but if you’re not in high spirits, you can respond with a más o menos (“more or less”) or a no

muy bien, meaning “not so well.”

If you’re meeting someone for the first time, you’ll want to talk about who you are and
perhaps where you’re from. To say your name, you can say Me llamo X, or “I call myself X.” You
can also say Yo soy X, or “I am X.” To find out other people’s names, you can ask ¿Cómo te
llamas? (literally “How do you call yourself?”) or ¿Cómo se llama usted? in more formal
situations. The way to say where you come from in Spanish is Yo soy de X, and to ask where
someone is from, you can say ¿De dónde eres? or more formally ¿De dónde es usted?
To say goodbye in Spanish, an adiós or a chao will do the trick. Hasta pronto (“see you soon”)
or hasta luego (“see you later”) are also great options.
 

11 Useful Spanish Phrases

 
There are plenty of other useful conversational Spanish words, phrases and expressions you’ll
get to know as you learn Spanish. From por favor (“please”), gracias (“thank you”) and de nada
(“you’re welcome”) to ¿Dónde está X? (“Where is X?”) and ¿Hablas español?, or “Do you speak
Spanish?” When you learn these Spanish phrases and hundreds more like them, you’ll be
better able to communicate with native Spanish speakers with ease.

Spanish Verbs

Verbs are key elements of any Spanish sentence. Whenever you want to express that
someone or something does some action or is something else, you need a Spanish verb.
Without exception, all Spanish verbs end in -ar (like hablar), -er (like comer) or -ir (like vivir).
This makes it fairly easy to recognize when you’re dealing with a Spanish verb as opposed to
another type of word, like a Spanish noun or Spanish adjective. However, these are only the
endings for the verbs in what’s called their infinitive form — “to do,” “to be,” “to eat” or “to
speak,” for example.
These verbs need to be conjugated, which is a technical way of saying that each Spanish verb
requires a special ending depending on the subject of the verb (who or what is doing the
action of the verb). For a regular verb ending in -ar, like hablar (“to speak”), if the pronoun yo
(“I”) is the subject, or the one doing the speaking, you drop the -ar ending from the verb and
add the ending -o, giving yo hablo, or “I speak.” For the pronoun tú (“you”), hablar becomes tú
hablas, or “you speak.” Each subject has its own special conjugation, or verb ending,
associated with it, and this
applies for all verbs, whether
they end in -ar, -er, or -ir —
though the conjugations are
slightly different for each
ending.
Knowing how to conjugate
Spanish verbs is essential to
being able to express yourself
in Spanish, and you’ll likely
spend a large part of your
Spanish learning journey
focusing on the grammar of
Spanish verbs. Once you
master them, you’ll be well on
your way to speaking Spanish
with fluency.

Spanish Nouns And

Spanish Gender

Each Spanish noun has a

gender, meaning it’s classified
as either masculine or
feminine. This doesn’t mean
that every person, place,
object or idea is inherently
male or female; it’s just a
system of grammatical
categorization that exists in
Spanish and many other
world languages that affects
how speakers use these
languages.
Often, Spanish gender maps to words in ways you’d expect; la mujer (“the woman”) is a
feminine noun, so it requires the definite article la (“the”), whereas el hombre (“the man”) is a
masculine noun that requires the definite article el. But sometimes these gender assignments
can be pretty arbitrary; why is el vestido (“the dress”) masculine while la masculinidad
(“masculinity”) is feminine? Why is la silla (“the chair”) feminine while el sofá (“the sofa”) is
masculine?
A major part of learning Spanish nouns involves memorizing their gender classifications, so
it’s important to practice this concept.
There are patterns of certain word endings that can clue you in to which gender they might be
assigned; for example, nouns that end in -o are often masculine (like el teléfono, or “the
telephone”), while nouns that end in -a are often feminine (like la cara, or “the face”).
But some words that defy this pattern, like the masculine word el problema (“the problem”) or
the feminine word la mano (“the hand”). Spanish gender can be a tricky concept to master for
this reason!
When discussing Spanish nouns, we must also talk about Spanish adjectives. Adjectives in
Spanish must “agree” with the nouns they modify. This means that their endings must reflect
the gender (masculine or feminine) and the number (singular or plural) of the noun to which