A handy dandy Spanish phrase sheet

A traveler's cheat sheet on how to say the basics and ask important questions in Spanish

Basics | Transport | Lodging | Dining | Time/Numbers | [pronunciation notes]

Basics

Transport

Lodging

Dining

Time & numbers

Pronunciation notes

Spanish in Spain is very different from Spanish in Mexico or elsewhere in Latin America (which is the Spanish most North Americans are used to).

For example, Spaniards—especially Castillians—often sound as it they are lisping. It is not actually a lisp (nor, despite the false legend repeated in many guidebooks, does it have anything to do with some lisping king everyone was afraid to correct). It is the ceceo, and it just means that many c's and z's sounds like "th."

• A "c" (followed by an "i" or "e") and a "z" are both pronounced "th" as in "this."
• A "c" followed by an "a," "o," "u" or a consonant is a hard "c," prounounced like a "k."
• A "j" is pronounced as a hard, throat-clearing "ch" sound, as in "loch" or "Bach."
• A double-L "ll" is pronounced as a "y" as in "yes."
• An ñ is pronounced "ny" as in "onion."
• "r" and "rr" are r-r-rolled, as in most Romance languages (and Scottish)
• A "v" is pronounced like a "b" as in "boy." (So "please" is actually "por fabor.")
• The "h" is silent. (So the word for "today," "hoy," is prounounced "oy.")

Regional dialects and languages

To make things easier, we'll stick to Castillian Spanish here—which is the "proper," common form of Spanish in Spain, the sort newscasters speak—since every Spanish region has its own distinct pronunciation or dialect.

For example, in parts of central and northern Andalusia, they pronounce "c" as an "s," not as "th."

Some regions of Spain even have their own, distinct languages. (Though just about everyone also speaks Castillian Spanish as well.)

In Catalonia, home to Barcelona—as well as in the Balearic Islands (Ibiza, Majorca, etc.) and in most of Valencia—they speak Catalan, which sounds a bit like a cross between Spanish and French and is more closely related to the Languedoc, Corsican, and Provençal langauges of France. (I have a seperate Catalan phrase sheet here.)

Other languages spoken within Spain include Galician and Astruaian in the northwest, and along the northern coast there are pockets of people who speak Basque, Aragonese, and even some Occitan.