100 Phrases Every Spanish Beginner Should Know, EXPLAINED

33 min video

Start with 100 useful Spanish phrases, explained by Lucía. Work through them in small groups so you can use them rather than only recognise them.

Watch the lesson

Try it yourself

Pick five phrases you could use this week. Say each in a short exchange, then review them tomorrow without looking at your notes.

Watch the original lesson on YouTube.

Edited bilingual reading guide

Follow Lucía through the video’s eight practice groups. This edited companion keeps the 100 main phrase entries in their original order, with natural English meanings, source examples and clearer grammar explanations. It is a reading guide rather than a verbatim soundtrack transcript; repeated filler and music are omitted. Alternatives and extra examples sit beside their main phrase rather than becoming additional numbered entries.

Level 1: Greetings

Watch from 0:25

Start with hola, the greeting you probably already know. Lucía also greets her mother with hola, mamá and adds hola, guapa for a beautiful friend. Buenas is a convenient short greeting: you do not have to choose between buenos días, buenas tardes and buenas noches. Lucía uses it when she meets someone or enters a place. Use it to greet someone in these examples.

¿Qué tal? and ¿Cómo estás? both ask how someone is. In the little exchange, the answer is Muy bien, ¿y tú? — ‘Very well, and you?’ Hasta means ‘until’ and pronto means ‘soon’. Lucía personally sometimes finds adiós abrupt and prefers hasta luego, hasta otra or hasta pronto. Adiós is still a perfectly valid goodbye; her preference is part of the lesson’s conversational style.

Mañana can mean ‘tomorrow’ or ‘morning’. In hasta mañana, it means ‘tomorrow’; hasta mañana por la mañana adds ‘morning’. ¿Qué pasa? literally asks ‘What’s happening?’ and also works as a casual ‘How’s it going?’ Ask about someone’s family with ¿Cómo está tu familia?, then return the question with ¿Y la tuya? Lucía loves wishing people a good day — and jokingly offers que tengas un mal día if you hate them. The useful everyday wish is que tengas un buen día.

Level 2: Super basics

Watch from 3:23

Sí, with its written accent, means ‘yes’. Lucía asks whether you like meatballs, and mentions answering the phone with sí. In informal messages you may see playful forms such as sip; these are chat spellings, not replacements for standard sí. No negates an answer or a sentence; her deliberately silly question is whether you like poo. Bienvenido welcomes a masculine addressee, bienvenida a feminine one; the plural forms are bienvenidos for a masculine or mixed group and bienvenidas for an all-feminine group.

Thank people with gracias, muchas gracias or mil gracias. De nada is the familiar reply; un placer means ‘my pleasure’. Add por favor to a request. Lucía demonstrates the informal short forms porfa and porfi between friends. Perdona can get someone’s attention (‘excuse me’) or apologise (‘sorry’), for example after bumping into someone. Her comic interruptions are part of the video’s playful delivery.

No sé and no lo sé both mean ‘I don’t know’. The verb is saber; in no lo sé, lo can stand for the information you do not know, such as the answer to ¿Qué hora es? Quizá and quizás both mean ‘maybe’. Lucía jokingly translates ‘Call Me Maybe’ as así que llámame quizás, then points out how awkward the literal lyric sounds. Her practical examples use the subjunctive: quizás vaya a la fiesta and quizás me quiera. Quizá(s) can also be used with the indicative; the subjunctive is not compulsory in every sentence.

¿Por qué? asks ‘why?’ and ¿por qué no? asks ‘why not?’ ¡Ayuda! and ¡Socorro! call for help; ayúdame is the command ‘help me’. Querer can mean ‘want’ or ‘love’, depending on its use: te quiero means ‘I love you’, and quiero a mi madre means ‘I love my mother’. Her dark punchline te quiero muerto switches to ‘I want you dead’ — a joke illustrating the other meaning, not an alternative romantic greeting. Finish the group with feliz cumpleaños; felicidades also works for a birthday or congratulations.

Level 3: Introducing yourself

Watch from 7:17

Introduce yourself with me llamo plus your name. Literally, me llamo Lucía means ‘I am called Lucía’; mi nombre es Lucía is another way to say ‘my name is Lucía’. Ask ¿Cómo te llamas? or ¿Cuál es tu nombre? Age uses tener, ‘to have’: tengo ochenta años is ‘I’m eighty years old’. The question is ¿Cuántos años tienes?

Choose encantado or encantada to agree with the person saying it; the longer version is encantado/encantada de conocerte. Reply igualmente, ‘likewise’. ¿A qué te dedicas? asks what you do — literally, what you devote yourself to — and Lucía answers soy profesora de español. Soy estudiante is also a useful answer. The noun estudiante has the same form for masculine and feminine, though surrounding words can show agreement, as in el estudiante or la estudiante.

Vivir means ‘to live’: vivo en Sevilla and vivo en Madrid say where you live. Lucía’s playful aside viva la vida means ‘long live life’. ¿De dónde eres? asks where you are from, answered here with Spain or the United States. ¿Cuál es tu número de teléfono? asks for a phone number; continue mi número de teléfono es… with the number. Her family examples are tengo una hermana, tengo dos hermanos and tengo una hija; she jokes after the last that she does not actually have a daughter.

Gustar works differently from English ‘like’. In el melón me gusta, the melon is the grammatical subject: literally, ‘melon pleases me’. In las fresas me gustan, the plural strawberries are the subject, so the verb is plural. Compare me gusta la música with no me gustan las manzanas. An infinitive takes the singular here: no me gusta conducir. Encantar follows the same pattern and expresses stronger liking: me encanta la sandía, but me encantan los plátanos. Ask about people with ¿Quién es él?, ¿Quién es ella? or ¿Quién es ese hombre?

Level 4: Daily conversations

Watch from 11:57

Por supuesto means ‘of course’; Lucía also uses the emphatic por supuesto que sí. The joke in her party invitation is por supuesto que no — ‘of course not’. No entiendo comes from entender, ‘to understand’. If someone asks ¿Quiere una bolsa?, you can say perdona, no entiendo español.

Ask the time with ¿Qué hora es? Say es la una en punto for one o’clock exactly and son las dos y media for half past two. ¿Qué opinas? and ¿Qué piensas? ask what someone thinks; Lucía’s new-hairstyle exchange gets the comic answer es muy feo, ‘it’s very ugly’. Tengo sueño means ‘I’m sleepy’; tengo mucho sueño is ‘I’m very sleepy’. Literally, these use ‘have’ plus sleepiness.

Buena suerte wishes someone good luck. Lucía jokes about the theatrical expression ¡Mucha mierda!, literally ‘lots of shit’, used to wish performers luck in Spain, much like English ‘break a leg’. No te preocupes means ‘don’t worry’. Preocuparse is a pronominal verb, and preocupes is the tú present-subjunctive form used in this negative command. ¿En serio? expresses surprise — ‘really?’ or ‘are you serious?’ — and ¿Lo dices en serio? asks whether someone means it.

Te echo de menos means ‘I miss you’; te extraño is another form, widely used in Latin America. Dinero is money: Lucía cannot buy the jacket because she has none, then asks ¿Me prestas dinero?, ‘can you lend me money?’ In esto es para ti, ti is the stressed personal pronoun used after the preposition para. It is not an indirect-object clitic. Compare para mí, para ti, para él and para ella.

Doler expresses pain. In me duele la pierna, ‘my leg hurts’, la pierna is the subject; the same pattern gives me duele la cabeza. Finally, the video distinguishes ¿Qué es esto?, ‘what is this?’, ¿Qué es eso?, ‘what is that?’, and ¿Qué es aquello?, ‘what is that over there?’ These demonstratives help point to things at different distances or in context.

Level 5: Travel phrases

Watch from 16:05

You reach phrase 50 with ¿Cuánto cuesta?, ‘how much does it cost?’ Use esto for ‘this’, or name the thing: ¿Cuánto cuesta una botella de agua? Caro/cara means expensive, and barato/barata means cheap. These adjectives agree with the noun’s grammatical gender and number: una camiseta cara, un coche barato, unas zapatillas baratas. A T-shirt or a car is not biologically female or male; grammatical gender is the relevant distinction.

Ask ¿Hablas inglés?, or explain lo siento, no hablo español. To slow the conversation, say habla más despacio, por favor; the opposite is habla más rápido, por favor. ¿Cómo se dice…? asks how to say a word: elephant is elefante in Spanish; margarita is ‘daisy’ in the flower example. Decir means ‘to say’.

¿Puedes repetirlo, por favor? uses the informal singular tú form. ¿Puede repetirlo, por favor? uses the usted form. In ¿Puedes escribirlo, por favor?, escribir means ‘write’ and lo stands for what you want written down. Lucía replies claro, ‘of course’.

Ir means ‘go’; the pronominal form irse often adds the idea of departing. Thus me voy means ‘I’m leaving’, and me voy de viaje means ‘I’m going on a trip’. Me belongs to the pronominal verb here; it does not literally mean that you go ‘myself’. Keep the useful destination examples: mañana me voy a un campamento, me voy al hotel, me voy a la piscina and me voy contigo. Al combines a and the article el.

In ¿A dónde va este autobús?, este is a demonstrative determiner meaning ‘this’, agreeing with masculine-singular autobús. Compare feminine-plural estas flores, ‘these flowers’. Ask for the next stop with ¿Cuál es la siguiente parada?; Lucía jokingly answers el infierno, ‘hell’. Quería literally means ‘I wanted’, but in a request such as quería reservar una habitación it softens the request: ‘I’d like to book a room’. She also uses it to order a paella. Ask ¿Qué me recomiendas? and the reply is garlic prawns, gambas al ajillo, as the house speciality. Point at a destination with quiero ir aquí, or name Lisbon or the hotel.

Level 6: Directions

Watch from 21:57

¿Dónde estás? asks where you are; the answer detrás de ti is ‘behind you’. Spanish often leaves out a subject pronoun when the verb and context make it clear. Find the bathroom with ¿Dónde está el baño?; Lucía gives al final del pasillo, a la izquierda, ‘at the end of the corridor, on the left’. Pasillo is ‘corridor’ in this setting, rather than an aisle between seats.

Lejos is far away and cerca is near. Compare mi casa está lejos, estoy muy lejos de ti, el supermercado está cerca and estamos muy cerca. Todo recto directs someone straight ahead. A la izquierda and a la derecha can mean ‘on the left/right’ or ‘to the left/right’, depending on whether you describe a place or a direction. ¿En qué calle está? asks which street something is on; name the restaurant or metro station if needed.

Tardar expresses how long something takes. Yo tardo una hora means ‘it takes me an hour’. Se tarda veinte minutos en tren is an impersonal construction: there is no grammatical subject, and the verb is in the third-person singular. Se is the impersonal marker here; saying there are ‘no pronouns’ is not an accurate description of the construction. For transport, the examples use en coche, en moto, en autobús and en tren.

Share your address with esta es mi dirección, or a phone number with este es mi número. Estar describes whether somewhere is open or closed: el metro está cerrado, el restaurante está cerrado, la tienda está abierta and el metro está abierto. Notice feminine abierta agreeing with tienda and masculine abierto/cerrado with metro. Lucía asks for a yellow-heart comment when you complete this group.

Level 7: Making plans

Watch from 25:36

Make plans with estoy ocupado/ocupada, ‘I’m busy’, and estoy libre, ‘I’m free’. Ocupado/ocupada changes with the person described; libre has the same form for masculine and feminine. In the examples, ¿Quedamos mañana? asks ‘shall we meet tomorrow?’ and ¿Nos vemos esta tarde? asks ‘shall we meet this afternoon?’ Venga, vale is a conversational way to agree. Ask ¿Qué quieres hacer?; Lucía wants an ice cream: quiero comerme un helado.

¿A qué hora? asks what time. Lucía teases that asking lets you arrive ten minutes later than the stated time in Spain and Latin America — then insists that if you meet her, you should be ten minutes early. Keep this as her joke about punctuality, rather than a rule about every person. Voy a llegar tarde predicts a late arrival, and voy a llegar quince minutos tarde gives the delay. Her dry reply is qué raro, ‘how unusual’.

Es temprano means ‘it’s early’. Lucía asks to sleep longer with déjame dormir más, and gives he llegado a Barcelona muy temprano, ‘I’ve arrived in Barcelona very early’. El fin de semana is the weekend; plural los fines de semana means weekends in general. The conversational short form is el finde: ¿Vamos al cine el finde que viene?, ‘shall we go to the cinema next weekend?’ She adds a musical aside while saying the phrase.

Some everyday weather expressions use hacer: hace sol, hace mal tiempo and hace buen tiempo. The verb llover means ‘rain’; mañana va a llover is ‘it’s going to rain tomorrow’. Mañana por la mañana specifies tomorrow morning. Ask ¿Cuándo tienes tiempo?, ‘when do you have time?’, and say el martes que viene estoy libre, ‘I’m free next Tuesday’. ¿Qué día es hoy? asks the day; the video’s Monday, 1 March answer is an example, not the current date.

Nos vemos a las diez en el restaurante works as ‘let’s meet at ten at the restaurant’ or ‘see you at ten at the restaurant’. Here nos vemos has a reciprocal meaning — we see each other — rather than ‘we see ourselves’. A las diez gives the time and en el restaurante the place. Lucía encourages you to reach phrase 100 and join her team of excellent students before moving to her favourite topic: food.

Level 8: Dining out

Watch from 29:28

Use tener for hunger and thirst: tengo hambre, ‘I’m hungry’, and tengo sed, ‘I’m thirsty’. Increase either with mucha: tengo mucha hambre or tengo mucha sed. ¿Me puedo sentar aquí? and ¿Puedo sentarme aquí? are both ‘can I sit here?’ The me belongs to sentarse; it can go before the conjugated verb or attach to the infinitive in this construction. Lucía also asks about sitting in a particular chair.

Ponme dos cervezas, por favor is a casual ordering formula in the Spanish bar setting Lucía demonstrates: naturally, ‘I’ll have two beers, please’. It replies to ¿Qué te pongo?, ‘what can I get you?’ Her joke is that you can order two even if you are alone. Keep por favor in your request; this casual formula is not the only polite option in every setting. You can also simply name the drink: una botella de agua, por favor, una cerveza, por favor or dos Coca-Colas, por favor.

Wish someone an enjoyable meal with que aproveche. ¡Qué rico! praises delicious food. Rico/rica agrees with the noun’s grammatical gender: la tarta está muy rica, but ¡qué rico está el pollo! This is grammatical agreement, not the sex of a cake or chicken dish. Ask for more with quiero más, then specify refresco or tortilla. In this Spanish food context, tortilla is an omelette.

Soy alérgico a los cacahuetes means ‘I’m allergic to peanuts’; use alérgica for feminine agreement. Lucía’s comic variation is soy alérgica a los idiotas, ‘I’m allergic to idiots’. Intolerante has the same form for masculine and feminine: soy intolerante a la lactosa, ‘I’m lactose intolerant’. Finish with la cuenta, por favor, ‘the bill, please’, or la cuenta, cuando pueda, ‘the bill, when you have a moment’. Pueda addresses the server with the usted form in that request.

The final five-phrase challenge

Lucía’s final challenge is to write a comment using five phrases from the lesson. She says she will personally check them to help you practise. Choose phrases you can genuinely use, put them into short exchanges and review them again tomorrow. Keep the playful examples as jokes and use the practical models in your own conversations.

Grammar references: RAE/ASALE: stressed personal pronouns after prepositions, RAE/ASALE: pronominal, reciprocal and impersonal constructions, RAE: demonstrative determiners, RAE/ASALE: grammatical gender and agreement, RAE/ASALE: quizá and quizás.