Spanish phrasebook

Spanish (castellano or español) is the third most-spoken language in the world. Originating in Spain (where it is also known as Castilian, and spoken by most residents there, with slightly different pronunciation from the rest of the world's Spanish speakers), it is also spoken in Mexico and all of Central and South America except Brazil, Guyana, French Guiana and Suriname. Spanish is also spoken in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic and other Caribbean islands.

Spanish is a first language for many people in the United States, especially in California, Texas, South Florida, and elsewhere the Southwest.

A Western Romance language, Spanish is closely related to and at least partially mutually intelligible with the other romance languages, such as Portuguese, Catalan, French, and Italian. English and Spanish share variants of approximately one third of their words, although the pronunciation tends to be very different.

Pronunciation Guide

Spanish spelling has the pleasant characteristic of being more or less phonetic. This means that if you know how to pronounce the letters of a word, it's relatively easy to sound out the word itself.

Besides having a very small number of vowel sounds and a high predictablity of exactly what sound is represented by each letter, Spanish has a very clear set of rules about where a stress normally falls, and exceptions are noted with an "acute accent mark" ("´") over the vowel of the stressed syllable. Normally, words that end in a vowel, or in n or s, have the stress on the next-to-last syllable (muchacho = "mu-CHA-cho"); all other words without an explicit accent mark are stressed on the final syllable (hospital = "os-pee-TAL"). There are no secondary stresses within words. We need to remember that English speaking people tend to drag out the letters especially the vowels. There are NO long vowels in Spanish, plus there is no 'ay' sound in the Spanish 'e' since its short like the 'e' in 'met.'

Vowels

Consonants

Diphthongs

Most diphthongs can be approximated by blending the first vowel into the second in a single syllable.

Accents and stress

Word stress can affect the meaning of the word and generally follows these rules:

If a word is marked with an accent, then that syllable receives the stress.
- Additionally, if the accent marks a diphthong a syllable break occurs between the two vowels of the diphthong.

If a word is NOT marked with an accent, then

if the word ends in a consonant other than N or S, the stress occurs on the last syllable.
if the word ends in a vowel, N or S, the stress occurs on the next to last syllable.

Examples:

An accent can also be used to differentiate between words that are pronounced the same but have different meanings:

si → if tu → your mi → my el → the
sí → yes tú → you mí → me él → he

Phrase list

Note: For the most part, these examples give Latin American pronunciation, not Spanish.

Basics

Problems

Numbers

Time

Clock time

Writing Time

When speaking, times are given in AM/PM form (but saying de la mañana (morning), de la tarde (afternoon), de la noche (evening/night) or de la madrugada (late night) to distinguish between AM and PM. On the other hand, in most countries times are rendered in 24-hour format, with a colon separating hours and minutes:

Duration

Days

The week begins on Mondays.

Months

Writing Dates

Dates are given in day-month-year form. All spoken and written, long and short forms follow this pattern:

Day-month constructions (4 de julio, for example) are not usually abbreviated. In the rare cases that an abbreviation is used, the number of the month is not used, but its initial letter is. Usual examples are:

Colors

Transportation

Bus and Train

Taxi

Lodging

Money

Eating

Note that you must ask for the bill. A gringo was known to have waited until 2 in the morning because he was too shy to ask :-)