Responses to Greetings - in Spanish

For this third post, I want to go over some responses to the greetings we learned last time.

We learned these words / phrases and their respective meanings:

Hola                                Hello
Buenos días                    Good morning
Buenas tardes                 Good afternoon
Buenas noches               Good evening

If you are responding to any of the above statements, you can just reciprocate.  For example, if someone says:  'Good morning!' - then you can reciprocate with 'Good morning!' .  The same goes for all three of these statements which are based on the time of the day. 

Using the word 'Hola' as a response is also acceptable.  For example:

Speaker 1:  ¡Buenos días!       
You:          ¡Hola!   or  ¡Buenos días!

You'll notice that reciprocating 'in kind' is as common in Spanish as it would be in English.  Also notice that when making an exclamatory statement in Spanish, we use the upside down exclamation point.  Spanish does this in order to signify which word or phrase - in other words, which part of the sentence - is being exclaimed.  This concept also carries over for questions - using an upside down question mark is standard procedure for questions.

That brings us to our next greeting:

¿Cómo está Ud.?             meaning:  How are you?  (when being formal)
Pronounced: 
Komo eh-stah  OO-sted

or

¿Cómo estás?                  meaning:  How are you?   (when speaking to a familiar person)
Pronounced:
Komo eh-stahs

Being able to ask either of these questions in the right place, to the right person is crucial.  Usually, people would ask the first one (¿Cómo está Ud.?) to someone you d on't know, to an elder, or to show respect.  Asking the other question (¿Cómo estás?) would be used to communicate to someone that you know well or to a friend.

Spanish makes a distinction between the formalized version of 'you' and the familiar, or personal version of 'you'. 

In either case, after asking someone how they are doing, these responses are common:

bien                             well
(bee-ehn)

muy bien                     very well
(moo-ee bee-ehn)


Well start with these for now.  Try these greetings and responses out with some people you know who speak Spanish.  The more you practice, the more comfortable you will become with these words!

Starter Greetings in Spanish

A great next step for learning Spanish is starting with basic greetings.

What are some of the most common greetings?

Hola                    Hello
Buenos Dias        Good Morning
Buenas Tardes    Good Afternoon
Buenas Noches   Good Night

For the first one, you can see that this word is almost a cognate.  Its very similar to the English spelling of the word 'hello'.  Another tip to take away from this word, is that the letter 'h' in Spanish is usually silent if placed at the beginning of a word. Hence, this word isn't necessarily pronounced 'hola' with a hard 'h'.  Its pronounced 'ola', with the silent 'h'.

The next three greetings are also pretty easy for beginners.  'Buenos Dias' - the pronunciation of this phrase is simple - phonetically it is similar to 'bweh-nos  dee-aas'.  While this isn't a literal phonetic spelling, its pretty close.  Its also important to remember where you are placing the stress.  In other words, where is the accent going on the word?  The capitalized letters should receive the accent, in each respective word:

phonetically:  BWE-nos DEE-aas

literally:         BUE-nos DI-as

For the other two greetings I've listed above, the pattern is the same.  Each phrase is going to have similar stress placed on each respective word.

Good afternoon:
phonetically:   BWE-nos  TAR-dess
literally:          BUE-nos   TAR-des

Good evening:
phonetically:   BWE-nas   NO-chess
literally:          BUE-nas    NO-ches

Remember that in Spanish, there are instances where you actually write in where the stress or emphasis of the word should occur.  In other words, you use an accent mark.  On these phrases, the accent marks should be places in the following locations, when writing them out:

Buenos días  (accent mark over the i)
Buenas tardes  (no written accent)
Buenas noches (no written accent)

While the last two phrases don't actually have a written accent - a good rule of thumb is as follows.  In almost every case, the stress of a word (the accent) should go on the second to the last syllable.

Its not too bad at all.  You can learn Spanish, its just going to take practice.  Try out these greetings on some of your friends or other acquaintances who speak Spanish.  You might be surprised how happy they are that you are trying to communicate to them in a language they are familiar with!

Learn Spanish - for beginners.

Ever think that learning a foreign language was too difficult?  Did you have bad experiences in school, or maybe just never felt confident?  Nervous? Concerned about making mistakes?

These are all common experiences that people go through when learning a foreign language.  If you can get through the initial concern and worry - you will probably learn fast.  Spanish is actually one of the easiest languages to learn.  Many of the letters and pronunciations are similar or identical to those used in English.  If you are a native English speaker - you can learn Spanish!

Is it necessary to take a class in order to learn?  Taking a class can help.  But, you can also learn from a tutor, or a conversation partner.  There are many great tools out there, that work great.  The main thing is to pick 1 method and try it.  Stay confident, and stay focused on the successes that you do have.

Where to begin?  Just start with cognates.  What are they?  Cognates are words that look similar to English words.  Here is a basic list of cognates:

absoluto - absolute
aceso - access
medalla - medal
musica - music
ensalada - salad
secreto - secret

There are many more!  Try to start by learning words that are similar to the words you know in English.  Remember that there are only five basic vowel sounds in Spanish:

English letter             Spanish pronunciation

a                                 ah
e                                 eh
i                                  ee
o                                 o
u                                 oo

These are the basic sounds for vowels.  Start here - and try pronouncing some words that are cognates.  This will help you get more comfortable with things, right away!