Practical Spanish, Ep. 1
Greetings and Farewells
What’s below are the resources and transcript to the first episode of my new podcast, Practical Spanish, available on Spotify (coming to other platforms in the future). In this podcast, I aim to make Spanish grammar, vocabulary, and other learning topics as accessible as possible to students like me.
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Key Words and Phrases
Hola — Hello
Que pasó / pasa — How have you been? / What’s up?
Que tal — What’s up?
Buenos días — Good morning / Good day
Buenas tardes — Good afternoon / Good evening
Buenas noches — Good night
Adios — Bye
Vaya con Dios — Go with God
Señor — Sir
Señora — Ma’am (older or married women)
Señorita — Miss (younger or unmarried women)
Querido — Dear
Cordialmente — Cordially / Sincerely
A quien corresponda — To whom it may concern
Estimado Señor — Esteemed sir
Atentamente — Sincerely
Saludos cordiales — Kind regards / Best regards
A la espera de recibir sus noticias/su repuesta, le saluda — I look forward to hearing from you. Best regards,
Transcript
Hello everyone and welcome to the first episode of Practical Spanish. My name is Zakary and today we’re going to learn a bit about Greetings and Introductions.
Now, before we get into it, I want to explain how I categorize things a bit. I try to follow the CEFR, which is Europes scale of language proficiency. This falls into the most basic level, A1. I strongly recommend immersing as early as possible, but I understand and sympathize with how hard that is in the beginning.
That’s why all my A1 episodes will be in English and uploaded separately in Spanish. A2 and above will be all in Spanish, with key words repeated in English, to challenge you and I and push ourselves even further.
Don’t forget to check the description for resources, key terms, and other helpful things.
With that, let’s go!
First, we’ll go over some basics. “Hola” is simply “Hello”. It’s basic and can be used anytime. ex. Hola, como estas?, Hola, necesitas ayuda?, Hola, y bienvenidos al primero… You get it.
“Que tal” in this case means something like “How are you?” Tal has other uses, but this is what it means here. ex. Hola, que tal?,
Que pasó and Que pasa are two ways to say the same thing, “What’s up?” Que pasó carries more of a “How have you been?” since pasó is a different form of the same verb, Pasar, but effectively, they mean the same thing.
Buenos días is good morning and good day and is used before the evening where you would use buenas tardes which basically means good evening. Buenas noches is reserved for good night and you would really only say this when you or someone else is going to bed or saying farewell for the night.
Informal farewells include the ubiquitous adios, which literally means to God, but if you’re feeling more churchy you could always say Vaya con Dios or go with God.
What I call semi formal options include the classic mister and misses or sir and ma’am. Both of those are found in the Spanish señor and señora. An important note, señorita is actually used for younger, particularly unmarried women.
Querido is used like dear at the beginning of a letter and cordialmente literally means cordially but can also mean sincerely.
Getting more formal, if you want to say “to whom it may concern”, then what you’re looking for is “a quien corresponda”. A little more formal might be “estimado senor” and it’s variations for quantity and gender to mean esteemed sir and respective variants.
Sincerely can also be expressed with the Spanish “atentamente”.
Formal farewells include phrases like saludos cordiales meaning “kind regards” or “best regards”. More lengthy and perhaps more personal is “a la espera de recibir sus noticias/su respuesta, le saludo” meaning “I’m waiting to hear your response. Kind regards…”
Use these in your writings and in some of your speech. Practice these forms that you find useful in your life and try to make them a natural part of your vocabulary. The best way to make these stick is to make them for yourself. Make it a part of your daily life in examples and situations that actually mean something to you personally.
If it isn’t important to you, then it’s just not important. Pick intentionally.
I hope you’ve learned something from this. Don’t forget to check the Spanish version to help all this stick in your mind and train your ears while your there.
Before you go, I’d appreciate one more moment of your time. If you found value in today’s episode, please subscribe, share the show, and give me your feedback. Your support keeps this content ad-free and helps expand this into new languages. If you’d like to contribute, visit Buy Me A Coffee — it’s not about the coffee, but about making it easier for me to create and share with you. Thanks for listening, and I hope to have you in the next episode!
