How to have a basic Spanish conversation.

Items are not a conversation.

Most beginner material is organised as items. Here is a greeting; here is how to order; here is how to ask for the bill. You can recognise all of it and still freeze, because recognising a phrase on a page and producing it while someone waits are different skills. Basic conversation in Spanish is not long sentences; it is joined ones.

There is a practical reason to learn the chain rather than the list. The lines you cannot control are few. Two replies do most of the work — ¿Algo más? and Aquí tiene. Prepare those two and the exchange becomes a short script with a predictable shape.

The chain has eight lines.

Read the table downwards once, then read it as a story: I greet, I order, they ask something back, I answer, they hand it over, I thank them, I ask for the bill, I leave.

Buenos días is the morning greeting, buenas tardes the afternoon one and buenas noches the evening one. The hour people switch varies by country and by person, so a mismatched greeting is a small mistake, not an insult; if you are unsure, Hola on its own is always safe.

The same exchange, start to finish.

Here is the chain with both parts written out. The learner lines are yours; read them aloud, not silently.

An original practice dialogue for rehearsal, not a recorded conversation.

¿Qué desea? is the line beginners least expect, because English has no fixed equivalent at the counter. It means “What would you like?”, and the answer always has the same shape: the thing you want, then por favor. If you hear something unrehearsed, the rescue phrases further down buy you a second attempt.

Write the chain on one card.

The temptation is to copy forty phrases. Do not. Five lines fit in your hand and in your head, and a card you can read at a glance beats a page you have to search. Take one card, one side — an index card, the back of an envelope, or the cut-out pocket card that comes with the free Conversation Rescue Card. Write your five lines in large letters, with one English cue under each in pencil: greet, order, refuse, bill, leave. A cue should trigger the Spanish, not replace it. Then add the two replies in another colour, because marking them separately reminds you which lines belong to the other person.

• Hola, buenos días.
• Un café, por favor.
• No, gracias.
• La cuenta, por favor.
• Gracias. ¡Hasta luego!

Copy the spelling exactly: ¿Algo más? needs its opening question mark, and más and café need their accents. They are part of the word, not decoration. Then put the card where the conversation will happen: wallet, phone case, inside the notebook you carry.

Role play it with no partner.

You do not need a partner to rehearse a chain. You need to say both parts aloud until your own lines arrive without a search. Four rounds, about ten minutes.

Saying the other person’s lines is not cheating; it is how the chain gets into your mouth. For more ways to speak without a partner, see our guide to practising speaking Spanish alone.

When the chain breaks, buy a second attempt.

Sooner or later a reply will arrive too fast. Three phrases keep the exchange in Spanish instead of sending it back to English.

Puede is the polite singular, the form you use with staff, strangers and anyone older than you (usted). With a friend, or a colleague who uses it with you, you will hear puedes. Start with puede: nobody is offended by the polite form, while the familiar one to a stranger can sound too casual. There are four more rescue lines, plus a landlord exchange and a table to check them from memory, in how to ask someone to repeat or slow down in Spanish.

Check the chain from memory.

Cover the answers and say each line aloud before you look. If a line will not come, that is the one to write on the card again.

Do this today, again in two days, and once more next week. The IES What Works Clearinghouse practice guide Organizing Instruction and Study to Improve Student Learning recommends spacing reviews over time and using quizzing that involves active retrieval rather than re-reading alone, which is why this page asks you to return to the same five lines at intervals instead of reading the table again.

This is practice, not a test of your level.

Is this just another app with points?

You have a right to ask. A streak counter measures taps. This page asked nothing of you to read: no account, no microphone, no install, no score at the end. You get eight lines, a card and a drill you can run in ten minutes.

Everything above is free to use as it stands. The free 7 Day Spanish Starter Plan and the Conversation Rescue Card are complete files you can print, not trials that unlock later; the card download asks for a first name and email, and the whole café chain is already on this page. We also sell our own phrase packs and a course as optional one-time purchases; every price and status is on the pricing page, which also sets out the toolkit, live course and membership we plan but have not opened for booking. Nothing starts automatically.

What this page will not do is promise you a result; progress varies from person to person. What it gives you is one small exchange to rehearse until the joints hold — and a card to take to the counter when they do.

Your first ten minutes.

Day 1 of the free 7 Day Spanish Starter Plan covers the greeting half of this chain, and Day 4 is the café dialogue itself. The fuller walk-through, with the bill and a change of drink, is in ordering coffee in Spanish; the opening lines alone, with the tú and usted forms, are in Spanish greetings for your first conversation.

Common questions.