Learn Spanish Online

One of the first steps to learning a language is of course learning how to greet people and introduce yourself.

Spanish has many different options for greeting others. Here are the universally understood greetings.

¡Hola! – Hello!

¿Cómo está? – How are you? [formal]
¿Cómo estás? – How are you? [informal]
¿Qué tal? – How’s it going?

¿Cómo se llama usted? – What’s your name? [formal]
¿Cómo te llamas? - What’s your name? [informal]

If you are in México, you might instead hear:

¿Qué onda? – how’s it going?

Some common answers are:

Estoy bien or Bien. – Good.
Muy bien. – Great.

And of course, you can add “thank you”:

Gracias. – Thank you.
Estoy bien, gracias. – I’m fine, thank you.

To state your name, say:

Me llamo… [name] – My name is… [name]
Soy de [country] – I’m from [country]

In response to meeting someone, you say:

¡Mucho gusto! – Pleased to meet you!

To say goodbye, you have several options:

¡Adiós! - Goodbye
¡Hasta luego! - See you later!
¡Hasta pronto! - See you soon!
Nos vemos. - See you soon.
¡Chau! – Bye! (informal)

One special note is that many native English speakers assume that one answers the phone by saying “¿hola?”, but you will usually hear people say “bueno”, “aló”, or “diga”.