Who is last? The queue phrase in six languages

At a busy counter, knowing how to ask who is next can be as useful as knowing what to order. Our six 500-phrase collections include questions about queues, weights, bags, receipts and payment. Two lists include a spoken question about who is last; four include ticket-system phrases, with Italian in both groups. The German list has no queue line. These differences describe our coverage, not six fixed national systems.

Ask who is last, or check the ticket system

Where people are waiting without an obvious line or ticket system, Spanish ¿Quién es el último? and Italian Chi è l'ultimo? ask who is last. Once someone answers, you know whose turn comes before yours. Check for a ticket machine or an appointment system too; the arrangement depends on the place.

Both questions help establish the order of a queue. Both are useful at counters where it is unclear whose turn comes next. Asking helps when the order is unclear. It is not a rule that silently waiting means losing your place. The lines sit in the shopping section of the Spanish 500 and the Italian 500.

Four collections also include ticket-system phrases. Where a Polish office uses numbered tickets, take the appropriate numerek. The Polish list includes this instruction in its forms and offices section. Some French offices call your number to a window, so the French collection asks which window rather than who is ahead. Brazilian offices call the ticket a senha, a word that also means password, and the Portuguese list gives you the question that finds the machine along with the check you make when your number is close.

Italian needs both kinds of question. At a deli you may ask who is last; a post office may use tickets or booked turns. Poste Italiane provides a turn-booking service, so a spoken queue is not the rule for Italian post offices. Check the signs and choose the ticket for the service you need.

The German list has no queue phrase, and if we rebuilt one section of it, that would be the one. What it carries starts mid-exchange, at the moment somebody has already turned towards you, and both of those lines assume the hard part is behind you. How a German bakery decides who is next is left to the reader to work out, which is the honest gap in this set.

The counter: weight, the bag, the receipt, the tip

The six shopping and paying sections hold 199 phrases between them, and many of them exist because a counter measures, wraps, charges and asks in a fixed order. Weight brings two useful local units into the examples: Italian etti and Polish deko.

An etto is a hundred grams and a deko is ten grams. Due etti therefore orders two hundred grams, while dziesięć deko orders a hundred. Grams are also understood; the local units are useful alternatives, not a test you have to pass. The German and Brazilian examples below use grams and half kilos, and the Brazilian list also includes a request for slicing.

Then the scale overshoots. If a slice runs past the weight you asked for, the counter asks whether that is all right, and Italian hands you the yes so you do not have to invent one at the moment somebody is holding a knife.

The till asks two more things while you are still packing. Our Polish example is a one-word bag question; the Portuguese and German examples ask the customer, while the Spanish one is the customer's request. These are examples, not limits on how each language asks. Three of those four notes mention that the bag will cost you something. Receipts are the odder of the two. A Brazilian till asks whether to put your tax number on the receipt, which links the purchase to a rebate scheme; a Polish one may ask whether you want a receipt or an invoice. Both are questions about your paperwork. You can decline adding a CPF or say whether you need a receipt or invoice.

The tipping examples give two ways to state what you want to pay. German Machen Sie zwanzig names a total including the tip. Stimmt so, Polish Reszty nie trzeba and Italian Tenga il resto tell someone to keep the change. Tip amounts and card-terminal options vary by venue; these phrases do not establish a fixed amount or payment rule.

Brazil adds a question that appears in none of the other five lists. A card payment can be split across months, often with no interest, and the note says the split covers groceries too. The machine asks before it charges, so the answer has to be ready before the card is.

The answers you have to give back

Much of counter language arrives as somebody else's question, and the useful reply is one or two words long. Every collection was built so that a question a newcomer will be asked has its answer sitting beside it, and the till is where that pays off fastest. Three of the ones below arrive as matched pairs, the question and the word that closes it.

German and Polish waiters ask the same thing about the bill and want one word back. French shops close an order by asking whether that is everything. A Brazilian till asks which kind of card before it takes one, and the answer keeps the preposition, which the note flags because dropping it is the obvious slip.

Two more get asked so often that they stop sounding like questions at all. Polish ticket windows want to know whether you are paying full price or the reduced fare, with eligibility and proof depending on the operator and the type of discount. Supermarket tills in Italy and Poland go for the loyalty card or the app, and in both languages two words end it.

French shops open with a question of their own, and the answer to it is the line that buys you room to look around.

What changes by city and by shop

The notes are where a collection admits that a country is not one place. A bag is a busta at an Italian counter and a sacchetto in the supermarket. A German roll has one name in Berlin, another in Swabia and another again in Bavaria, and the note gives them all, because a bakery is the first counter most newcomers reach. Spain's word for a till receipt travels badly: much of Latin America asks about the recibo or the factura instead.

Payment changes by shop more than by city. A German till may take only the domestic Girocard, so a foreign credit card can be refused and the note tells you to carry cash for it. Markets, kiosks and small cafes in Germany still say cash only, and Polish markets and kiosks sometimes do. French bakeries and market stalls sometimes set a card minimum. Italian bars decide for themselves whether you pay at the till before you order or at the end, and the note's advice there is to watch what the locals do.

A note is guidance about the example, not a complete account of local practice. Every collection names its variety at the top of the file, so the Spanish here is Spain's, the Portuguese is Brazil's and the German is Germany's, with the other forms flagged where daily use differs. Regional coverage is uneven, and no independent native-speaker sign-off is documented for these collections. These lines were also written for a polite adult stranger, so among friends they will sound careful.

Where these lines go next

They are pages for now. All six collections sit together on The Vocabcord 500 with the files to download, and the queue and counter lines are the ones worth carrying on paper in your first week, because you meet them before you have learned them.

They become app packs later, with text-to-speech audio, and then a line plays when the phone goes on charge: the phrase, a pause, the English, a pause, the phrase again. The app favours the lines you have gone longest without hearing, which suits a list where a handful of sentences carry a whole errand. One word per charge explains that loop. Until the packs land, print the page for the country you are moving to and put it in a pocket.

Common questions

How do you ask who is last in line in Spanish?

Say ¿Quién es el último? when the order of a queue is unclear. If someone answers, their turn comes before yours. Italian Chi è l'ultimo? does the same job. Where there is a ticket or appointment system, follow that instead.

What does Reklamówkę mean?

It is the one-word question a Polish cashier asks as your shopping goes through the till: a bag. Bags cost extra, so the answer decides what you pay. Say Nie, dziękuję to decline or Poproszę to take one.

How do you ask for a hundred grams at an Italian or Polish deli counter?

An Italian etto is a hundred grams: Un etto di prosciutto crudo, per favore. asks for that amount. The collection example, Due etti di prosciutto crudo., asks for two hundred. In Polish, Poproszę dziesięć deko szynki. asks for a hundred grams of ham. Giving the amount in grams is also valid.

What does CPF na nota mean at a Brazilian till?

The cashier is asking whether to include your CPF tax number on the receipt. In participating programmes, this can link a purchase to tax benefits. Não declines. Whether you need a CPF for another service depends on that service and your circumstances.