Spanish small talk on your first day at work.

The conversation stops at the second line.

You can say Buenos días. Then a colleague smiles and asks ¿Cómo estás?, and the reply you rehearsed disappears. You manage something short, they switch to English to be kind, and the moment is gone. A few of those in your first week and the office starts to feel like a place you watch rather than join.

This page works on one small piece of that: three turns you can rehearse today, a clear choice between tú and usted, and two follow-up questions that keep the other person talking.

Learn three turns, not thirty phrases.

A friendly exchange at a desk is usually three moves: you greet, you answer, you ask one thing back. That is a complete exchange. It needs no fourth turn and no interesting opinion.

Use Buenas tardes after midday and Buenas noches in the evening; a plain Buenas works at any time. The third turn is the one that saves you: it is not clever and it is not about you, but it gives the other person something easy to answer.

Choose tú or usted before you speak.

Spanish makes you pick a level of formality with every “you”. With tú the verb is familiar: ¿Cómo estás? With usted it stays in the third person: ¿Cómo está? The Real Academia Española notes that usted is grammatically a third-person pronoun, so pairing it with a second-person verb is incorrect, and describes it as the form that signals courtesy and a degree of distance.

On a first day, use usted with anyone you have not met, then follow their lead. If a colleague uses your first name and asks ¿Cómo estás?, switching to tú is usually welcome. Some teams relax within a week; others stay formal for months. Both are normal, and nobody minds a newcomer who starts politely.

Two follow-up questions that are safe.

Pick follow-ups that are easy to answer and not too personal for a first day. These two work.

The first invites a story, and most people are happy to tell it. The second gives you something useful back, usually a café or a lunch place. With tú: ¿Llevas mucho tiempo aquí? and ¿Qué me recomiendas cerca de la oficina?

Illustrative answers, not a script. Soy nuevo aquí is for a man, Soy nueva aquí for a woman. Estoy aprendiendo means “I am learning”, which is honest and usually buys you patience.

Rehearse the exchange out loud.

Read it twice: once as yourself, once as the colleague. It is a practice dialogue written for this page, not a recording.

If your colleagues use tú from the start, keep the same shape and change the endings: ¿cómo estás?, ¿y tú?, ¿llevas mucho tiempo aquí?. Day 1 of the free 7 Day Spanish Starter Plan covers the same greeting and introduction lines, and the greetings guide adds the variants you will hear in the lift.

If the reply arrives too fast.

You will not catch everything on day one. Keep four short lines ready and a blank moment becomes a pause.

Those use usted. After switching to tú they become ¿Puedes repetir, por favor? and ¿Puedes hablar más despacio, por favor? Both sets are on the free Conversation Rescue Card, and they match Day 2 of the free plan.

Is this just another app that teases you?

Fair question. The honest answer is short: these are free pages you read and say aloud, not a game with a progress bar. No streaks, no account before you start reading, nothing listening through a microphone. If you do want the plan as a file, the PDF and Word copies ask for a first name and email; you then get the plan and four short emails over ten days, the last mentioning our paid materials, with an unsubscribe link in every one. No payment is taken anywhere on this site, and the course, toolkit and membership we have planned are not open for booking.

Spanish is checked by our editors. We do not have an independent teacher review yet and we say so in the Editorial Policy. Nothing here promises a level or a timeline.

Cover the Spanish and recall it tomorrow.

Reading a phrase five times feels productive and fades quickly. Producing it once from memory does more. A US practice guide for teachers recommends spacing study over time and using short quizzes that make learners retrieve information.

• I can answer ¿Cómo está? and hand the question back.
• I can choose tú or usted and keep the verb right.
• I can ask for a repeat or a slower reply.

This is practice, not a proficiency test.

Common questions.