Buenos días pronunciation, drilled at your own door.

Two lines carry the first ten seconds.

Almost every doorway exchange needs two lines from you. The first is the greeting on its own: «Buenos días.» It is already complete and already polite, and nothing has to follow it. That is worth saying plainly, because the freeze often comes from believing you owe a whole sentence.

The second line is optional and warms the exchange: «¿Cómo está?» (How are you?), the polite form used with usted. With a friend or a colleague who uses the familiar form with you, it becomes «¿Cómo estás?»

An illustrative practice exchange, not a recorded conversation.

You do not need to produce the middle of that exchange. You need to recognise bien, gracias and have one reply ready. Rehearse your two lines; skim the other two.

Say it slowly before you say it fast.

The stress sits on two syllables: bue-nos dí-as. Four syllables in all, with a small pause where the space is. Add the two in ¿Cómo está?: CO-mo es-TÁ. Read the notes once, then say each phrase three times slowly, three times at normal speed, three times quickly.

• The accent on í does two jobs. It marks the stress and keeps the i and the a in separate syllables: dí-as. Say the a at the end; do not slide the vowels together.
• Five clean vowels. a as in father; e as in bed; i as in see but shorter; o round and short, with no glide; u as in boot. Spanish vowels do not wander.
• The b in buenos. Lips together, light, no puff of air.
• The d in días. Tongue tip against the back of your top front teeth, softer than the English d.
• The final s. Keep it light but audible. Do not drop it out of nerves.

To check your own pronunciation without a teacher, we keep a short method in how to check Spanish pronunciation alone. If fast speech frightens you most, why Spanish sounds so fast treats listening as a separate skill.

Run a cold recall at your own door.

Cold recall means no warm-up and nothing to read — the closest thing at home to the state you will be in when another person is waiting. You also train the doorway itself as a cue: see the door, say the lines.

Vary the doorway once the first one stops being interesting: the bathroom door, the office lobby, the lift. Day 1 of the free 7 Day Spanish Starter Plan is built on exactly these phrases, so the drill and the plan can run together.

Add the doorman variant.

In a Mexico City building, the person at the entrance is often the portero, or a security guard in the caseta by the gate. You will see them most mornings, and the exchange is short and repeated, which makes it the best-value rehearsal of your week.

• Greet first, before you are close enough to feel watched.
• Keep it to two lines. The same two lines every day is the point, not a longer script.
• Use usted until the other person uses tú with you. The polite form is never wrong here.
• Close as you pass the desk: Gracias, hasta luego or Que tenga buen día.

Expect one question you did not plan for. In Mexico you may hear ¿Cómo amaneció?, a morning greeting about how your morning has gone; Bien, gracias is a complete answer. For the register itself, our guide to usted vs tú explains who usually gets which form.

Practise greetings and goodbyes as pairs.

Spanish greetings practice often stops at hello, and then a second silence happens: leaving a desk, a shop, a lift. So learn them in pairs from the start. One hello, one goodbye, said together five times. Then swap the pair and go again.

General guidance for a beginner in Mexico; local habit varies from building to building.

For greetings and goodbyes practice in a longer form, ten everyday scenarios has short dialogues at normal and slower speed, so you copy a voice rather than guess at one.

Read it, cover it, say it, check it.

Cover the right-hand column and say the Spanish aloud before you look. Recognising a phrase on a page is not the same as producing it at a doorway, so repeat this tomorrow rather than twice today.

This is practice, not a test of your level.

Why this is not another points-and-streaks app.

The objection is fair, so keep it: you have already given evenings to an app that made you feel productive and left you quiet in front of a person. Points and streaks measure taps. They say nothing about whether a greeting arrives when a neighbour is waiting.

This page is a drill with a doorway and a count, not a game. No score, no streak, no account and no microphone. The free material is complete on its own: the 7 Day Spanish Starter Plan, the two-page Rescue Card, the two-page planner, the 120-card phrase deck and the ten scenarios with audio at normal and slower speed.

About the upsell worry, plainly: we do sell our own materials — three phrase packs at $9 each or $19 for all three, and a $49 self-paced course of 28 lessons in 8 modules, with no live sessions, teacher or coach feedback. Both are one-time payments with a 30-day refund under the refund policy, and every price is written on the pricing page. You can run this drill without buying anything, and decide later. Our Spanish is checked automatically, with AI and rule-based checks, and there is no teacher review; the editorial policy says what that covers.

Common questions.