Learn Spanish for Travel, Work and Study

Spanish is written in the Latin alphabet with one letter of its own, “ñ”, and accents that mark stress where it breaks the rules. No big language is pronounced more predictably: a, e, i, o, u have one sound each and never weaken; “j” and “g” before e and i are the throaty sound of Scottish “loch”; “ll” and “y” are the same sound; “h” is silent; and “rr” is rolled, as in “ferrocarril”. In most of Spain “c” before e and i and “z” are said as the th of “thin”, which Latin America says as s — the one difference a learner hears at once. Words ending in a vowel, n or s are stressed on the syllable before the last, all others on the last, and a written accent flags every exception: “está”, “inglés”, “médico”.

The grammar is Romance in full. A noun's gender usually shows in its ending, and its article and adjectives follow it; verbs fall into three families and conjugate for six persons across a set of tenses of which four carry daily speech. The two difficulties that last are “ser” and “estar” — “es aburrido” means he is a boring person, “está aburrido” that he is bored — and the subjunctive, which appears after expressions of wish, doubt, emotion and purpose and in every “when” that refers to the future: “cuando llegues”, when you arrive. Object pronouns stand before the verb or attach to the end of an infinitive, and the subject is dropped whenever the verb ending shows it.

Spanish has “tú” for friends, family and children and “usted” for strangers, officials and elders, with the third-person verb; Spain moves to “tú” fast and uses it with shopkeepers and colleagues, while much of Latin America keeps “usted” longer and, in Colombia and Central America, uses it even within families. Spain alone has “vosotros”, the informal plural; Latin America uses “ustedes” for every group. Argentina, Uruguay and parts of Central America say “vos” instead of “tú”, with its own verb forms. Titles are “señor”, “señora” and “don” or “doña” with a first name for respect, and “buenos días” on entering a shop, a lift or a waiting room is expected everywhere.

The Spanish of Spain and the Spanish of the Americas are one language with regional voices, and the Royal Spanish Academy and its sister academies in every Spanish-speaking country keep the written standard common. The differences are in sound — Spain's th, the Caribbean's dropped s, Argentina's sh for “ll” and “y”, the Andes' clear and slow vowels — and in a layer of everyday words: a car is a “coche” in Madrid, a “carro” in Mexico and an “auto” in Buenos Aires. Spanish shares most of its vocabulary with Portuguese and Italian and a few thousand words with Arabic, from “almohada”, pillow, to “ojalá”, the “inshallah” of the Spanish-speaking world.

Spanish is the language English speakers learn fastest of all the world's major ones: by the US Foreign Service Institute's count an English speaker works comfortably in it after 600 to 750 hours of class, as with French and Italian, and a quarter of what Chinese or Arabic demand. The sounds are immediate, the vocabulary half familiar and the grammar regular, so that greetings, a meal, a ticket and directions come within weeks and a basic conversation within months. The long middle is the verbs — conjugated in every sentence, with “ser” and “estar” and the subjunctive demanding a judgement each time — and the ear, since Spanish speakers talk fast and run their words together. Learners who reach B1 report that Spanish then rewards every hour put into it.

Spain's coasts, and the centres of Madrid and Barcelona, will deal with a visitor in English at the hotel, the museum and the restaurant with a terrace; two streets away, in any town inland and with anyone over fifty, Spanish is the language, and so it is at the foreigners' office, the health centre and the town hall. Latin America is Spanish from the airport onwards except in international business and the resort hotels; Mexico City, Bogotá and Buenos Aires have English-speaking professional circles and Spanish-speaking everything else. Spanish firms, the state and the professions run in Spanish; tourism, technology and the multinationals take English speakers as well. Universities teach in Spanish and ask international students for B2, while a growing share of master's programmes run in English.

• ¿The question comes first?: Spanish opens a question with an inverted mark and an exclamation with an inverted “¡”, so a reader knows the tone before the sentence begins. No other major language does it.
• Embarazada is not embarrassed: It means pregnant. “Éxito” is success, not exit; “constipado” is having a cold; “sensible” means sensitive. Spanish false friends are famous because they are so plausible.
• Sobremesa: The hour or two spent at the table after the meal is over, talking — a word for a thing English speakers do without naming, and a Spanish institution that explains why lunch ends at five.
• Ojalá is inshallah: “I hope so” in Spanish is the Arabic “law sha' Allah”, worn smooth by eight centuries of contact; so are “almohada”, “azúcar”, “aceite” and some four thousand other words beginning with al-.
• Wives and handcuffs: “Esposas” means both, and Spanish speakers have made every possible joke about it already.
• A letter worth fighting for: Spain once refused to allow computer keyboards without the “ñ” to be sold, and the letter — which turns “año”, year, into “ano”, anus, when dropped — stays on every Spanish keyboard.
• Estrenar: To use or wear something for the first time: new shoes, a new flat, a new film. Spanish has one word for the pleasure; English needs a sentence.

Spanish levels follow the CEFR, and the Instituto Cervantes, Spain's cultural institute, issues the two certificates that count everywhere Spanish is spoken. The DELE, the Diploma of Spanish as a Foreign Language, is a separate exam at each level from A1 to C2, sat several times a year at Cervantes centres and partner institutions in more than a hundred countries, marked in Spain and valid for life; it is the diploma universities, employers and the Spanish state recognise. The SIELE, run by the Cervantes with the universities of Salamanca, Mexico and Buenos Aires, is a single online exam that reports a level from a score across four skills, can be booked at short notice around the world, and is valid for five years; it accepts every variety of Spanish as correct. The CCSE, also from the Cervantes, is Spain's civics test on the constitution and society, taken alongside the DELE for nationality.

Spain names its levels in law. Spanish nationality by residence requires a DELE at A2 or higher together with a pass in the CCSE, with nationals of Spanish-speaking countries exempt from the language part; Spain attaches no language test to a visa or a residence permit. Spanish-taught degrees commonly ask international applicants for B2, proven with the DELE or the SIELE or the university's own test. Across Latin America, naturalisation asks for Spanish in an interview or a short exam set by the country's own authorities — Mexico's foreign ministry sets a written test, Argentina's courts assess the applicant — and universities accept the DELE and SIELE or test for themselves. Employers in Spain say “nivel alto” and mean B2. The A2 of Spanish nationality is four to six months of steady classes away for most adults, B1 about a year, B2 somewhere in the second.

Spanish is the best-supplied language in the world for self-study after English, and the learner's problem is choice rather than scarcity. Two free resources stand out: an audio course that reasons the grammar out of what an English speaker already knows, step by step, and a video library of hundreds of hours of Spanish spoken slowly and clearly at every level by speakers from a dozen countries. Around them a dictionary with a conjugator, a flashcard deck with “el” or “la” on every noun, and the television of whichever Spanish-speaking country the learner is heading for complete the kit.

A tutor in Spanish earns their place on the verbs and the ear. “Ser” or “estar”, indicative or subjunctive, preterite or imperfect: these are judgements made in every sentence, and they turn into reflexes only in talk with someone who drops in the right form each time without halting the conversation. A tutor also fixes the rolled r and the pure vowels in a learner's own mouth, and — since Spanish is one language with many voices — brings the accent and the words of the country the learner is actually going to.