Spanish mistakes English speakers make

The Spanish that costs you is usually the Spanish you got right. A wrong ending reads as someone learning, and the person in front of you helps out. A correct sentence pointed at the wrong hour, the wrong country or the wrong level of formality gets no help at all, because nothing about it looks like a mistake. When we wrote the Spanish half of The Vocabcord 500, 116 of the 500 rows ended up with a note beside them, and most of those notes warn about the second kind: this word is ordinary in Madrid and obscene in Mexico City, this greeting expires at lunch, this apology is far too heavy for squeezing past someone. Below are the traps those notes kept flagging, sorted by what each one costs.

Every Spanish sentence picks a level of formality for you

Spanish settles who you are talking to before you have finished the verb, and offers no neutral setting to fall back on. Seven notes in our list exist to hand you that decision. The full reply to how are you is Bien, gracias. ¿Y usted? Usted goes to strangers and older people, ¿y tú? to colleagues your own age. ¿Cómo se llama? is the usted form; ¿cómo te llamas? waits until someone has used tú with you first.

An English speaker picks one form and uses it on everybody, usually whichever the course taught first. With a stranger usted is the safe default and costs you nothing. At the next desk it is a level of formality most Spanish offices dropped long ago, so our list settles the office with a question rather than a guess: ¿Nos tuteamos?, can we use tú. Ask once and ask early, says the note, because most Spanish offices run on tú from the first day, the boss included.

Writing is where the choice hardens, since you cannot read a face and correct course. The tú apology for a late reply is Perdona por el retraso. Perdone is what a customer gets. Choose wrong in an email and the sentence stays correct, stays polite, and still sits at the wrong distance from its reader.

The words an English reader thinks they already know

Some Spanish words are readable on sight and wrong on arrival. The pharmacy pair is the one people repeat. I have a cold is Estoy resfriado. The note beside it points at constipado, which means the same thing in Spain and has nothing to do with digestion. Either word gets you cold medicine at a Spanish pharmacy. Resfriada is the ending a woman uses.

The trap with a real price sits at a table. The menu is the carta, so you ask for it with La carta, por favor. El menú in Spain is the fixed-price set lunch, so the most obvious translation asks something else. For the days you do want that deal there is ¿Tienen menú del día?

Two more move you around in space. A flat sits on the third floor in El piso está en el tercero. Across Latin America piso is the floor under your shoes. Because planta baja is the ground floor, one flight up is Está en la primera planta. That is British counting, waiting for an American on the stairs.

The office pair costs the least and turns up the most. An ordinary way to ask for clarification in a meeting is Tengo una duda. A doubt in English hints that you distrust the plan. Arranging to meet runs on quedar, a verb with nothing to do with staying anywhere: Quedamos el martes a las diez.

Correct sentences that arrive as rudeness

Spanish keeps most of its literal-translation traps in the repair kit. ¿Cómo? is how you ask a person to say that again. The direct translation of what is ¿qué?, which our note marks as curt on its own. Both are correct. The gap between them is the entire lesson.

Checking that you have been understood carries the sharpest edge. ¿Me explico? is the natural version, am I making sense, and it puts the weight on your own Spanish. The note flags ¿me entiende? as something that can sound like a challenge, because that one puts it on the listener instead.

Apologies are graded in Spanish, and English collapses the grades into one word. Bumping into someone or a small slip gets Perdón. Bad news or a real mistake gets Lo siento. Our note calls that second one too heavy for squeezing past a stranger, and the phrase for squeezing past is Con permiso. Before asking a stranger for anything there is Perdone que le moleste. The same idea reaches you from shop signs as disculpe las molestias.

One word, two countries

Of the 116 notes, 24 exist for a single reason: the word changes across the Atlantic. Our list is European Spanish with Latin American variants marked, and the loudest consequence has its own row. In Spain there is nothing remarkable about ¿Dónde puedo coger un taxi? The note is blunt about everywhere else: in Mexico, Argentina and much of Latin America coger is obscene, and tomar is the verb there.

The quieter one is a direction. Straight ahead in Spain is Todo recto. The Latin American word for it is derecho, and our note warns that a Spaniard can take that as the right-hand side, because derecha is one letter away. Recto has only the one reading, so it is the word to use in Spain.

The rest are nouns you reach for daily. Móvil becomes celular in Un segundo, lo miro en el móvil. Billete becomes boleto or pasaje at a ticket window, which reshapes Un billete sencillo, por favor. Zumo becomes jugo, ordenador becomes computadora, andando becomes caminando, and alquilar becomes rentar in Mexico. Extraño a mi familia is how the other side says Echo de menos a mi familia. Even the filler is regional. Spain's OK is Vale. Latin America says bueno, and Argentina says dale.

The right phrase at the wrong hour

Three greetings cover a Spanish day, and the borders between them sit where an English speaker does not expect. Until lunch, which in Spain means until about two in the afternoon, you say Buenos días. From lunch until dark, still true at eight in the evening, it is Buenas tardes. After dark you switch to Buenas noches. Those same two words also mean goodnight, so they open a conversation and close it. An English clock reaches good afternoon at half past twelve and good evening at six, and both are early in Spain.

The safe answer is on the list too. The shortening you hear walking into a shop or a bar is Buenas. It works at any hour.

Meals run on the same clock. A booking that sounds late in English is Hemos reservado para las nueve. In Spain that counts as early, and many kitchens open at half past eight. Two further traps turn on the order of events. Nobody brings the bill unasked, so ¿Me trae la cuenta, por favor? is a sentence you have to produce. And at a market or a clinic the queue lives in shared memory rather than in a line: ¿Quién es el último? on arrival tells you who to stand behind, and you hold that job for whoever walks in after you.

The last vowel changes with who is speaking

Our note column flags 10 phrases whose ending moves with the speaker. A woman meeting you says encantada rather than Encantado. The same vowel shifts in four more rows: Soy vegetariano. No estoy seguro. Estoy cansado. Hola, soy nuevo. English hides all of it, since I am tired is the same sentence in every mouth. Spanish parks the speaker's gender on the last letter of an adjective you never thought about.

At work it stops being cosmetic. The self-employed status in Spain, with its own monthly fee, arrives as Tengo que darme de alta como autónomo. A woman registers as autónoma. A temporary contract that turned permanent is Me han hecho fijo. For her it is fija. These are sentences you repeat to an accountant, a landlord and a bank.

Elsewhere Spanish drops that same information without warning. He has fainted and she has fainted are both Se ha desmayado. The subject is simply left out, and whoever you called will ask.

Phrases you cannot assemble out of the words you know

A whole layer of Spanish admin runs on fixed verb phrases whose parts tell you nothing. Dar de alta opens an account or a service and dar de baja closes it. Switching on the electricity is Quiero dar de alta la luz. Being off sick is estar de baja. The fixed phrase at a police station is Quiero poner una denuncia. The report it produces is what an insurer wants. For the government offices there is ¿Dónde pido cita previa? Cita previa is compulsory for most of them and booked online.

Poner does more work than any verb on the list, and its dictionary entry shows none of it. It serves you a drink in ¿Me pone un vaso de agua del grifo?, free by law in Spain, files the police report above, and copies you into an email in ¿Me pones en copia?, where nobody says cc out loud. Cobrar belongs to the till, and ¿Me cobra, por favor? catches a waiter's eye once you are ready to pay.

Two words carry more of a Spanish working day than any sentence you could build from scratch: Ya está. They cover finished, sorted and that is it.

Age, hunger and hurry are things you have

English hands these states to the verb to be. I am thirty-two, I am hungry, I am in a hurry. Spanish hands them to tener, to have, and the note beside Tengo treinta y dos años. is the only one in the list that calls a mistake the classic beginner slip. The slip is soy treinta y dos, and this is the one trap on this page a listener repairs for you while you are still talking.

What keeps it alive is the size of the family. Being corrected on your age tells you nothing about the next sentence, and 7 rows in the Spanish list answer an English to be with a Spanish tener. Hunger, sleep and a train you are late for all take the same verb: Tengo hambre. Tengo sueño. Tengo prisa. Conceding a point in a meeting is Tiene razón. Your shift takes it too, in Tengo turno de tarde. So does the line somebody says to you on every call, Tienes el micro apagado.

Ser and estar get a chapter to themselves in most Spanish courses. Tener gets a line, and it carries the sentences you need in the first hour. This is the cheapest mistake on the page, because it is visible and somebody usually corrects it out loud. It is still the one you will make most often.

What this page cannot fix

Three things sit outside the note column. The first is your accent, which decides how much slack you get on everything above. Right words with the wrong music still read as foreign.

The second is the mood of a room. Register advice is written for an average stranger on an average day, and ¿Vamos a tomar un café?, the mid-morning coffee our list tells you to accept in your first week, is a different room from a Monday deadline.

The third is the traps we have not met. These 116 notes came out of writing the list, so they carry the shape of the people who wrote it: European Spanish first, Latin American variants marked where we knew to mark them. A reader in Bogotá gets fewer warnings than a reader in Madrid, and that gap is ours. No outside native-speaker review is documented for this batch either; when one happens we will say who did it and what they covered.

How a trap stops being a trap

Reading a note teaches you the fact. It leaves the phrase outside your mouth, and every trap on this page goes off in the half-second before you have time to remember anything. What closes that gap is hearing the right version often enough that the wrong one sounds wrong before you can explain why.

That is the loop the app runs on: a phrase plays when the phone goes on charge, once the automation is set up, and the entries you have not heard recently are the ones weighted to come round. The reasoning is written up in One word per charge: why a lesson would fail. The collections turn into app packs later; their audio is not built yet, and we are not putting a date on it.

Until then the Spanish list is a page you can keep open at a counter. All 500 rows, notes included, sit on The 500 Spanish phrases you actually need, and the six lists live together on The Vocabcord 500.

Common questions

Should I use tú or usted with a stranger in Spanish?

Use usted with strangers and older people, and tú with colleagues your own age. In an office you can settle it with one question, ¿Nos tuteamos?, and the answer is usually yes, because most Spanish offices run on tú from the first day. In writing, perdona is the tú form and perdone is what a customer gets, which is why the list carries Perdona por el retraso.

Is coger rude in Spanish?

It depends where you are standing. In Spain ¿Dónde puedo coger un taxi? is completely ordinary and you will hear coger all day. In Mexico, Argentina and much of Latin America the same verb is obscene, and tomar is the one to use there.

When do you say buenas tardes instead of buenos días?

The greeting until lunch is Buenos días. In Spain lunch means about two in the afternoon. From then until dark, which can run to eight or nine in the evening, it is Buenas tardes. After dark you switch to Buenas noches. That one works as a greeting and as a goodnight, and when the borders are hard to hold there is always Buenas.

What Spanish false friends catch English speakers out?

Constipado means you have a cold, which is why the list hands you Estoy resfriado. Carta is the menu while el menú in Spain is the fixed-price set lunch, so the sentence that gets you something to read is La carta, por favor. Piso is a flat in Spain and the floor under your shoes in Latin America, and the dietas in ¿Hay dietas? are travel and meal allowances.