Learn Spanish for Beginners by Speaking From Week One

This page covers what's particular to Spanish in your first two weeks. The general plan covers how the days work overall, and its planner can lay out your 90 days.

Whose Spanish should you copy?

Spanish changes from place to place, and you'll meet some of it in your first week. Pick the Spanish of the people you plan to talk to. If you don't know yet, pick one and keep it for two weeks. That's a House routine, not a rule of the language.

Three differences show up early:

1. You all. ¡Chévere!, an open first-year textbook, marks the vosotros forms as used only in Spain. Latin America uses ustedes instead.
2. Familiar you. Trayectos, an open course from the University of Texas, uses vos for familiar "you" in Argentina and Uruguay. Vos has its own verb forms. These lines from Tatoeba use them: ¿De dónde sos? asks where you're from, where tú gives ¿De dónde eres? There's also Disculpame, ¿cómo te llamás? (Sorry, what's your name?) and Estoy bien, ¿y vos? (I am fine, and you?) Wiktionary lists llamás as the vos form of llamar. Wiktionary also lists vos in other places, such as Central America, Chile and Paraguay. Don't carry these Tatoeba lines over to those places as they are. Ask the people you'll talk to which forms they use.
3. C, z and s. ¿Cómo suena?, an open phonetics book, says that c before e or i, z and s all coming out as s is the most common way in Latin America and the south of Spain. In the center and north of Spain, c and z there sound like the th in "thin." The book also notes pockets of Andalusia, in the south, where s sounds like that th too.

None of these is the wrong one. They're just different places.

Which sounds come first?

Spend your first two weeks on the five vowels and the r. The U.S. Foreign Service Institute's Spanish course from the 1950s, known as FSI, does something similar: its first two units are mostly about pronunciation.

¿Cómo suena? says Spanish has five vowels, each short and steady. English speakers tend to slide the e, so este comes out like "estey." Say Hola, ¿cómo estás? and hold each vowel still. The h in hola is silent: Wiktionary's pronunciation of hola starts on the o. The same list warns about a y sound slipping in before u, so universidad turns into "yuniversidad," and about stretching vowels until pan sounds like "paaan." Start right on the u. Keep every vowel short. The Spanish pronunciation page goes through the rest, and the alphabet week covers the letters.

Spanish has two r sounds. The tap touches the ridge behind your top teeth once, and the trill touches it several times. Swap them and you get a different word. The page on rolling your r breaks the trill down step by step.

These pairs each differ by one sound or by stress. The h in ahora and ahorra is silent, since Wiktionary's pronunciations of ahora and ahorrar have no h sound, so the only change in that pair is the r. The alphabet week has more on the h. Say each word alone, then both together.

The first two pairs come from ¿Cómo suena?, and the last two from FSI's drills on stress. Now try both r sounds in one line, the tap in pero and the trill in perro: ¡Pero qué enorme perro! The minimal pairs tool has more.

What do you say first?

Your first sentences are greetings, your name and where you're from. Spanish makes you choose between two words for "you" right away. ¡Chévere! sets usted as the formal one and tú as the informal one.

Say the left column, then the right. The tú column is for people who picked tú. If you picked vos, use the vos lines from the list above in its place. For the name, the question part ¿cómo te llamás? is enough, since Disculpame only adds "excuse me." For "and you?", use the ¿y vos? from Estoy bien, ¿y vos? This page's sources give no vos line for "How are you?", so for that row use the usted line or ask the person you're talking to. Don't say ¿Cómo te llamas? from the tú column, and don't build other vos forms yourself. ¡Chévere! adds that some of the difference is subtle and depends on the setting. With a tutor you've just met, ask which one they'd like you to use.

Now answer. Estoy bien, gracias. means "I'm fine, thank you." For "I'm OK," ¡Chévere! gives Estoy más o menos. It also lists regular for the same answer, and warns against así así. For "nice to meet you," ¡Chévere! uses ¡Mucho gusto! in both its formal and its informal dialogues. If you say "pleased to meet you" with encantado, the ending follows you: ¡Chévere! has a man say encantado and a woman say encantada. With tú, a woman can say the book's line Encantada de conocerte. A man puts the same de conocerte after encantado: Encantado de conocerte. With usted, a man in ¡Chévere!'s formal dialogue says Encantado de conocerle. A woman changes encantado to encantada there too.

How should you learn nouns?

Learn each noun together with its word for "the." FSI's course says to memorize a noun's gender along with it, and that usually you can do this by memorizing el or la with the noun. So learn el libro, not just libro. Say Dame el libro. (Give me the book.)

FSI also flags an exception: el agua takes el but is feminine. The adjective after it shows this, since fría is the feminine form: El agua está fría. (The water's cold.)

Agua isn't alone. Wiktionary's entry for el says it's also used before feminine nouns that start with a stressed a sound, such as el alma (the soul) and el aula (the classroom). So when a noun starts with a stressed a, el doesn't tell you the gender. Check the dictionary, or listen for the ending on a word that follows it.

These little words come up all the time. In this site's count of words in Tatoeba, a free collection of example sentences, la ranks 2nd and el ranks 4th. It counts written forms, so la there also includes la as a pronoun ("her" or "it"). That count only covers this sentence collection, not Spanish in general, and the first 1,000 words page explains how it was made. Take your first nouns from there and say each one in a short sentence.

How do the first 14 days run?

Three jobs take turns, as in the general plan. For Spanish, they hold these:

1. Sounds. The five vowels and the two r sounds first, then the letter names from the alphabet week, row by row.
2. Pairs. The four pairs above, said alone and then together.
3. Sentences. Greetings, your name and where you're from, in both the tú (or vos) and the usted versions, and nouns with el or la.

Count the work in Spoken Minutes, which run only while you're saying Spanish out loud. Each day opens with a Cold Say-Back: say something from an earlier day from memory, then check it.

On a 5-minute day, spend 1 minute on the Cold Say-Back and 4 on the day's job. On a 10-minute day, it's 2 and 8. On a 20-minute day, it's 3 on the Cold Say-Back, then 10 on one job and 7 on the next. Day 1 has nothing to say back yet, so those minutes go to the day's first job. At 20 Spoken Minutes, the next job in the turn comes second: day 1 is sounds then pairs, day 2 pairs then sentences, day 3 sentences then sounds. These splits are this site's House routine, untested with learners.

A Sounds turn splits its time between the vowels and r and the letter names:

Do the five vowels first, then the tap and the trill, about half the time each. On day 1, the Cold Say-Back minutes go to the letters. The alphabet table has seven rows, and both ways they're done by day 10. At 5 or 10 minutes, it's rows 1 and 2 on day 1, 3 and 4 on day 4, 5 and 6 on day 7, and row 7 on day 10. At 20 minutes, it's one row on each of days 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9 and 10. After that, the whole Sounds time goes to the vowels and the r. This split is House routine too.

Here's day 2 at 10 Spoken Minutes. You spend 2 minutes on day 1's five vowels and r, the letter names a to n from rows 1 and 2, and your two lines from the top of this page, Me llamo… and Soy de…, all from memory. Then you spend 8 on the four pairs, starting with pero and perro, each word alone and then both.

Day 3 at 20 Spoken Minutes could look like this. You spend 3 minutes saying an earlier pair, peso and pesó, from memory. The next 10 go to sentences: ask and answer names in the tú version, or the vos lines if you picked vos, and then the usted version. The last 7 go to sounds. Spend 3 of them on the vowels and the r together, the five vowels first and then the tap and the trill, about half each. Spend the other 4 on row 2 of the alphabet table and its review. Add the minutes to your Mile Log.

What can wait until after week two?

Leave these for later. You'll meet some of them inside your first sentences, and that's fine. Say those sentences as whole lines and don't stop to work out the grammar yet.

• Ser and estar. Soy de… uses one verb for "to be" and ¿Cómo estás? uses the other. Learn them as lines now. Ser vs estar explains the choice when you're ready.
• Me llamo. It comes from llamarse, a verb that Wiktionary lists with se attached. Reflexive verbs can wait.
• Por and para, the two past tenses, the subjunctive. Each has its own page: por vs para, preterite vs imperfect and the subjunctive. None of them belongs in your first two weeks.
• Verb charts. When you need a form, look it up in the conjugation lookup and say it in a sentence.
• Vosotros forms, if the people you'll talk to aren't in Spain.

This list fits someone learning to talk, and you can change it if your goal is different. After day 14, go back to the general plan for days 15 to 45, where your first conversation is on day 30. If you're learning another language instead, there's a French start and a German start.

Tomorrow, before you look at anything, run a Cold Say-Back: say your name and where you're from, then ask someone's name both ways, with tú (or your vos line) and with usted.