The simplest way to communicate in Spanish at a basic level is to learn words and phrases. Learning Spanish phrases is not only an easy way of learning how to communicate fast, but is also a helpful way of increasing your vocabulary.
SimplestSpanish contains words and phrases which will help you in many common, and not so common situations.
The language used on this site is as spoken in Spain, but as the spoken language is remarkably uniform over the many Spanish speaking countries, the phrases will be useful wherever you travel.
Some of the phrases have audio. These are marked with :-
Spanish for the tourist
If you are visiting Spain (or any other Spanish speaking country) and only want to learn a few of the most common and commonly used phrases, then the following are a good starting point:
Basic Directions
Basic Phrases
Key Phrases
A few things :-
Phrases which are potentially offensive are marked with *.
There is a distinction in Spanish between formal and informal which is lacking in English. These are marked as (formal) where necessary. Any phrase that isn't marked as formal is informal.
Where it isn't possible to directly translate a phrase from Spanish to English, a sensible English translation is given - often along with a literal one. E.g. Talking about mobile phones, the sentence No tiene baterķa literally means It doesn't have battery but the translation used is 'the battery is flat'. This is very useful if you are learning phrases as a method of increasing your vocabulary.