Beginner Lessons

Greetings in Spanish

In addition to the web version, you can download the lesson as a PDF, found at the bottom of the page.

Be sure to listen and practice with the audio throughout the lesson.

Lesson 1: Greetings

The following is a short introduction to basic greetings in Spanish with responses. Using this structure, follow-up questions can be asked in order to keep the conversation going.

Translations for conversations can be found at the end.

¿Hola, cómo estás?

Hola, muy bien.

¡Qué bien!

Dialog 1 Part 2

¿Y tú? ¿Cómo va todo?

Pues…más o menos.

¿Por qué? ¿Qué pasó?

Since Valentina hesitated (pues…) and then responded more neutrally, Andrés asked Valentina, “Why?” and “What happened?”.

Following the same starting point, the conversation can be adjusted in order to slightly change the responses.

Dialog 2 Part 1

¿Hola, cómo estás?

Hola, bien. Todo bien. *

¡Ah, me alegra!

*There is a difference between well (bien) and good (bueno). Here, the more natural translation uses both well and good, despite Andrés only using bien.

Keywords and phrases

¿Cómo estás?
How’re you?

¿Cómo va todo?
How is everything?

Bien
Well

Más o menos
Ok (literally: more or less)

¿Y tú?
And you?

¡Qué bien!
That’s great!

Me alegra
I’m glad

Final Thoughts…

There’s a few ways to ask Valentia how she is using standard questions, like in this lesson. There are a lot more ways using more colloquial, natural-sounding questions.

Lesson 2 of the Beginner Series gives a look at the multiple ways to ask, “What’s up?”, using these questions.

A lot of the time these questions are used alongside of asking how someone is by following the standard, “¿Cómo estás?”, so remember that one.

Translations

Dialog 1 Part 1:

Hi, how’re you?
¿Hola, cómo estás?

Hi, I’m well.
Hola, muy bien.

That’s great!
¡Qué bien!

Dialog 1 Part 2:

And you? How is everything?
¿Y tú? ¿Cómo va todo?

Well…it’s ok.
Pues…más o menos.

Why? What happened?
¿Por qué? ¿Qué pasó?

Dialog 2 Part 1: