plan curricular del Instituto Cervantes: Gramatica, niveles A1-A2." Instituto Cervantes, cvc.cervantes.es.

An adjective describes a noun. In Spanish, adjectives must agree with the noun they describe in both gender (masculine or feminine) and number (singular or plural). This is one of the biggest differences from English, where adjectives never change: English says tall boy, tall girl, tall boys, while Spanish spins one word into four. Agreement feels like bookkeeping at first, but it quickly becomes music; a sentence sounds wrong to a Spanish ear when the endings clash.

How agreement works

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

	Singular	Plural
Masculine	alto	altos
Feminine	alta	altas

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

Two practical rules complete the picture. A mixed group takes the masculine plural: one boy and three girls are still altos. And when one adjective describes two nouns of different genders, the masculine plural wins again: el libro y la mesa son nuevos.

A working set of adjectives

Learn these in pairs with their opposites; each row gives the masculine singular and, where it differs, the feminine.

Spanish	English	Opposite	English
alto / alta	tall	bajo / baja	short (height)
grande	big	pequeño / pequeña	small
nuevo / nueva	new	viejo / vieja	old
bueno / buena	good	malo / mala	bad
fácil	easy	difícil	difficult
joven	young	mayor	older, elderly
bonito / bonita	pretty	feo / fea	ugly
rápido / rápida	fast	lento / lenta	slow

Intensify any of them with muy (very), un poco (a little), or bastante (quite): muy alto, un poco lento, bastante fácil. Never combine muy with mucho; "muy mucho" is not Spanish.

Where adjectives go

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

Position can even shade the meaning. A few adjectives feel more literal after the noun and more figurative before it: un amigo viejo is a friend who is elderly, while un viejo amigo is an old friend you have known for years; un hombre pobre has little money, while un pobre hombre is a poor soul you pity. You will absorb these gradually; for now, default to placing descriptions after the noun.

Colors and everyday descriptions

Colors are among the most useful adjectives, and they follow the agreement rules you just met. Colors ending in -o have four forms, like any -o adjective, while colors ending in -e or a consonant change only for number, not for gender. So a red car is un coche rojo and a red house is una casa roja, but a green car and a green house are both simply verde.

Spanish	English	Spanish	English
rojo / roja	red	blanco / blanca	white
negro / negra	black	amarillo / amarilla	yellow
verde	green	azul	blue
gris	gray	marrón	brown

The last four in that list, verde, azul, gris, and marrón, keep one form for masculine and feminine and only add an ending in the plural: verdes, azules, grises, and marrones.

Adjectives that shorten before the noun

A few common adjectives drop their final vowel when they come right before a masculine singular noun, a change called shortening. Bueno becomes buen, malo becomes mal, primero becomes primer, and tercero becomes tercer. So a good friend is un buen amigo and the first day is el primer día. The word grande shortens to gran before any singular noun and then changes meaning, from big to great.

How to build it: a full description

Take the English sentence "The new white houses are small" and assemble it. Start with the noun phrase: houses is casas, feminine plural, so "the" is las. White must agree: blancas. New must agree too: nuevas. Both descriptive adjectives follow the noun: las casas blancas nuevas (or more naturally, las casas nuevas y blancas, joining two adjectives with y). Now the verb: describing size is a lasting trait, so ser, and the ellas form is son. Small agrees as pequeñas. Result: Las casas nuevas y blancas son pequeñas. Count the agreements: las, nuevas, blancas, son, pequeñas, five words all bent around one feminine plural noun. That chain is Spanish agreement working exactly as designed.

Example sentences

Read these aloud, with the English meaning in parentheses.

• Es un buen amigo. (He is a good friend; bueno shortens to buen.)
• Simón Bolívar fue un gran hombre. (Simón Bolívar was a great man.)
• Vivo en el primer piso. (I live on the first floor.)
• Tengo unos zapatos negros y una camisa blanca. (I have black shoes and a white shirt.)
• Las montañas son altas y verdes. (The mountains are tall and green.)
• Mi profesora es joven, inteligente y muy trabajadora. (My teacher is young, smart, and very hardworking.)

A short dialogue

A customer chooses a shirt by color and size. Read the Spanish aloud, then check the English.

• Cliente: Busco una camisa azul. (I am looking for a blue shirt.)
• Vendedora: ¿Prefiere la azul o la verde? (Do you prefer the blue one or the green one?)
• Cliente: La azul, pero más grande. (The blue one, but bigger.)
• Vendedora: Aquí tiene una camisa azul grande. (Here is a big blue shirt.)
• Cliente: Perfecta, gracias. (Perfect, thank you.)

Three comprehension notes. The seller can say la azul, "the blue one", because the article plus adjective stands in for the noun once everyone knows we mean shirts; English needs the word "one", Spanish does not. Más grande shows comparison, more big = bigger. And the customer's last word perfecta is feminine because it still describes la camisa.

Describing character and origin

Adjectives also carry personality and nationality, and both follow the agreement rules. Useful character words include simpático (nice), trabajador (hardworking), divertido (fun), serio (serious), and amable (kind). Most take four forms, but amable, ending in -e, stays the same for a man or a woman.

Adjectives of nationality behave in a special way. Those ending in -o follow the normal pattern, so a Mexican man is mexicano and a Mexican woman is mexicana. But nationalities ending in a consonant add an -a for the feminine, unlike other consonant adjectives, so we say español and española, or francés and francesa, the second losing its written accent because the stress now falls naturally. A full description might be Mi amiga es española, trabajadora y muy amable, which means my friend is Spanish, hardworking, and very kind. Remember from Lesson 4 that these nationality words stay lowercase in Spanish.

Common misconceptions

• Adjectives never change, as in English. In Spanish they agree in gender and number: chica alta, chicos altos.
• Every adjective adds -a for the feminine. Those ending in -e or a consonant, like verde, azul, and inteligente, do not change for gender, only for number. The exceptions that do add -a are nationalities (española) and -dor words (trabajadora).
• Descriptive adjectives go before the noun, as in English. Most follow the noun in Spanish, as in una casa blanca; putting them first is the classic word-for-word translation error.
• grande and gran mean the same in any position. Before a singular noun it shortens to gran and means great, but after the noun grande means big: un gran hombre is a great man, un hombre grande is a large man.
• A mixed group can take the feminine plural. Any group containing at least one masculine noun or male person takes the masculine plural: los chicos altos.
• Agreement only applies next to the noun. It reaches across the verb too: in las casas son blancas, blancas still agrees with casas even though son stands between them.

Recap

• Adjectives agree with their noun in gender and number.
• Adjectives in -o have four forms; those in -e or a consonant change only for number, except nationalities and -dor words.
• Colors follow the same rules: rojo has four forms, but verde and azul do not change for gender.
• Most descriptive adjectives come after the noun, and a few change flavor when placed before it.
• Bueno, malo, primero, and grande shorten before the noun, and gran then means great.
• Mixed genders take the masculine plural, and agreement reaches across ser: las casas son blancas.

Sources

1. "Spanish Adjectives." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
2. "Spanish Adjectives - Descriptive." SpanishDictionary.com ↗, Curiosity Media, spanishdict.com.
3. "Spanish Adjectives Placement." SpanishDictionary.com ↗, Curiosity Media, spanishdict.com.
4. "Spanish Grammar." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
5. Real Academia Española and Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española. Nueva gramática de la lengua española. Espasa, 2009. find source ↗
6. "Centro Virtual Cervantes." Instituto Cervantes, cvc.cervantes.es.
7. "Plan curricular del Instituto Cervantes: Gramatica, niveles A1-A2." Instituto Cervantes, cvc.cervantes.es.

A Spanish verb in its base form is called the infinitive, and it always ends in -ar, -er, or -ir. To conjugate a regular verb, you drop that ending to find the stem and add a new ending that matches the subject. Once you learn the three patterns, you can use hundreds of verbs. This is the engine room of the language: English changes its verb only for he/she (I speak, she speaks), while Spanish gives every person its own ending, and in return lets you drop the pronoun entirely.

The three patterns

Here are three model verbs: hablar (to speak), comer (to eat), and vivir (to live). Each table row is a complete sentence subject; read every form aloud.

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

Notice that -er and -ir verbs share the same endings except in the nosotros and vosotros forms (comemos versus vivimos). The -ar endings all feature the letter a, while -er and -ir endings feature e or i. Pronunciation tip: stress stays on the stem in four forms (HA-blo, HA-blas, HA-bla, HA-blan) but moves to the ending in nosotros and vosotros (ha-BLA-mos, ha-BLAIS), which is why only the vosotros form needs a written accent.

How to build it: a three-step recipe

Say you want "We write emails." Step 1, find the verb and its family: to write is escribir, an -ir verb. Step 2, cut the ending to get the stem: escrib-. Step 3, ask who acts: "we", so attach the -ir nosotros ending -imos: escribimos. Add the object and you have Escribimos correos. No pronoun needed; -imos already announces "we". Run the same recipe on "She drinks coffee": beber, stem beb-, ella takes -e, so Ella bebe café, or simply Bebe café when context makes "she" clear. Practice this consciously for a week and it becomes reflex.

Putting it to work

The Spanish present tense covers three English ideas at once. Hablo español can mean "I speak Spanish," "I am speaking Spanish," or "I do speak Spanish." There is no separate helper verb like English "do" or "am"; the one form does it all. Here are more examples with translations:

• Nosotros comemos pan. (We eat bread.)
• Ella vive en Madrid. (She lives in Madrid.)
• Los estudiantes estudian mucho. (The students study a lot.)
• Tú bebes agua. (You drink water.)

Other common regular verbs to practice include trabajar (to work), estudiar (to study), aprender (to learn), leer (to read), escribir (to write), and abrir (to open). Conjugate them the same way: drop -ar, -er, or -ir, then add the matching ending.

The endings on their own

It helps to see the endings by themselves, apart from any one verb. Once these are in memory, you can conjugate any regular verb by dropping the infinitive ending and attaching the matching piece. Notice again that -er and -ir verbs are identical except in the nosotros and vosotros rows.

Pronoun	-ar	-er	-ir
yo	-o	-o	-o
tú	-as	-es	-es
él / ella / usted	-a	-e	-e
nosotros	-amos	-emos	-imos
vosotros	-áis	-éis	-ís
ellos / ellas / ustedes	-an	-en	-en

The yo form is -o across all three families, a friendly constant. And the -ar family is by far the largest; it is also where Spanish files almost every newly invented verb, from chatear (to chat online) to googlear (to google), so the pattern you are learning today will even conjugate words that did not exist twenty years ago.

A verb for every day

Here is a starter set of common regular verbs. Each one conjugates with the endings above, so learning the pattern once unlocks all of them at the same time.

Spanish	Pronunciation	English	Spanish	Pronunciation	English
trabajar	tra-ba-HAR	to work	comer	ko-MER	to eat
estudiar	es-tu-DYAR	to study	beber	be-BER	to drink
cocinar	ko-see-NAR	to cook	leer	leh-ER	to read
escuchar	es-ku-CHAR	to listen	aprender	a-pren-DER	to learn
mirar	mee-RAR	to watch	escribir	es-kree-BEER	to write

Two verbs in one sentence

Spanish often chains two verbs together, and the rule is simple: conjugate the first, leave the second as an infinitive. Necesito estudiar means I need to study; Deseamos aprender español means we want to learn Spanish. English does the same thing with "to", so the pattern feels natural; the trap is conjugating both verbs, which Spanish never does. This little pattern multiplies what you can say with today's endings: need to, hope to (esperar), and should all ride on it.

Example sentences

Read these aloud, with the English meaning in parentheses.

• Yo trabajo en una oficina. (I work in an office.)
• ¿Estudias español todos los días? (Do you study Spanish every day?)
• Nosotros leemos y escribimos en clase. (We read and write in class.)
• Ella cocina muy bien. (She cooks very well.)
• Los niños aprenden rápido. (The children learn fast.)
• Bebemos café por la mañana. (We drink coffee in the morning.)
• ¿Miras la televisión por la noche? (Do you watch television at night?)

A short dialogue

Two people compare their days. Read the Spanish aloud, then check the English.

• Sara: ¿Dónde trabajas? (Where do you work?)
• Tom: Trabajo en un hospital. ¿Y tú? (I work in a hospital. And you?)
• Sara: Estudio en la universidad y aprendo español. (I study at the university and I am learning Spanish.)
• Tom: ¿Hablas otras lenguas? (Do you speak other languages?)
• Sara: Hablo inglés y un poco de francés. (I speak English and a little French.)
• Tom: ¡Qué bien! Yo también aprendo francés a veces. (How nice! I sometimes study French too.)

Three comprehension notes. Every verb in the dialogue is a regular present form you can now generate yourself: trabajas/trabajo (tú and yo of trabajar), estudio, aprendo, hablas/hablo. Sara's aprendo español is a good example of the present covering English "I am learning". And Tom's Yo también adds the pronoun deliberately, for the contrast "me too".

Saying how often, and saying no

Verbs become far more useful once you can say how often an action happens. Spanish places short frequency words near the verb: siempre (always), a veces (sometimes), a menudo (often), casi nunca (almost never), and nunca (never). A time phrase such as todos los días (every day) or los fines de semana (on weekends) can open or close the sentence.

To make a verb negative, simply put no directly before it. No trabajo los domingos means I do not work on Sundays, and Ella no come carne means she does not eat meat. There is no Spanish "do not"; the bare no is the whole negative. Put these pieces together and you can describe a real routine: Siempre estudio por la mañana, pero a veces trabajo por la tarde means I always study in the morning, but sometimes I work in the afternoon. With one pattern of endings and a few time words, your sentences already sound like natural speech.

Common misconceptions

• The present tense has just one English translation. Hablo can mean I speak, I am speaking, or I do speak, depending on context.
• You must always include the subject pronoun. The ending already shows the subject, so trabajo by itself means I work.
• -er and -ir verbs are conjugated differently all the way through. They differ only in the nosotros and vosotros forms, as in comemos versus vivimos.
• Every form is stressed the same way. The nosotros and vosotros endings shift the stress, and vosotros carries a written accent, as in habláis, coméis, and vivís.
• Both verbs in a chain get conjugated. Only the first: necesito estudiar, never "necesito estudio". The second verb stays an infinitive.
• The infinitive can stand in for a conjugated verb. "Yo hablar español" is the stereotype of broken Spanish; the ending, not the word yo, is what makes the sentence work: hablo español.

Recap

• Every infinitive ends in -ar, -er, or -ir; drop that ending to find the stem.
• Add the matching ending for the subject to conjugate the verb; yo is always -o.
• -er and -ir verbs share endings except in the nosotros and vosotros forms.
• One present form covers I speak, I am speaking, and I do speak.
• Chain verbs by conjugating only the first: necesito estudiar.
• Negate with no before the verb, and add frequency words like siempre, a veces, and nunca.

Sources

1. "Spanish Verbs." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
2. "Spanish Conjugation." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
3. "Spanish Present Tense Forms." SpanishDictionary.com ↗, Curiosity Media, spanishdict.com.
4. "Appendix: Spanish Verbs." Wiktionary, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wiktionary.org.
5. "Comer." Diccionario de la lengua española, Real Academia Española, dle.rae.es.
6. Spanish Grammar in Context. COERLL, University of Texas at Austin, grammar.spanishintexas.org.
7. "Plan curricular del Instituto Cervantes: Gramatica, niveles A1-A2." Instituto Cervantes, cvc.cervantes.es.

Numbers appear everywhere: prices, ages, phone numbers, and time. Here are the essentials from zero to twenty, then the tens.

#	Spanish	#	Spanish
0	cero	11	once
1	uno	12	doce
2	dos	13	trece
3	tres	14	catorce
4	cuatro	15	quince
5	cinco	16	dieciséis
6	seis	17	diecisiete
7	siete	18	dieciocho
8	ocho	19	diecinueve
9	nueve	20	veinte
10	diez

And here are all the tens up to one hundred. Two of them sound dangerously alike at speed: sesenta (60) grows from seis, while setenta (70) grows from siete, and mixing that pair up is the classic number slip even for advanced learners. Say them aloud slowly, stressing the difference: se-SEN-ta, se-TEN-ta.

#	Spanish	#	Spanish
20	veinte	60	sesenta
30	treinta	70	setenta
40	cuarenta	80	ochenta
50	cincuenta	90	noventa
		100	cien

To build numbers in between, join a ten and a unit with y (and): treinta y uno is 31, cuarenta y cinco is 45, noventa y nueve is 99. The numbers 16 to 19 and 21 to 29 are written as one word (dieciséis, veintidós, veintinueve); from 31 on, the three-word spelling with y is standard.

One agreement rule hides inside uno: before a masculine noun it shortens to un, and before a feminine noun it becomes una. So you count "veintiuno" but say veintiún libros (21 books) and treinta y una personas (31 people). Every other number from 2 to 99 is invariable.

Days, months, and dates

The days of the week are lunes (Monday), martes, miércoles, jueves, viernes, sábado, and domingo. They are not capitalized in Spanish, and the week starts on Monday on Spanish calendars. The article does the work English does with "on": el lunes means on Monday, and los lunes means on Mondays, as in Trabajo los sábados (I work on Saturdays). The five weekday names ending in -s do not change in the plural; only the article moves: el lunes, los lunes.

The months (enero, febrero, marzo, and so on) are also lowercase. To give a date, use the pattern el + number + de + month: el cinco de mayo means "the fifth of May." For the first of the month, Spanish traditionally uses el primero, though Spain increasingly says el uno.

Telling time

To ask the time, say ¿Qué hora es? (What time is it?). For one o'clock use es; for all other hours use son, because they are plural:

• Es la una. (It is one o'clock.)
• Son las tres. (It is three o'clock.)
• Son las cuatro y media. (It is four thirty; media means half.)
• Son las siete y cuarto. (It is a quarter past seven.)
• Son las nueve menos diez. (It is ten to nine.)

Add de la mañana (in the morning), de la tarde (in the afternoon), or de la noche (at night) to be clear. Noon is el mediodía and midnight is la medianoche: Es mediodía, Es medianoche. Why "la una" and "las tres"? The feminine article agrees with the unspoken word hora (hour), so the time expressions are feminine throughout.

A cultural note: schedules in Spain and much of Latin America run on the 24-hour clock in writing, so a train at 15:30 is said aloud as las tres y media de la tarde. In Latin America you will also hear time-of-day ranges shift with daylight: de la tarde can stretch to seven or eight in the evening. And "quince minutos" is fine instead of cuarto, just as English says fifteen instead of quarter.

Numbers past one hundred

The number one hundred is cien when it stands alone or before a noun, as in cien euros. But from 101 to 199 it changes to ciento, so 150 is ciento cincuenta, and there is no y right after the hundred. The hundreds from 200 up are formed with -cientos, and a few are irregular. They also agree in gender with what they count, so you say doscientos libros but doscientas casas.

#	Spanish	#	Spanish
200	doscientos	600	seiscientos
300	trescientos	700	setecientos
400	cuatrocientos	800	ochocientos
500	quinientos	900	novecientos

For thousands, use mil, which does not change when you count: 2,000 is dos mil and 2026 is dos mil veintiséis. One million is un millón, and it takes de before a noun, as in un millón de personas. Notice that 500, 700, and 900 are the irregular ones to watch, since they are not simply cinco, siete, and nueve plus cientos.

How to build it: a big number, piece by piece

Assemble 347: three hundred is trescientos, forty is cuarenta, seven is siete, and the y goes only between ten and unit: trescientos cuarenta y siete. Now 1,985, the way you would read a year: one thousand is mil (no "un"), nine hundred is novecientos, then eighty-five: mil novecientos ochenta y cinco. Spanish reads years as full numbers, never in pairs like English "nineteen eighty-five". Finally a price: 21 euros is veintiún euros, with uno shortened before the masculine noun euros.

The months of the year

The days of the week appeared above; here are the twelve months, which are also written in lowercase. To give a full date, use the pattern el plus the number plus de plus the month, as in el quince de agosto.

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

Write dates day first: 5/3 is el 5 de marzo, the fifth of March, not the third of May. A full date strings the pieces with de: el catorce de febrero de dos mil veinte, February 14, 2020.

It is time versus at what time

There is a useful difference between saying what time it is and saying when something happens. To state the time, use es or son: Son las tres means it is three o'clock. To say at a time, switch to a la or a las: La clase es a las tres means the class is at three. Add en punto for on the dot, and de la mañana, de la tarde, or de la noche to be clear about the part of the day.

Ages and phone numbers

Spanish states age with tener (to have), which the next lesson conjugates in full: Tengo veintitrés años is literally "I have twenty-three years", and the question is ¿Cuántos años tienes?. Phone numbers are usually read in pairs: 612 34 56 78 comes out seis, doce, treinta y cuatro, cincuenta y seis, setenta y ocho, which is excellent everyday number practice.

Example sentences

Read these aloud, with the English meaning in parentheses.

• Tengo veintitrés años. (I am twenty-three years old.)
• El libro cuesta quince euros. (The book costs fifteen euros.)
• Hoy es el diez de octubre. (Today is the tenth of October.)
• Son las ocho y cuarto de la mañana. (It is a quarter past eight in the morning.)
• La reunión es a las tres de la tarde. (The meeting is at three in the afternoon.)
• Hay treinta y una personas y veintiún libros. (There are thirty-one people and twenty-one books.)

A short dialogue

Two classmates check the time and a schedule. Read the Spanish aloud, then check the English.

• Ana: ¿Qué hora es? (What time is it?)
• Beto: Son las dos y media. (It is two thirty.)
• Ana: ¿A qué hora es la clase? (What time is the class?)
• Beto: A las cuatro en punto. (At four o'clock sharp.)
• Ana: Perfecto, hasta luego. (Perfect, see you later.)

Three comprehension notes. Beto answers the "what time is it" question with son las, but the "at what time" question with bare a las, the exact es/a las contrast above. Dos y media adds the half hour with y, never with "treinta y" plus media. And the exchange never names the pronoun once: hora es, es la clase, all subjects live in the verb.

Common misconceptions

• One o'clock uses son like the other hours. One o'clock is singular, so it is Es la una, while all other hours use son.
• cien works for 101. Use ciento from 101 to 199, as in ciento uno; cien is exactly one hundred.
• Days and months are capitalized as in English. They are lowercase in Spanish: lunes, enero.
• Dates are written month first. Spanish puts the day first, so 5/3 is el 5 de marzo, the fifth of March, not the third of May.
• Age uses ser, as English uses "to be". Age uses tener: tengo veinte años, literally I have twenty years; "soy veinte años" is a telltale error.
• uno never changes. It shortens to un before masculine nouns (veintiún euros) and becomes una before feminine ones (veintiuna horas).

Recap

• Join tens and units with y: treinta y uno, cuarenta y cinco; 16-29 are single words.
• The tens are veinte, treinta, cuarenta, cincuenta, sesenta, setenta, ochenta, noventa; watch sesenta versus setenta.
• cien is exactly 100; use ciento for 101 to 199, and the hundreds agree in gender.
• mil is invariable when counting, and un millón takes de before a noun.
• Say the time with es or son, and say when with a la or a las; hora makes it all feminine.
• Days, months, and dates are lowercase, day before month, and el lunes means on Monday.

Sources

1. "Review of Numbers in Spanish." SpanishDictionary.com ↗, Curiosity Media, spanishdict.com.
2. "Telling Time in Spanish." SpanishDictionary.com ↗, Curiosity Media, spanishdict.com.
3. "Spanish Language." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
4. "Spanish Grammar." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
5. Real Academia Española. Diccionario de la lengua española. 23rd ed., dle.rae.es.
6. "Centro Virtual Cervantes." Instituto Cervantes, cvc.cervantes.es.
7. "Plan curricular del Instituto Cervantes: Gramatica, niveles A1-A2." Instituto Cervantes, cvc.cervantes.es.

Some of the most useful Spanish verbs are irregular, meaning they do not follow the regular patterns. Three you will use constantly are tener (to have), ir (to go), and hacer (to do or make). Learn them now and your sentences will open up quickly. Irregular does not mean random: each of these verbs has its own internal logic, and spotting it makes the forms stick.

Pronoun	tener (to have)	ir (to go)	hacer (to do/make)
yo	tengo	voy	hago
tú	tienes	vas	haces
él / ella / usted	tiene	va	hace
nosotros / nosotras	tenemos	vamos	hacemos
vosotros / vosotras	tenéis	vais	hacéis
ellos / ellas / ustedes	tienen	van	hacen

Look at the patterns inside the table. Hacer is regular everywhere except its yo form hago; several common verbs share this "-go" quirk (poner, pongo; salir, salgo). Tener combines two habits: the -go yo form (tengo) and a stem change of e to ie in tienes, tiene, and tienen, while the nosotros and vosotros forms keep the plain stem. Ir is the wild card: its present forms voy, vas, va, vamos, vais, van look nothing like "ir" because they were borrowed centuries ago from a different Latin verb, and they conveniently rhyme with the endings of -ar verbs.

Special uses of tener

Spanish uses tener where English uses "to be" for certain states. Most importantly, age: Tengo veinte años literally means "I have twenty years," that is, "I am twenty years old." The question is ¿Cuántos años tienes? (How old are you?). Other tener expressions include tener hambre (to be hungry), tener sed (to be thirsty), tener frío (to be cold), tener calor (to be hot), and tener que + infinitive (to have to do something), as in Tengo que estudiar (I have to study).

ir and hacer

The verb ir almost always pairs with a (to): Voy a la escuela (I am going to school), Vamos al cine (We are going to the movies). Note that a + el contracts to al. To ask about destination, use ¿Adónde vas? (Where are you going?). The form vamos doubles as an invitation: ¡Vamos! means "Let's go!" The verb hacer means to do or make, and it also appears in weather: Hace calor (It is hot out), Hace frío (It is cold out), Hace sol (It is sunny). A common question is ¿Qué haces? (What are you doing?), and the polite answer often uses hacer too: Hago la tarea (I am doing homework).

More expressions with tener

Spanish uses tener plus a noun for many states where English uses to be plus an adjective. You literally have hunger, have sleepiness, or have luck. Because these use a noun, you strengthen them with mucho or mucha, not muy, so it is tengo mucha hambre, not the equivalent of very hungry.

Spanish	English	Spanish	English
tener sueño	to be sleepy	tener prisa	to be in a hurry
tener miedo	to be afraid	tener razón	to be right
tener suerte	to be lucky	tener ganas de	to feel like doing

Gender decides mucho versus mucha: hambre, sed, prisa, and suerte are feminine (mucha), while sueño, miedo, frío, and calor are masculine (mucho). One more essential: tener ganas de plus an infinitive means to feel like doing something, as in Tengo ganas de bailar (I feel like dancing).

Talking about the weather

Most weather expressions use hacer in a fixed, third-person form, as if to say the day makes heat or makes cold. A few common ones use their own verbs instead. Rain and snow have single-word verbs, and a cloudy sky uses estar.

Spanish	English	Spanish	English
Hace calor.	It is hot.	Hace viento.	It is windy.
Hace frío.	It is cold.	Llueve.	It is raining.
Hace sol.	It is sunny.	Nieva.	It is snowing.

Intensify weather with mucho, matching the noun: Hace mucho calor (It is very hot), Hace mucho frío. The question is ¿Qué tiempo hace? (What is the weather like?), literally "What weather does it make?", a phrase worth memorizing whole. Hacer has one more everyday job: with a length of time it means "ago", as in hace dos años (two years ago) and hace una hora (an hour ago).

How to build it: three verbs, one plan

Take the English thought "I am hungry, so I have to go to the market." Piece one: hunger is a tener state, and the noun hambre is feminine, so Tengo hambre. Piece two: obligation is tener que plus infinitive, so "I have to go" is tengo que ir; note that ir stays an infinitive because tener already carries the conjugation. Piece three: destination takes a, and market is el mercado, so a + el contracts: al mercado. Full sentence: Tengo hambre, así que tengo que ir al mercado. One subject, every verb decision accounted for.

Example sentences

Read these aloud, with the English meaning in parentheses.

• Tengo mucha hambre y un poco de sed. (I am very hungry and a little thirsty.)
• Tenemos que estudiar esta noche. (We have to study tonight.)
• Vamos al parque los sábados. (We go to the park on Saturdays.)
• Hoy hace mucho calor. (Today it is very hot.)
• ¿Qué haces los fines de semana? (What do you do on weekends?)
• ¿Adónde van ustedes después de clase? (Where are you all going after class?)

A short dialogue

Two friends make a plan around the weather. Read the Spanish aloud, then check the English.

• Sol: ¿Qué haces mañana? (What are you doing tomorrow?)
• Dani: Voy a la playa si hace sol. (I am going to the beach if it is sunny.)
• Sol: Dicen que va a llover. (They say it is going to rain.)
• Dani: Entonces vamos al cine. Tengo ganas de ver una película. (Then we go to the movies. I feel like watching a film.)
• Sol: ¡Buena idea! ¡Vamos! (Good idea! Let's go!)

Three comprehension notes. Dani's si hace sol uses the weather hacer inside an "if" clause; no new grammar, just the fixed expression at work. Sol's va a llover quietly previews the near future you will study in Module 7: ir + a + infinitive, "it is going to rain". And vamos al cine shows the a + el contraction plus the fact that Spanish happily uses the present (vamos) for a plan that is about to happen.

Where are you going?

The verb ir is your ticket to talking about destinations. It pairs with a and a place, and remember that a plus el joins into al. Common destinations include la escuela (school), el trabajo (work), el mercado (the market), el gimnasio (the gym), la casa (home), and el centro (downtown). So Voy al trabajo means I am going to work, and Vamos a la casa de Ana means we are going to Ana's house. Notice that Spanish says "the house of Ana"; there is no apostrophe-s, so possession always runs through de.

The same verb opens the door to talking about the future, a structure the next module covers in detail. When you add a plus another verb in its base form, you say what is going to happen: Voy a estudiar means I am going to study, and Vamos a comer means we are going to eat. In other words, one small verb lets you say both where you go and what you plan to do, which is why tener, ir, and hacer are the workhorses of everyday Spanish.

Common misconceptions

• Age and hunger use ser or estar. They use tener: Tengo veinte años and Tengo hambre. "Soy veinte años" and "estoy hambre" are the two classic errors here.
• ir can stand alone without a. Ir almost always takes a plus a destination, and a + el contracts to al, as in Voy al banco; "voy el banco" is missing its glue.
• All weather uses hacer. Most does, but rain and snow use their own verbs, llueve and nieva, and a cloudy sky uses estar, as in está nublado.
• hacer means only to do. It also means to make, it runs the weather, and with time it means ago, as in hace un año.
• tener states take muy. Because hambre, sed, and sueño are nouns, they take mucho or mucha: mucha hambre, never "muy hambre".
• tener que conjugates both verbs. Only tener conjugates; the second verb stays an infinitive: tengo que estudiar, never "tengo que estudio".

Recap

• tener, ir, and hacer are irregular but appear constantly, so they are worth memorizing.
• tengo and hago share the -go yo form; tener also changes e to ie in tienes, tiene, tienen.
• Use tener for age and for states like hunger, thirst, and sleepiness, with mucho or mucha.
• tener que plus an infinitive means to have to do something; tener ganas de means to feel like it.
• ir takes a plus a destination, a + el becomes al, and ¡Vamos! means let's go.
• Most weather uses hace, but llueve, nieva, and está nublado are exceptions, and hace + time means ago.

Sources

1. "tener." Wiktionary, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wiktionary.org.
2. "ir." Wiktionary, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wiktionary.org.
3. "hacer." Wiktionary, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wiktionary.org.
4. "Tener." Diccionario de la lengua española, Real Academia Española, dle.rae.es.
5. "Spanish Conjugation." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
6. "Spanish Verbs." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
7. "Plan curricular del Instituto Cervantes: Gramatica, niveles A1-A2." Instituto Cervantes, cvc.cervantes.es.

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

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

Notice what is missing: there is no Spanish word for the English helpers "do" and "does". English rebuilds its sentence to ask a question; Spanish just changes the melody. One thing to remember in writing: Spanish opens a question with an inverted question mark and closes with a normal one, so the full written form is ¿Hablas español? The same happens with exclamations: ¡Qué bien! The opening mark tells the reader to start the rising tone in the right place, which matters because a Spanish question can be word-for-word identical to a statement.

Two tiny add-ons turn any statement into a question: ¿verdad? (right?) and ¿no? tag the end, as in Hablas español, ¿verdad? (You speak Spanish, right?).

Question words

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

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

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

More question words

Beyond the core interrogatives, a few more let you ask about choices, quantities, and directions. Each keeps its written accent, which is exactly what marks it as a question word. Note that some combine a small word with a question word, such as adónde for to where and de dónde for from where.

Spanish	English	Example
cuál / cuáles	which	¿Cuál prefieres? (Which do you prefer?)
cuántos / cuántas	how many	¿Cuántos años tienes? (How old are you?)
adónde	to where	¿Adónde vas? (Where are you going?)
de dónde	from where	¿De dónde eres? (Where are you from?)
a qué hora	at what time	¿A qué hora es? (At what time is it?)

Those last rows teach a rule English speakers never expect: the preposition travels to the front with the question word. English says "Where are you from?", leaving from at the end; Spanish must say ¿De dónde eres?, "From where are you?". The same goes for ¿Con quién vives? (Who do you live with?, literally "With whom do you live?") and ¿A quién llamas? (Who are you calling?). A preposition can never dangle at the end of a Spanish question.

Also note that cuántos agrees with its noun: ¿Cuántos hermanos? but ¿Cuántas hermanas?, and plain cuánto before a verb asks about amount or price.

qué or cuál?

These two both translate as what or which, and choosing between them trips up many learners. Use qué to ask for a definition or an explanation, and always before a noun, as in ¿Qué es esto? (What is this?) and ¿Qué color te gusta? (What color do you like?). Use cuál to ask someone to pick from a set of options, as in ¿Cuál prefieres? (Which one do you prefer?). One surprise for English speakers is that a phone number or a name uses cuál: ¿Cuál es tu número? asks what your number is, because you are choosing one number out of all possible numbers rather than asking for a definition of "number".

How to build it: from statement to interview

Start from one statement you can already say: María vive en Madrid. (María lives in Madrid.) Now mine it for questions. To confirm it, keep the words and lift your voice: ¿María vive en Madrid? To ask about the place, replace "en Madrid" with the question word and pull it to the front: ¿Dónde vive María?, with the subject sliding behind the verb. To ask about the person, replace María: ¿Quién vive en Madrid? Each question is the same sentence with one slot emptied and the question word promoted to the front carrying its accent. This slot-swapping trick converts everything you learn into practice questions.

Example sentences

Read these aloud, with the English meaning in parentheses.

• ¿Cuál es tu número de teléfono? (What is your phone number?)
• ¿Cuántos hermanos tienes? (How many siblings do you have?)
• ¿Adónde vas ahora? (Where are you going now?)
• ¿Con quién estudias español? (With whom do you study Spanish?)
• ¿Por qué estudias? Porque me gusta. (Why do you study? Because I like it.)
• Ustedes son de Chile, ¿verdad? (You all are from Chile, right?)

A short dialogue

A visitor asks for information at a museum desk. Read the Spanish aloud, then check the English.

• Turista: Perdón, ¿dónde está la salida? (Excuse me, where is the exit?)
• Guía: La salida está a la derecha. (The exit is on the right.)
• Turista: ¿A qué hora cierra el museo? (What time does the museum close?)
• Guía: A las seis de la tarde. (At six in the evening.)
• Turista: ¿Cuánto cuesta la entrada? (How much does a ticket cost?)
• Guía: Diez euros, señor. (Ten euros, sir.)
• Turista: Muchas gracias. (Thank you very much.)

Three comprehension notes. The tourist opens with perdón, the polite attention-getter from Lesson 3, before asking anything. ¿Dónde está la salida? runs on estar because it asks for a location. And the guide's answers reuse the question's own frame (a la derecha, a las seis), which is exactly how you should answer: recycle the question's structure and drop your information into it.

Answering and asking back

A question is only half of a conversation, so it helps to have ready answers. For a yes-or-no question you can reply simply with sí or no, and a fuller answer often repeats the verb: to ¿Hablas español? you might say Sí, hablo un poco. A negative answer doubles the no naturally: No, no hablo francés, where the first no answers and the second negates the verb. To answer a why question, start with porque plus a reason. To ask the same thing back, the short phrase ¿Y tú? or the formal ¿Y usted? keeps the exchange moving.

Word order in questions is flexible. You can keep the statement order and simply raise your tone, as in ¿Tú vives aquí?, or you can move the subject after the verb, as in ¿Vive aquí tu familia? Both are correct and common. Because the opening ¿ already warns the reader that a question is coming, Spanish does not need to change the words as strictly as English does with do and does. One last detail: the accent on a question word survives even inside a statement, as in No sé dónde está la salida (I do not know where the exit is), because the where is still doing question work. With a handful of question words, a few ready answers, and the habit of asking back, you can hold a real back-and-forth conversation.

Common misconceptions

• por qué and porque are the same. Por qué (two words, accent) asks why; porque (one word) answers because.
• qué and cuál are interchangeable. Use qué for a definition or before a noun, and cuál to choose among options: ¿Cuál prefieres?
• éxito means exit. It is a false friend: éxito means success, while the exit is la salida.
• Question words can drop their accent. The accent marks the word as a question word, so dónde asks where, while donde without the accent simply links clauses.
• The opening ¿ is optional. In correct writing it is required, and it can appear mid-sentence: Y tú, ¿cómo estás? Only the question part gets the marks.
• Prepositions can dangle at the end, as in English. They move to the front with the question word: ¿De dónde eres?, never "¿Dónde eres de?".

Recap

• Form a yes-or-no question with rising tone or by putting the verb first; there is no Spanish "do".
• Written questions open with ¿ and close with a normal question mark, even mid-sentence.
• The question words carry a written accent: qué, quién, dónde, cuándo, cómo, cuánto, cuál, and keep it in indirect questions.
• Use qué for a definition or before a noun, and cuál to pick among options, including phone numbers.
• Prepositions ride in front: ¿De dónde...?, ¿Con quién...?, ¿A qué hora...?
• por qué asks why; porque answers because; ¿verdad? and ¿no? tag any statement into a question.

Sources

1. "Interrogative Word." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
2. "Asking Questions in Spanish." SpanishDictionary.com ↗, Curiosity Media, spanishdict.com.
3. "Spanish Grammar." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
4. "Personal Pronouns in Spanish." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
5. "Plan curricular del Instituto Cervantes: Gramatica, niveles A1-A2." Instituto Cervantes, cvc.cervantes.es.
6. "Centro Virtual Cervantes." Instituto Cervantes, cvc.cervantes.es.
7. Real Academia Española and Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española. Nueva gramática de la lengua española. Espasa, 2009. find source ↗

Food is one of the most rewarding topics for a new speaker because you can use it immediately. Let us build a small menu of vocabulary, then learn how to order.

Spanish	Pronunciation	English	Spanish	Pronunciation	English
el pan	el pan	bread	el agua	el AH-gwa	water
el queso	el KEH-so	cheese	el café	el ka-FEH	coffee
la carne	la KAR-neh	meat	el jugo	el HOO-go	juice
el pollo	el PO-yo	chicken	la leche	la LEH-cheh	milk
el pescado	el pes-KA-do	fish	el vino	el VEE-no	wine
la manzana	la man-SA-na	apple	la sopa	la SO-pa	soup

The three meals are el desayuno (breakfast), el almuerzo (lunch), and la cena (dinner). To eat is comer and to drink is beber. Watch the regional labels, though: in Spain and Mexico the midday meal is often la comida, and dinner comes late, at nine or ten at night in Spain. Some food words change country too: potato is la papa in Latin America but la patata in Spain, and juice is el jugo in Latin America but el zumo in Spain. Both words in each pair are correct Spanish; use the one your region uses.

Wanting and liking

To say what you want, use querer (to want), a common verb that changes its stem from e to ie in four of its six forms. Here is the complete present tense; notice that nosotros and vosotros keep the plain stem, the same "boot" pattern you saw in tener.

Pronoun	querer	Example	English
yo	quiero	Quiero un café.	I want a coffee.
tú	quieres	¿Quieres pan?	Do you want bread?
él / ella / usted	quiere	Ella quiere sopa.	She wants soup.
nosotros / nosotras	queremos	Queremos la cuenta.	We want the check.
vosotros / vosotras	queréis	¿Queréis postre?	Do you all want dessert?
ellos / ellas / ustedes	quieren	Quieren vino.	They want wine.

To be polite you can soften quiero to Quisiera (I would like), the restaurant register par excellence. To say what you like, use gustar, which works differently: it literally says something "is pleasing to me." Me gusta el café means "I like coffee," and Me gustan las manzanas means "I like apples" (plural noun, so gustan).

Ordering

Here is a short restaurant exchange you could use today:

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

The keyword la cuenta (the bill) and the polite por favor will carry you through most meals. Note the idiom the waiter uses: ¿Qué desea? runs on desear (to wish), a courteous stand-in for querer.

More food and drink

A wider menu lets you say what you actually want. Here is a second set of everyday foods, from fruits and vegetables to a sweet ending. As always, learn each noun with its article so the gender sticks.

Spanish	English	Spanish	English
la naranja	orange	el arroz	rice
el plátano	banana	el huevo	egg
la fresa	strawberry	la ensalada	salad
el tomate	tomato	el postre	dessert
la cebolla	onion	el helado	ice cream
la papa	potato	el pastel	cake

A closer look at gustar

The verb gustar does not work like the English to like. It literally says that something is pleasing to you, so the thing liked is the subject and you appear as an object word. This flip is the single most useful "think in Spanish" moment of the course: English says "I like coffee"; Spanish says "Coffee pleases me." The person pleased is shown by one of six little pronouns:

Pronoun	Meaning	Example	English
me	to me	Me gusta el pan.	I like bread.
te	to you (informal)	¿Te gusta el café?	Do you like coffee?
le	to him, her, you (formal)	Le gusta la sopa.	He or she likes soup.
nos	to us	Nos gusta comer.	We like to eat.
os	to you all (Spain)	¿Os gusta el vino?	Do you all like wine?
les	to them, you all	Les gustan las fresas.	They like strawberries.

Use gusta when one thing or an action is pleasing, and gustan when several things are. With a verb it stays singular: Me gusta cocinar means I like to cook. To add emphasis or to make clear who you mean, put a mí, a ti, or a name in front, as in A mi hermano le gusta el té. The verb encantar works the same way but stronger, so Me encanta la pizza means I love pizza.

How to build it: saying you like something

Build "My mother likes strawberries." Step 1, flip the sentence: strawberries will be the subject, your mother the receiver. Step 2, the receiver phrase: a + person, a mi madre, followed by its echo pronoun le. Step 3, the verb agrees with the subject las fresas, plural, so gustan. Result: A mi madre le gustan las fresas. The a-phrase and the le look redundant to English eyes, but the le is required; the a-phrase is the optional clarifier.

Example sentences

Read these aloud, with the English meaning in parentheses.

• Me gusta el pescado, pero no me gustan los mariscos. (I like fish, but I do not like seafood.)
• A mi hermano le encanta el helado. (My brother loves ice cream.)
• Quiero una ensalada y un jugo de naranja. (I want a salad and an orange juice.)
• ¿Te gusta cocinar? (Do you like to cook?)
• De postre, quisiera un pastel. (For dessert, I would like a cake.)

A fuller restaurant order

A meal often comes in courses, so here is a longer exchange with a waiter. Read the Spanish aloud, then check the English.

• Camarero: Buenas noches. ¿Qué van a pedir? (Good evening. What are you going to order?)
• Cliente: De primero, una sopa. De segundo, el pollo. (To start, a soup. For the main, the chicken.)
• Camarero: ¿Y para beber? (And to drink?)
• Cliente: Agua, por favor. (Water, please.)
• Camarero: ¿Algo de postre? (Anything for dessert?)
• Cliente: Sí, un helado. Y la cuenta, por favor. (Yes, an ice cream. And the check, please.)

Three comprehension notes. ¿Qué van a pedir? uses ustedes (van) because the waiter addresses the whole table formally; pedir is the restaurant verb "to order". De primero... de segundo is the standard Spanish-menu frame for courses, worth memorizing whole. And the client orders el pollo with the definite article, pointing at the menu's chicken dish, but una sopa with the indefinite, one bowl among many.

Useful words in a restaurant

A few extra words make dining out smooth. The menu is la carta or el menú, the waiter is el camarero in Spain and el mesero in much of Latin America, and the tip is la propina. To start, you can ask ¿Tiene una mesa para dos? (Do you have a table for two?) or ¿Me trae la carta, por favor? (Could you bring me the menu, please?). That me trae pattern, "you bring to me", is the natural way to request things; a word-for-word English "can I have" sounds odd in Spanish.

When you are ready to pay, La cuenta, por favor is all you need. If a dish looks good, you can say Para mí, el pollo (For me, the chicken), and if you have a restriction, Soy vegetariano or Soy vegetariana tells the waiter you do not eat meat. A cultural note: in Spain, going out for tapas means sharing many small plates rather than ordering courses, and lingering at the table talking after the meal is so normal it has a name, la sobremesa. Tipping customs are lighter than in the United States; rounding up or leaving five to ten percent is common in Spain and Mexico for good service. These small phrases, added to the food words above, cover almost any meal from the first greeting to the final check.

Common misconceptions

• gustar changes to match the person. It matches the thing liked, so it is gusta for one thing and gustan for several; the person is shown by me, te, or le.
• me gusto means I like it. That actually means I like myself; to say I like it, use me gusta.
• "Yo gusto..." is how you say I like. The liker is never the subject; yo plays no part in me gusta el café.
• sopa means soap. It is a false friend: sopa is soup, while soap is jabón.
• querer is a regular verb. It is stem-changing, from e to ie: quiero, quieres, quiere, but queremos.
• Ordering copies English "Can I have...". The natural frames are quisiera..., me trae..., por favor, and para mí...; a literal "¿puedo tener?" marks you as translating.

Recap

• Build a small menu of foods and drinks, each learned with its article, and expect regional pairs like papa/patata and jugo/zumo.
• querer is stem-changing (quiero, quieres, quiere, queremos, queréis, quieren); quisiera is its polite voice.
• gustar flips the sentence: the food is the subject, and me, te, le, nos, os, les mark who is pleased.
• me gusta for one thing or an action, me gustan for several; encantar works the same but stronger.
• Order with de primero, de segundo, para beber, and close with la cuenta, por favor.

Sources

1. "Centro Virtual Cervantes." Instituto Cervantes, cvc.cervantes.es.
2. "Plan curricular del Instituto Cervantes: Gramatica, niveles A1-A2." Instituto Cervantes, cvc.cervantes.es.
3. "Instituto Cervantes." Instituto Cervantes, cervantes.es.
4. "Spanish Language." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
5. "Spanish Grammar." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
6. Real Academia Española. Diccionario de la lengua española. 23rd ed., dle.rae.es.
7. "Spanish Determiners." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.

Talking about family (la familia) is a natural early conversation. Here are the core members, with pronunciation hints.

Spanish	Pronunciation	English	Spanish	Pronunciation	English
el padre	el PA-dreh	father	la madre	la MA-dreh	mother
el hijo	el EE-ho	son	la hija	la EE-ha	daughter
el hermano	el er-MA-no	brother	la hermana	la er-MA-na	sister
el abuelo	el a-BWEH-lo	grandfather	la abuela	la a-BWEH-la	grandmother
el tío	el TEE-o	uncle	la tía	la TEE-a	aunt
el primo	el PREE-mo	cousin (m)	la prima	la PREE-ma	cousin (f)

A useful feature: the masculine plural covers a mixed group. Los padres means "the parents," los hermanos can mean "the siblings," and los abuelos means "the grandparents." Note the silent h hiding in hijo and hermano, and remember papá and mamá are the warm everyday words for dad and mom.

Possession with de

Before the possessive words, one structure matters: Spanish has no apostrophe-s. "Ana's house" is la casa de Ana, "the house of Ana", and "my father's car" is el coche de mi padre. The order always runs thing + de + owner, and chains are fine: el perro de la hermana de Luis, Luis's sister's dog. This de-structure is also how you clear up the famously flexible word su below.

Whose family? Possessives

To show whose relative you mean, use possessive adjectives: mi (my), tu (your), su (his, her, your formal, or their), and nuestro/nuestra (our). They agree in number: mi hermano (my brother), mis hermanos (my brothers). Examples: Mi madre es alta (My mother is tall), Nuestros abuelos viven en España (Our grandparents live in Spain).

Possessive adjectives in full

The possessives agree in number, and the nuestro family also agrees in gender. Crucially, a possessive matches the thing owned, not the owner, so it is nuestra casa (our house) but nuestros libros (our books), whoever the owners are.

Spanish	English	Example
mi / mis	my	mi tía, mis tías
tu / tus	your (informal)	tu primo, tus primos
su / sus	his, her, your (formal), their	su hijo, sus hijos
nuestro / nuestra / nuestros / nuestras	our	nuestro padre, nuestras hijas

Two spelling look-alikes deserve care: tu without an accent means your, while tú with the accent means you; likewise mi is my but mí is me after a preposition. And because su can point at four different owners, Spanish clears the fog with de: su casa could be anyone's, but la casa de ella is unmistakably hers.

Describing people

Combine ser with adjectives to describe appearance and character. For looks: alto/bajo (tall/short), joven/viejo (young/old), guapo/bonita (handsome/pretty). For hair: Tiene el pelo negro (He/She has black hair), Tiene los ojos azules (has blue eyes). For personality: simpático (nice), inteligente (smart), trabajador (hardworking). A full description: Mi hermana es simpática e inteligente, y tiene el pelo largo means "My sister is nice and smart, and has long hair." Remember agreement, and note that y becomes e before a word starting with an i sound (inteligente).

Notice a quiet contrast with English in those hair-and-eyes sentences: Spanish says the hair and the eyes, not "her hair" or "his eyes". With body parts, the definite article usually replaces the possessive, because tener already tells you whose they are: Tiene el pelo largo, she has long hair.

The extended family

Beyond parents and siblings, a few more words let you name the whole family tree. As with the core members, the masculine plural covers a mixed group, so los tíos can mean the aunt and uncle together and los nietos can mean the grandchildren.

Spanish	English	Spanish	English
el esposo / la esposa	husband / wife	el novio / la novia	boyfriend / girlfriend
el nieto / la nieta	grandson / granddaughter	el sobrino / la sobrina	nephew / niece
el suegro / la suegra	father-in-law / mother-in-law	el cuñado / la cuñada	brother-in-law / sister-in-law

A cultural note: family in the Spanish-speaking world tends to be broad and close. Adult children often live with parents until marriage, Sunday lunch gathers three generations, and godparents (el padrino and la madrina) hold a real place in the family through the bond called compadrazgo. Recall from Lesson 2 that most people carry two surnames, one from each parent, so a family tree is written into every full name.

Appearance, hair, and clothing

To describe how people look, Spanish leans on two verbs. Use ser for build and lasting looks, as in alto (tall), bajo (short), and delgado (slim). Use tener for hair and eyes: Tiene el pelo rubio (blond), castaño (brown), or canoso (gray), and Tiene los ojos azules, verdes o marrones. To say what someone is wearing, use the verb llevar plus an item of ropa (clothing), such as una camisa (a shirt), los pantalones (trousers), un vestido (a dress), or los zapatos (shoes).

How to build it: a portrait in three verbs

Build "My aunt is tall, has brown hair, and is wearing a white dress." Piece one, the owner: my aunt is mi tía. Piece two, the lasting trait rides on ser, agreeing feminine: es alta. Piece three, hair belongs to tener with the definite article: tiene el pelo castaño. Piece four, clothing takes llevar: lleva un vestido blanco, with blanco agreeing with the masculine vestido, not with the aunt. Assembled: Mi tía es alta, tiene el pelo castaño y lleva un vestido blanco. Three verbs, each owning its own kind of description; that division of labor is the whole lesson in one sentence.

Example sentences

Read these aloud, with the English meaning in parentheses.

• Mi hermana tiene el pelo castaño y los ojos verdes. (My sister has brown hair and green eyes.)
• Nuestros abuelos son muy simpáticos. (Our grandparents are very nice.)
• Mi sobrino lleva una camisa azul. (My nephew is wearing a blue shirt.)
• La ropa de mi tía es muy elegante. (My aunt's clothes are very elegant.)
• ¿De qué color son tus ojos? (What color are your eyes?)
• El esposo de mi prima es de Chile. (My cousin's husband is from Chile.)

A short dialogue

Two friends look through a family photo. Read the Spanish aloud, then check the English.

• Eva: ¿Quién es esta mujer? (Who is this woman?)
• Leo: Es mi tía. Tiene el pelo rubio. (She is my aunt. She has blond hair.)
• Eva: ¿Y el niño? (And the boy?)
• Leo: Es mi sobrino. Lleva una camisa roja. (He is my nephew. He is wearing a red shirt.)
• Eva: ¿Son tus abuelos? (Are they your grandparents?)
• Leo: Sí, los padres de mi madre. (Yes, my mother's parents.)
• Eva: ¡Qué familia tan bonita! (What a lovely family!)

Three comprehension notes. Leo identifies people with ser (es mi tía, es mi sobrino) because identity is essence. Hair takes tener and clothing takes llevar, exactly the division above. And los padres de mi madre stacks the de-structure to say "my mother's parents"; no apostrophe anywhere.

Describing personality

Character words round out a description, and they use ser because they name lasting traits. Useful ones include simpático (nice), amable (kind), trabajador (hardworking), divertido (fun), tímido (shy), and generoso (generous). Each agrees with the person, so an uncle es generoso while an aunt es generosa.

You can combine looks and character in one sentence to paint a full picture. Mi abuela es baja, tiene el pelo canoso y es muy amable means my grandmother is short, has gray hair, and is very kind. Mis primos son altos, delgados y divertidos means my cousins are tall, slim, and fun. Notice how ser carries the traits, tener carries the hair, and every adjective agrees in gender and number with the family member you are describing.

Common misconceptions

• The possessive agrees with the owner. It agrees with the thing owned: nuestra casa and nuestros libros, regardless of who owns them.
• su means only his. It can mean his, her, your (formal), or their; to be clear, add de él or de ella.
• Spanish forms possession with an apostrophe. There is no apostrophe-s; ownership always runs through de: la casa de Ana.
• ropa means rope. It is a false friend: ropa means clothes, while a rope is una cuerda.
• Hair and eye color use ser. They use tener with the definite article: Tiene los ojos azules, not the equivalent of is blue eyes.
• tu and tú are interchangeable in writing. The accent changes the word: tu is your, tú is you. Mixing them is a very common written error.

Recap

• The masculine plural covers a mixed group: los padres, los hermanos, los tíos.
• Possession runs through de (la casa de Ana), never an apostrophe.
• Possessives agree with the thing owned, not the owner; su is flexible, so add de él or de ella when unclear.
• Use ser for build and character, tener with the article for hair and eyes, and llevar for clothing.
• tu (your) versus tú (you) and mi (my) versus mí (me) differ only by the accent.
• ropa is clothing, a common false friend to keep straight.

Sources

1. "Spanish Adjectives." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
2. "Spanish Nouns." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
3. "Spanish Grammar." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
4. "Familia." Diccionario de la lengua española, Real Academia Española, dle.rae.es.
5. "Centro Virtual Cervantes." Instituto Cervantes, cvc.cervantes.es.
6. "Plan curricular del Instituto Cervantes: Gramatica, niveles A1-A2." Instituto Cervantes, cvc.cervantes.es.
7. Spanish Grammar in Context. COERLL, University of Texas at Austin, grammar.spanishintexas.org.

Describing your day introduces a new kind of verb: the reflexive verb. These describe actions you do to yourself, like waking up or getting dressed. Their infinitives end in -se, such as levantarse (to get up) and llamarse (to call oneself, that is, to be named). You have already met one: ¿Cómo te llamas? literally asks "How do you call yourself?"

How reflexives work

A reflexive verb needs a reflexive pronoun that matches the subject and sits before the conjugated verb. Here is levantarse (to get up).

Pronoun	Reflexive form	English
yo	me levanto	I get up
tú	te levantas	you get up
él / ella / usted	se levanta	he/she gets up
nosotros / nosotras	nos levantamos	we get up
vosotros / vosotras	os levantáis	you all get up
ellos / ellas / ustedes	se levantan	they get up

The verb part conjugates exactly like any -ar verb; the pronoun is the only new machinery. English has nothing quite like it: we say "I get up", not "I raise myself", but the Spanish structure is literally the second one. Common routine verbs include despertarse (to wake up), ducharse (to shower), vestirse (to get dressed), desayunar (to eat breakfast, not reflexive), and acostarse (to go to bed).

Stem changers in the routine

Several routine verbs are also stem-changing, the e-to-ie and o-to-ue "boot" pattern you met in querer: the change appears everywhere except nosotros and vosotros. Two full paradigms show the shape.

Pronoun	despertarse (e to ie)	acostarse (o to ue)
yo	me despierto	me acuesto
tú	te despiertas	te acuestas
él / ella / usted	se despierta	se acuesta
nosotros / nosotras	nos despertamos	nos acostamos
vosotros / vosotras	os despertáis	os acostáis
ellos / ellas / ustedes	se despiertan	se acuestan

Vestirse belongs to a third family, e to i: me visto, te vistes, se viste, nos vestimos, os vestís, se visten. When you meet a new routine verb, learn its infinitive and its yo form together and the rest follows.

Reflexive or not? Same verb, two meanings

Many verbs live a double life, and the pronoun is what changes the meaning. Lavar is to wash something (Lavo el coche, I wash the car) but lavarse is to wash yourself (Me lavo, I wash up). Dormir is to sleep, while dormirse is to fall asleep. Llamar is to call someone on the phone, while llamarse is to be named. Poner is to put, while ponerse is to put on clothing. The rule of thumb: if the action lands back on the doer, the pronoun appears.

One more habit rides along from the last lesson: with body parts and clothing, Spanish uses the definite article, not a possessive, because the reflexive pronoun already names the owner. So it is Me cepillo los dientes (I brush my teeth, literally "the teeth") and Se pone la chaqueta (He puts on his jacket), never "mis dientes" or "su chaqueta" in these frames.

More reflexive verbs for your day

A full routine needs more than one or two verbs. Here is a set of reflexives that carry you from morning to night. Each takes a reflexive pronoun that matches the subject.

Spanish	English	Spanish	English
despertarse	to wake up	ducharse	to shower
afeitarse	to shave	peinarse	to comb one's hair
cepillarse los dientes	to brush one's teeth	vestirse	to get dressed
ponerse la ropa	to put on clothes	quitarse	to take off
acostarse	to go to bed	dormirse	to fall asleep

Where the pronoun goes

Before a conjugated verb, the pronoun stands alone in front: me ducho. With an infinitive there are two equally correct homes: attached to the end of the infinitive, Voy a levantarme temprano, or in front of the first verb, Me voy a levantar temprano (I am going to get up early). What Spanish never allows is the pronoun floating between the two verbs or missing entirely. Match the pronoun to the subject even on the infinitive: ¿Quieres ducharte? (Do you want to shower?).

Sequencing your day

Link actions with time words: primero (first), luego (then), después (afterward), por la mañana (in the morning), por la tarde (in the afternoon), and por la noche (at night). Here is a short routine:

• Por la mañana, me despierto a las siete. (In the morning, I wake up at seven.)
• Luego me ducho y me visto. (Then I shower and get dressed.)
• Después, desayuno y voy al trabajo. (Afterward, I eat breakfast and go to work.)
• Por la noche, me acuesto a las once. (At night, I go to bed at eleven.)

With these building blocks you can narrate an entire day, one of the most useful things a beginner can do.

por and para

Both little words often become for in English, yet Spanish keeps them apart, and your routine is a good place to feel the difference. Use por for a length of time, a part of the day, a cause, or motion through a place, as in por la mañana (in the morning) and Gracias por la cena (Thanks for the dinner). Use para for a purpose, a destination, a recipient, or a deadline, as in Estudio para aprender (I study in order to learn) and Salgo para el trabajo (I leave for work).

A quick test helps. If you can replace for with because of or during, you want por. If you can replace it with in order to or intended for, you want para. So Corro por la tarde para estar en forma means I run in the afternoon in order to stay in shape, using por for the time and para for the goal.

How to build it: one line of your morning

Build "I brush my teeth after breakfast." The action lands on yourself, so the verb is reflexive: cepillarse los dientes. The subject is yo, so the pronoun is me and the -ar verb takes -o: me cepillo. Body part with the article: los dientes. The time link "after" is después de, and after a preposition the verb-noun breakfast stays as it is: después del desayuno (or después de desayunar, after eating breakfast). Assembled: Me cepillo los dientes después del desayuno. Pronoun, verb, article, connector: four decisions, all covered by this lesson.

Example sentences

Read these aloud, with the English meaning in parentheses.

• Me levanto temprano por la mañana. (I get up early in the morning.)
• Estudio español para viajar por Sudamérica. (I study Spanish in order to travel through South America.)
• Este regalo es para mi madre. (This gift is for my mother.)
• Gracias por tu ayuda. (Thanks for your help.)
• Me acuesto tarde los viernes. (I go to bed late on Fridays.)
• Los niños se duermen en el coche. (The children fall asleep in the car.)

A short dialogue

Two roommates compare their mornings. Read the Spanish aloud, then check the English.

• Ana: ¿A qué hora te levantas? (What time do you get up?)
• Sam: Me levanto a las siete y me ducho. (I get up at seven and shower.)
• Ana: ¿Y luego? (And then?)
• Sam: Me visto, desayuno y salgo para el trabajo. (I get dressed, have breakfast, and leave for work.)
• Ana: Yo me levanto más tarde. Prefiero ducharme por la noche. (I get up later. I prefer to shower at night.)

Three comprehension notes. The question and answer swap pronouns exactly as they should: te levantas asks about you, me levanto answers about me. Sam's desayuno takes no pronoun because desayunar is not reflexive, while every self-directed action around it is. And Ana's ducharme shows the pronoun glued to the infinitive after preferir, with me still matching the speaker.

Narrating a whole day

Once the verbs and the time words are in place, you can tell the story of an entire day in a few smooth lines. Me despierto a las seis, me levanto y me ducho. Luego me visto y desayuno. Por la tarde trabajo, y por la noche me acuesto a las once.

That short paragraph means I wake up at six, get up, and shower. Then I get dressed and have breakfast. In the afternoon I work, and at night I go to bed at eleven. Being able to narrate a routine is one of the most practical things a beginner can do, and it recycles nearly everything in this module. A small cultural footnote as you write your own: daily rhythms shift with the map. In Spain, lunch lands around two and dinner after nine, so me acuesto a las doce raises no eyebrows in Madrid, while much of Latin America keeps hours closer to the North American clock.

Common misconceptions

• The reflexive pronoun goes after the verb. It goes before the conjugated verb, as in me levanto, though it may attach to an infinitive, as in voy a levantarme.
• The pronoun can be dropped like a subject pronoun. Never: "levanto a las siete" is missing its me and stops meaning I get up. The reflexive pronoun is part of the verb.
• por and para both just mean for. Use por for duration, cause, and part of the day; use para for purpose, destination, and recipient.
• Every routine verb is reflexive. Some are not, such as desayunar (to have breakfast); only actions done to oneself take the pronoun.
• Reflexive verbs never change their stem. Many do: despertarse (e to ie), acostarse (o to ue), and vestirse (e to i), giving me despierto, me acuesto, and me visto.
• Body parts take a possessive, as in English. With reflexives the article does the job: me lavo las manos, literally "I wash the hands", never "mis manos" here.

Recap

• Reflexive verbs describe actions done to oneself and end in -se in the infinitive.
• The reflexive pronoun (me, te, se, nos, os, se) matches the subject and comes before the conjugated verb, or attaches to an infinitive.
• Same verb, two meanings: lavar/lavarse, dormir/dormirse, llamar/llamarse, poner/ponerse.
• Sequence a day with primero, luego, después, and por la mañana, tarde, or noche.
• Use por for time, cause, and part of the day; use para for purpose and destination.
• Many routine verbs are stem-changing, and body parts take the article: me cepillo los dientes.

Sources

1. "Reflexive Verb." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
2. "Reflexive Verbs and Reflexive Pronouns in Spanish." SpanishDictionary.com ↗, Curiosity Media, spanishdict.com.
3. "Spanish Conjugation." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
4. "Spanish Verbs." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
5. "Appendix: Spanish Verbs." Wiktionary, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wiktionary.org.
6. "Spanish Grammar." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
7. "Plan curricular del Instituto Cervantes: Gramatica, niveles A1-A2." Instituto Cervantes, cvc.cervantes.es.

You do not need a whole new verb tense to talk about the future. Spanish has an easy, extremely common structure called the near future (or futuro próximo). It works just like the English phrase "going to." The formula is simple:

a form of ir + a + an infinitive

You already know how to conjugate ir (voy, vas, va, vamos, vais, van). Add a, then any verb in its base form. Look how the whole thing comes together.

Spanish	English
Voy a estudiar.	I am going to study.
Tú vas a comer.	You are going to eat.
Ella va a viajar.	She is going to travel.
Nosotros vamos a bailar.	We are going to dance.
Vosotros vais a leer.	You all are going to read.
Ellos van a trabajar.	They are going to work.

The only part that changes is ir; the a and the infinitive stay the same. This is why beginners love it: master one verb and you can express countless future plans. English works the same way with "going to", so for once the two languages walk in step; the only trap is forgetting the little a, which English does not have a separate word for.

Three parts, one idea

Think of the structure as three small pieces that click together. First comes the conjugated ir, which carries the person and a sense of movement toward an action. Next comes the fixed word a, which links the two verbs and never disappears. Last comes the infinitive, the dictionary form ending in -ar, -er, or -ir, which names the action itself. Because only the first piece changes, you can swap in any infinitive and instantly build a new sentence about the future.

Here are common infinitives you can drop straight into the pattern. Each one follows a without any change.

Spanish	English	Spanish	English
estudiar	to study	comer	to eat
viajar	to travel	salir	to go out
ver	to see, to watch	escribir	to write
descansar	to rest	aprender	to learn

To make a plan negative, put no before the conjugated ir: No voy a salir esta noche (I am not going out tonight). To ask, just add the question melody and marks: ¿Vas a estudiar? Reflexive verbs ride along in their infinitive with the pronoun attached and matched to the subject: Voy a levantarme temprano or, equally correct, Me voy a levantar temprano (I am going to get up early). Even ir itself can fill the last slot: Voy a ir al mercado, I am going to go to the market.

How to build it: two different a's in one sentence

Assemble "Tomorrow I am going to visit my grandmother." Start with the time word: Mañana. The frame: yo form of ir plus the linking a: voy a. The action: visitar. Now a subtlety worth knowing early: when the person affected by a verb is a specific human being, Spanish inserts a second small a, called the personal a, before that person: visitar a mi abuela. Result: Mañana voy a visitar a mi abuela. The first a belongs to the near-future frame; the second marks the loved one as a person, not a thing. Compare Voy a visitar el museo, where the museum is a thing and gets no personal a. English has nothing like this marker, so noticing it now will save you confusion for years.

Talking about when

Pair the near future with time expressions to be specific: hoy (today), mañana (tomorrow), esta noche (tonight), este fin de semana (this weekend), la próxima semana (next week). For example:

• Mañana voy a visitar a mi abuela. (Tomorrow I am going to visit my grandmother.)
• Este fin de semana vamos a ver una película. (This weekend we are going to watch a movie.)
• ¿Qué vas a hacer esta noche? (What are you going to do tonight?)

Notice the last example combines a question word, the near future, and a time expression. You can now make plans, invite friends, and answer questions about what comes next.

Time words that point to the future

The near future feels natural when you anchor it with a time expression. You already know hoy, mañana, and esta noche; here are more that place an action further ahead. Notice that dentro de means within a span of time and pairs neatly with plans.

Spanish	English	Spanish	English
pronto	soon	más tarde	later on
el próximo mes	next month	el año que viene	next year
dentro de dos días	in two days	en el futuro	in the future

Word order is flexible with these expressions. You can open with the time word, as in Mañana voy a estudiar, or close with it, as in Voy a estudiar mañana. Both are correct and mean the same thing, so choose whichever feels natural.

Making plans and suggestions

The same structure does double duty. When you use the nosotros form, vamos a plus an infinitive can mean both we are going to and the friendly let us. So Vamos a comer can be we are going to eat or let's eat, and the tone of voice makes the meaning clear. To talk about intentions, two other verbs help: pensar plus an infinitive means to plan to, as in Pienso viajar (I plan to travel), and querer plus an infinitive means to want to, as in Quiero aprender (I want to learn).

For completeness: Spanish also has a one-word future tense (hablaré, I will speak) that you will meet in a later course. In everyday conversation, especially in Latin America, the ir a structure you are learning here is the workhorse; the one-word future often carries a formal or "we shall see" flavor. If you can say voy a plus an infinitive, you can handle nearly every future situation a first-year speaker meets.

Example sentences

Read these aloud, with the English meaning in parentheses.

• Voy a viajar a México el próximo mes. (I am going to travel to Mexico next month.)
• ¿Qué vas a hacer este fin de semana? (What are you going to do this weekend?)
• Vamos a ver una película esta noche. (We are going to watch a movie tonight.)
• Pienso estudiar medicina. (I plan to study medicine.)
• Actualmente vivo en Lima, pero voy a mudarme pronto. (I currently live in Lima, but I am going to move soon.)
• El año que viene vamos a estudiar español en Madrid. (Next year we are going to study Spanish in Madrid.)
• No van a venir a la fiesta. (They are not going to come to the party.)

A short dialogue

Two friends arrange a weekend. Read the Spanish aloud, then check the English.

• Rosa: ¿Qué vas a hacer el sábado? (What are you going to do on Saturday?)
• Iván: Voy a visitar a mis abuelos. ¿Y tú? (I am going to visit my grandparents. And you?)
• Rosa: Vamos a ir a la playa. ¿Quieres venir? (We are going to the beach. Do you want to come?)
• Iván: Sí, el domingo estoy libre. (Yes, on Sunday I am free.)
• Rosa: ¡Genial! ¿A qué hora vamos? (Great. What time are we going?)
• Iván: Vamos a salir a las nueve. (We are going to leave at nine.)

Three comprehension notes. Iván's visitar a mis abuelos carries the personal a because grandparents are people. Rosa's Vamos a ir a la playa stacks the frame (vamos a) on the destination (a la playa) without any problem. And el sábado and el domingo use the article to mean "on Saturday/Sunday", the pattern from Lesson 9, so no extra word for "on" ever appears.

Common misconceptions

• You can drop the a in the near future. The a is required: it is Voy a comer, never the equivalent of I go eat.
• actual means actual. It is a false friend: actual means current, and actualmente means currently. To say actually, use en realidad or de hecho.
• The near future needs a whole new set of endings. You only conjugate ir; the a and the infinitive never change.
• ir a is less correct than the one-word future tense. The near future is fully correct and is the most common way to talk about plans in speech.
• vamos a only means we are going to. With the right tone it also works as a friendly let us, so vamos a empezar can mean let's begin.
• The second verb gets conjugated too. Learners write "voy a como"; the slot after a belongs to the bare infinitive: voy a comer.

Recap

• The near future is a form of ir, plus a, plus an infinitive.
• Only ir changes; the a and the base verb stay the same, and no goes before ir.
• Reflexives attach to the infinitive with the pronoun matched: voy a levantarme.
• A second, personal a appears before specific people: voy a visitar a mi abuela.
• Anchor plans with time words like mañana, pronto, el próximo mes, and el año que viene.
• vamos a doubles as let's, and pensar or querer plus infinitive states intentions.

Sources

1. "ir." Wiktionary, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wiktionary.org.
2. "Spanish Future Tense Informal." SpanishDictionary.com ↗, Curiosity Media, spanishdict.com.
3. "Ir." Diccionario de la lengua española, Real Academia Española, dle.rae.es.
4. "Spanish Verbs." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
5. "Spanish Grammar." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
6. "Plan curricular del Instituto Cervantes: Gramatica, niveles A1-A2." Instituto Cervantes, cvc.cervantes.es.
7. Spanish Grammar in Context. COERLL, University of Texas at Austin, grammar.spanishintexas.org.

To say what you did, Spanish uses a past tense called the preterite (pretérito). It describes actions that are finished and complete, such as "I ate," "she arrived," or "we lived there for a year." This is your first step into talking about the past, and the regular patterns are very learnable.

Use the preterite for a single, bounded event, or for something that happened a set number of times. It answers the question what happened, not what things were generally like. Words such as ayer (yesterday), anoche (last night), and de repente (suddenly) often signal it, because each one frames an action with a clear beginning and end.

Regular preterite endings

As in the present, you drop the infinitive ending and add new endings. Good news: -er and -ir verbs share the exact same preterite endings. Here are hablar (to speak), comer (to eat), and vivir (to live).

Pronoun	hablar	comer	vivir
yo	hablé	comí	viví
tú	hablaste	comiste	viviste
él / ella / usted	habló	comió	vivió
nosotros / nosotras	hablamos	comimos	vivimos
vosotros / vosotras	hablasteis	comisteis	vivisteis
ellos / ellas / ustedes	hablaron	comieron	vivieron

The written accents on the yo and él forms matter: hablé (I spoke) versus hablo (I speak), and habló (he spoke) versus habla (he speaks). One small letter changes the whole meaning.

The endings at a glance

It helps to see the endings on their own. Attach them to the stem that is left after you remove -ar, -er, or -ir. The -er and -ir columns are identical, so you really learn only two sets.

Pronoun	-ar endings	-er / -ir endings
yo	-é	-í
tú	-aste	-iste
él / ella / usted	-ó	-ió
nosotros	-amos	-imos
vosotros	-asteis	-isteis
ellos / ellas / ustedes	-aron	-ieron

Notice that the nosotros form of -ar and -ir verbs looks the same in the present and the preterite: hablamos can mean we speak or we spoke, and vivimos can mean we live or we lived. Context makes the time clear.

One more detail helps with pronunciation. The stress in the preterite falls on that final vowel in the yo and él forms, which is exactly why the accent is written. Say hablé as ha-BLEH and comió as co-MYOH, pushing your voice onto the last syllable so the past meaning comes through clearly.

Small spelling adjustments in the yo form

Three groups of -ar verbs adjust their spelling in the yo form only, purely to keep the sound right under the rules from Lesson 2. Verbs in -car switch c to qu: buscar (to look for) gives busqué, because "buscé" would soften the c to an s sound. Verbs in -gar switch g to gu: llegar (to arrive) gives llegué. Verbs in -zar switch z to c: empezar (to begin) gives empecé. Every other form of these verbs is perfectly regular: buscaste, llegó, empezaron. The change is spelling, not grammar; the sound stays exactly what the pattern predicts.

Three irregulars worth recognizing today

Some very common verbs are irregular in the preterite. Three appear in almost every past conversation, so learn to recognize them now and produce them with practice. Strikingly, ser and ir share one and the same preterite; only context tells "it was" from "he went".

Pronoun	ser / ir (was, went)	hacer (did, made)
yo	fui	hice
tú	fuiste	hiciste
él / ella / usted	fue	hizo
nosotros / nosotras	fuimos	hicimos
vosotros / vosotras	fuisteis	hicisteis
ellos / ellas / ustedes	fueron	hicieron

Notice these irregular forms carry no written accents: fui, fue, hice, hizo. So Fui al mercado means I went to the market, Fue un buen día means it was a good day, and ¿Qué hiciste? means what did you do, the single most useful past question in the language.

Verbs you will use often

These regular verbs appear constantly in past stories. Each one follows the endings above without surprises.

Spanish	English	Spanish	English
hablar	to speak	comer	to eat
trabajar	to work	beber	to drink
viajar	to travel	escribir	to write
estudiar	to study	vivir	to live

Past-time expressions

Anchor your sentences in the past with these time markers. They tell the listener the action is over and done.

Spanish	English	Spanish	English
ayer	yesterday	anoche	last night
la semana pasada	last week	el año pasado	last year
anteayer	the day before yesterday	hace dos días	two days ago

How to build it: one line of your weekend

Build "Last night I studied and then I ate with my sister." Anchor first: Anoche. "I studied": estudiar, -ar yo ending -é, so estudié, accent and all. The connector "and then" is y después. "I ate": comer, -er yo ending -í: comí. Company rides on con: con mi hermana. Assembled: Anoche estudié y después comí con mi hermana. Every past form you produced leaned on just two ending sets plus the accent rule; that is the entire machine.

Telling a simple story

With these endings you can narrate past events. Read this short account with its translation:

• Ayer hablé con mi amigo. (Yesterday I spoke with my friend.)
• Comimos en un restaurante. (We ate in a restaurant.)
• Después, ella escribió un mensaje. (Afterward, she wrote a message.)
• Yo viví en Perú dos años. (I lived in Peru for two years.)
• Anoche estudié para el examen. (Last night I studied for the exam.)
• La semana pasada trabajamos mucho. (Last week we worked a lot.)

Even with only the regular patterns and the three recognizable irregulars, you can already describe much of what you did, from a shared meal to a long trip. The other frequent irregulars (estar, tener, decir) belong to your next course, and they follow family patterns of their own.

More example sentences

Read each one aloud and match it to its English gloss.

• ¿Qué comiste ayer? (What did you eat yesterday?)
• Ella vivió en México el año pasado. (She lived in Mexico last year.)
• Escribimos muchos mensajes anoche. (We wrote many messages last night.)
• Ustedes hablaron con el profesor. (You all spoke with the professor.)
• Bebimos café después de la cena. (We drank coffee after dinner.)
• Anteayer viajé a la capital. (The day before yesterday I traveled to the capital.)
• Busqué mis llaves y llegué tarde. (I looked for my keys and arrived late.)

A short dialogue

Two classmates compare their weekends. Read the Spanish aloud, then check the English.

• Marta: ¿Qué hiciste el fin de semana? (What did you do over the weekend?)
• Leo: Estudié y comí con mi familia. ¿Y tú? (I studied and ate with my family. And you?)
• Marta: Viajé a la costa con una amiga. Fue un fin de semana perfecto. (I traveled to the coast with a friend. It was a perfect weekend.)
• Leo: ¡Qué bien! ¿Nadaron en el mar? (How nice. Did you all swim in the sea?)
• Marta: Sí, y descansamos mucho. (Yes, and we rested a lot.)

Three comprehension notes. Marta's opening question uses the irregular hiciste from the table above; Leo answers with two regular yo forms, estudié and comí, one from each ending set. Her Fue un fin de semana perfecto is the shared ser/ir preterite meaning "it was". And Leo's ¿Nadaron? uses the ustedes form to ask about Marta and her friend together, no pronoun needed.

Common misconceptions

• The accent marks are optional. They are not: hablo (I speak) and habló (he spoke) are different tenses, and the accent is the only clue. Writing "yo comio" is not just a typo; it breaks the tense.
• The -er and -ir verbs use different preterite endings. They share one set, so comí and viví follow the same pattern.
• The nosotros form always looks different in the past. For -ar and -ir verbs the present and preterite nosotros forms match, and only context shows the tense.
• The preterite covers every past idea. It handles completed actions; a separate past tense, the imperfect, describes ongoing background, which you will meet later.
• busqué and llegué are irregular verbs. They are regular; the qu and gu are pure spelling shields that keep the hard sound, exactly like queso and guerra in Lesson 2.
• fui always means I went. It is also I was: ser and ir share the same preterite, and context decides which verb you are hearing.

Recap

• The preterite reports completed past actions and answers "what happened".
• Drop the infinitive ending and add -é, -aste, -ó, -amos, -asteis, -aron for -ar verbs, or -í, -iste, -ió, -imos, -isteis, -ieron for -er and -ir.
• The yo and él forms carry accents that distinguish them from the present.
• -car, -gar, and -zar verbs adjust spelling in the yo form: busqué, llegué, empecé.
• ser and ir share fui, fuiste, fue; hacer gives hice, hiciste, hizo, all without accents.
• Anchor past stories with ayer, anoche, la semana pasada, and hace + time.

Sources

1. "Preterite." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
2. "Spanish Preterite Tense." SpanishDictionary.com ↗, Curiosity Media, spanishdict.com.
3. "Spanish Conjugation." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
4. "Spanish Verbs." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
5. "Appendix: Spanish Verbs." Wiktionary, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wiktionary.org.
6. "Spanish Grammar." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org.
7. "Plan curricular del Instituto Cervantes: Gramatica, niveles A1-A2." Instituto Cervantes, cvc.cervantes.es.