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Day 1 of 90

Hello and goodbye

Greetings by time of day. About 10 minutes. Grammar: buenos / buenas.

Spanish of

Six words get you through a first meeting in Spanish. Learn them properly today and you will use them every single day of the other eighty nine.

The greetings

Spanish greets you by naming the part of the day you are in.

hola
hello
Any hour, anyone, formal or not. The h is silent, so it is o-la.
buenos días
good morning
Until about midday. Both words are plural.
buenas tardes
good afternoon
Midday until dark, which in practice means until the evening meal.
buenas noches
good evening, and good night
After dark. It is both a hello and a goodbye, which no English greeting is.
Why it works this way

The endings are not decoration. día is a masculine noun so it takes buenos, while tarde and noche are feminine so they take buenas. This is the first time you meet gender agreement and it will happen in every sentence you ever say, so it is worth noticing here where there are only two options.

Leaving

adiós is the one every English speaker knows and the one Spanish speakers use least.

hasta luego
see you later
The ordinary goodbye. Use this by default.
hasta mañana
see you tomorrow
mañana is both tomorrow and morning. Context decides.
adiós
goodbye
Carries a sense of finality. Fine, but heavier than you think.
chao
bye
Casual and very common. Written chau in Argentina and Uruguay.
Why it works this way

hasta means until, so hasta luego is until later and hasta mañana is until tomorrow. Once you own that one word you can build the rest yourself: hasta pronto, until soon. hasta el lunes, until Monday. This is how most useful Spanish works, one small word carrying a whole family of phrases.

How are you

One letter separates the friendly version from the polite one.

¿cómo estás?
how are you?
To a friend, a child, someone your own age.
¿cómo está?
how are you?
To a stranger, someone older, anyone serving you in a professional setting.
bien, gracias
fine, thanks
The expected answer. muy bien if you mean it.
¿y tú?
and you?
Say ¿y usted? if you used the polite form above.
Why it works this way

That final s is you-informal and its absence is you-formal. It is not a special rule for this phrase, it is how the whole language marks the difference between tú and usted, and you will see the same s appear and disappear on every verb from here on. Getting it wrong is never rude enough to matter on day one, but hearing it is what tells you how someone is treating you.

Why questions open with ¿

Spanish has no equivalent of English do in questions, so ¿Cómo estás? and Cómo estás are the same three words. In speech intonation does the work. In writing the upside down mark does it instead, and it sits at the start so you know a question is coming before you begin reading it aloud. The same goes for ¡ before an exclamation.

Check yourself

Eight questions. Get 5 of them right to finish the day.

More from this course

Weeks 1 to 2: first words, first sentences.

See all 90 days of the course →