Spanish at the airport
Airports are where you have to understand fast Spanish rather than produce it. Most of this page is for reading signs and following what is said to you.
Checking in
Airport Spanish is mostly nouns, and staff use usted with you: ¿lleva equipaje?, do you have luggage. Recognise the usted ending, the same as for he or she, and you will understand most questions at the desk.
Security and signs
Signs use one noun each. Salida is both departure and exit, which sounds confusing until you notice it means the way out, whether of a building or of the country.
Announcements
Announcements use a fixed set of words: retrasado, cancelado, embarque, última llamada. Catch those four and the gate number, and the rest of the sentence is detail you can safely miss.
When it goes wrong
When something goes wrong, the past tense does the work: perdí, I missed, and no llegó, it did not arrive. Two verbs in the simple past cover most airport problems, and necesito hablar con alguien gets you to a person who can fix them.
Two things worth knowing
On an airport board salida is departures. On a door it is the way out. Both come from salir, to leave, and the sign never tells you which one it means, so read the context.
Announcements are fast and you will not catch all of it. Learn puerta and the numbers to thirty cold, and you can extract what matters from a sentence you did not otherwise follow.
The 90 day course builds these phrases into real conversation, one short lesson a day. Days 1 to 7 need no account.
Open Day 6 →