Learning Useful Spanish Greetings
In your first attempt to learn Spanish, Spanish greetings are commonly the first things that you are taught. What do you know if you don’t know how to say “hello?” Learning the greetings will help you to learn Spanish quick in its simplest form because you don’t have to juggle with all the verb agreements or word orders. Spanish greetings are taught in simple phrases. No complex words need to be looked up or added. As I said before, when you learn Spanish, the first phrase you need to know is “hello.” In order to say that in Spanish, you would say, “Hola.”
“Hola” can be used either formally or casually to mean hello to anyone you may run into. If you want to say hello on the phone, you might use “bueno” or “diga.”
If you would like to say “goodbye” in Spanish, you would say, “Adiós.”
If you want to say, “How are you?” you would say, “Cómo estás?” If you want to say, “Good afternoon.” you would say, ” Buenas tardes.”. If you would like to say, “Good morning” or “Good day,” you would say, “Buenos días.” “Good night” in Spanish is buenos noches, and to ask for somebody’s name, you would say, “Cómo te llamas?”
Once you get these down, you will find that easy to pick up the language, but you are in for some more complex terms a bit later on down the road. Other basics that you can start mastering are numbers, the alphabet, telling time, asking directions, gender, color, body parts, and family.
Learning these kinds of common terms will help you learn Spanish quickly because you will able to practice these words daily. People say hello and good night all of the time so you should be comfortable practicing your Spanish daily.
Later on, you will be able to say more sophisticated greetings such as, “Hello, how are you are you doing?” or “Hi, the weather is pleasant today, isn’t it?”
You can start to get a little more sophisticated by asking “What’s up?” or “What’s new?” To say that in Spanish, you would say “Qué hay?” If you wish to say, “How’s it going?” you would say, “Qué pasa?” If you wantto say “nice to meet you” you would say “Mucho gusto.”
Those are just a few of the more advanced level greetings that will help you to learn Spanish while getting to know other people.
In Spain, it’s often a common thing for people to greet each other with kisses on both cheeks when they meet. However, men will in general just give each other a hand shake. Even though people kiss each other often when they meet, they don’t do it all of the time. For instance, in the context of a business meeting, you would not catch people kissing each other on the cheeks.
If you are in the U.S., you may not want to try kissing anyone as you learn Spanish, even if it’s another Spanish person. Most people of different cultures have gotten accustomed to the American culture, and Americans don’t normally kiss each other when they first meet. Nonetheless, should you visit Spain, you can try it. It adds to the fun as you learn Spanish.