How to speak Spanish in 3 days?

So here I am again, with some help in learning a new language.

I had written a post on how to learn Italian, of course, the basic Italian in about 3 days (here the post), and now I thought to help you out with a little bit of Spanish as well.

So, let's imagine you are about to go to Spain and you know nothing at all about Spanish, aside from the common things, such as 'Siesta', 'Cerveza', 'Andale' and something more, for sure.

Well, there is a very good variation of Spanish in Spain and, therefore, get ready to be confused and not understand everything, even if it is the case where you have been studying Spanish back home. That is why the city that I have chosen is Madrid. People from Madrid would say they have an accent too, but to be fair, as a foreigner, I thought the Madrid accent to be the clearer and easy to understand. Said that, it is not my favourite accent, as a Spanish-fluent speaker, any weird accent is the best of the best and there are a lot of accents and dialects in Spain, my favourite so far is the accent that you can hear if you go to the south-east of Spain, particularly, Murcia. But, to be completely fair, my favourite accent ever is located in South America. There are many people from South America that live in Spain, I love the accent because they speak way more relaxed, while Spanish people are always in a hurry. They speak quite fast. But hey, you only need the basic, then you will definitely get used to understanding even the weirdest accent and to speak a lot more than Hola, yo me llamo Giulia. Which means, Hi my name is Giulia.

So let's start with class number 1.

Greetings

In Spanish, as much as in Italian, you can use the word 'Hola', to greet anyone and whenever during the day, but the difference with Ciao, is that you can only use "Hola" when you arrive and not when you are going. You can use Ciao when you are about to go or a simple 'Hasta luego', which means "See you later". No 'H' is pronounced in Spanish.

If you are in a situation where you need to be more formal, so think about people that you don't know and above all, elder. Well, in that case, it is not suggested to use "Hola", but the correspondent of good morning, afternoon, evening/night.

• Buenos dias (Bwenos dee-as)
• Buenas tardes (Bwenas tard-es)
• Buenas noches (Bwenas no-ches)
• The 'es' sound is like in the word 'explain', but with a 's' instead of a 'x'.
• And you can go away saying: Encantado (En-kant-ado) if you are a man and Encantada if you are a woman.

Once you have greet people, if you are about to introduce yourself you say:

• My name is... What's your name?
• Me llamo... Y tu? (Me as in Mediterranean, ya-mo... E too)

And once again you can use the word "Encantado/a" because it means "Pleasure to meet you".

Now let's think about situations you can face during a trip abroad.

Asking for help/directions

How do I reach the centre/park/street?

• Como llegar al centro/parque/calle? (Ko-mow ye-gar Al sen-trow/parke/Ka-ye)

And you can go almost anywhere without getting lost.

But you will need to approach people in a formal way, so you will stop them saying:

• Hola/Buenos dias, perdon... per-don

How much does it cost? And it could be anything really, a bus ticket, an ice cream, whatever you like, you can use:

• Cuanto es/cuesta?... Kuanto es/kwesta?

And pretty much you can survive anywhere in Spain, asking people how to go somewhere, so that you don't get lost and buying things that you will need, like food!

If you want to ask for something at the restaurant or at the supermarket/shop you can say:

• Perdon un café para mi
• Perdon un café para mi, por favor. (Sorry, a coffee for me, please)

It does not sound 100% natural but from not being able to say a word to order in a polite way to have something to drink.

By the way, I believe that a little guide, the type you can buy at the airport are super useful to carry around with you. If you know the basic, that I am teaching you right now, you can then check in the guide words you can use to replace "coffee" (café) with "water" or "steak" or whatever you feel like.

Finally few important words to know are:

1. Vino Tinto
2. Sangria
3. Tapas

Because you have to try the wine, the sangria and the tapas that are very typical of Spain.

And I think pretty much that's it for now. If you would like to have more help just comment on the comments below and I will be happy to give you some more tips.