Core Spanish vocabulary: the words that do the most work
A small set of words makes up most of what people say. The few hundred most frequent Spanish words cover a large majority of everyday speech, and many of them are short grammar words: de, que, y, en. This page groups the first essential words by the job they do, so you can start building sentences straight away. Nouns are listed with el or la, because every noun has a gender.
This is why the order of learning matters. The shaded area is where this page sits: a short list of words you will meet in almost every conversation.
Greetings and courtesy
Spanish greetings change with the time of day. Buenos días runs until lunch (about 2 pm in Spain), buenas tardes until dark, buenas noches after dark, both as hello and goodbye. For general methods that work in any language, see our guide to building vocabulary.
People and pronouns
A pronoun is a word that stands in for a noun: I, you, she, they. Spanish often leaves subject pronouns out, because the verb ending shows the person; you will still need them for emphasis and after prepositions. The family words take el or la by the person’s gender; how gender works is in gender and articles.
Pronouns
Family and people
Question words
Eight words let you ask almost anything. All carry a written accent when they ask a question. Each has an example you can play.
Word
Meaning
Example
¿qué?keh
what?
¿Quéwhatesisesto?this“What’s this?”
¿quién?kyen
who?
¿Quiénwhoes?is“Who is it?”
¿dónde?DON-deh
where?
¿Dóndewhereestáiselthebaño?bathroom“Where’s the toilet?”
¿cuándo?KWAN-doh
when?
¿Cuándowhenabre?(it) opens“When does it open?”
¿cómo?KOH-moh
how?
¿Cómohowteyourselfllamas?call“What’s your name?”
¿por qué?por KEH
why?
¿Porforquéwhatno?not“Why not?”
¿cuánto?KWAN-toh
how much?
¿Cuántohow-muchcuesta?(it) costs“How much is it?”
¿cuál?kwahl
which?
¿Cuálwhichprefieres?(you) prefer“Which do you prefer?”
Time
Days of the week and months take no capital letter in Spanish. Days are masculine and take el for “on”: el lunes means “on Monday”, los lunes “on Mondays”.
Days
Parts of the day
Units of time
Places and things
The nouns you need first, with the article that shows their gender. Red marks feminine nouns, dark blue masculine.
Describing words in opposite pairs
Adjectives are easiest to learn in pairs. Each is shown in its masculine form; adjectives ending in -o change to -a for feminine nouns.
Small words that hold sentences together
These short words are among the most frequent in the language. Learning them early turns a list of nouns into real sentences.
Por and para both appear on this list; the difference between them has its own lesson, por and para. For the verbs that pair with these words, see the verb tables.