In the first pages of the classic novel Cien años de soledad, this description appears:
—
Al ser destapado por el gigante, el cofre dejó escapar un aliento glacial. Dentro sólo había un enorme bloque transparente, con infinitas agujas internas en las cuales se despedazaba en estrellas de colores la claridad del crepúsculo.
When opened by the giant, the chest gave off a glacial exhalation. Inside there was only an enormous, transparent block with infinite internal needles in which the light of the sunset was broken up into colored stars.
—
As creative and well-written as this is, it’s probably not the most useful reference for how Spanish speakers use the language on a daily basis.
Like in all languages, there’s a difference between the Spanish you hear in conversations and the Spanish you read in novels and newspapers.
Let’s look at a few of these differences so you can prioritize your efforts and help your conversations feel more natural.
Simple Future Tense
As in English, Spanish has three ways of expressing the future:
- Future tense (viajaré, I will travel)
- Ir + a + verb (voy a viajar – I’m going to cook)
- Present + time marker (mañana viajo – I’m traveling tomorrow)
In general, options 2 and 3 are far more common in everyday speech than they are in written Spanish, which makes more frequent use of the future tense.
In conversations, you can use the future tense, but it tends to be reserved for more specific situations.
In an email to your boss, you might write “Lo haré esta tarde” (I’ll do it this afternoon).
But in normal conversation, you’re far more likely to say “voy a hacerlo esta tarde”.
It’s still worth learning the future tense, but know that in your conversations, ir + a + verb will serve you well.
Complex (and complete) sentences
When we speak, we rarely do so in perfectly complete and coherent sentences. There’s back and forth, incomplete thoughts, mistakes, pauses and more.
Here’s an example from a popular Mexican podcast called Creativo, where the host Roberto is talking about the Game of Thrones TV series:
“No fue mi estilo de serie pero sí me gustó mucho.. o sea nunca había disfrutado algo de ese estilo, o sea lo’stoy diciendo como un.. como un cumplido, o sea no… no soy algo de.. no soy de, como que de ese estilo de… fantasía”
If Roberto had sat down to write this out, he might have landed on something like…
“La serie me gustó mucho, aunque no es el tipo de programa que suelo ver. Nunca antes había disfrutado algo de este estilo, y lo digo como un cumplido, ya que normalmente no me atrae la fantasía”.
Not overly formal, but a series of complete thoughts.
Point is, conversations tend to include shorter, less complex sentences with less formal language and more mistakes and pauses.
Muletillas
In the text above, did you notice o sea?
It’s similar to like, and is a common muletilla – linguistic crutch.
It’s the kind of word that means nothing, but we use it to connect phrases, restart a thought, or just to say something when we’re trying to formulate an idea.
Great orators will practice getting rid of these muletillas in their speeches, but the reality is everyone uses them to a degree.
So while you won’t see them written in newspapers, spoken Spanish makes generous use of words like these:
- O sea
- Este
- Em
- ¿Sabes?
- Vamos
- Bueno
- Es que
- Pues
- ¿No?
- ¿Me entiendes?
- Entonces
- Como que
Connectors
As in English, a big part of communication is connecting our phrases and ideas. And we have formal and everyday ways to do this.
In written Spanish, you may see connecting phrases like…
- “Por consiguiente” (therefore)
- “En virtud de” (by virtue of)
- “No obstante” (nevertheless)
- “asimismo” (also, likewise)
- “En primera instancia” (first of all)
While in day-to-day life, we hear simpler language like…
- “Entonces” (often reduced to ‘tonces in fast speech)
- “por eso” (that’s why, because of)
- “aunque” (although)
- “también” (also)
- “para empezar” (to start)
The second category is where you want to be for 9.8/10 situations you might find yourself in.
What’s next:
Depending on your goals with Spanish, you may want to learn more formal language, too.
And you’ll absorb a lot of it just by reading.
But I suspect for most of you, the primary goal is communication for relationships and travel. If that’s the case, I’d do a few things:
- Practice replacing your English fillers (muletillas) with Spanish ones
- Choose a couple of useful connector phrases to incorporate
- Lean more on phrases like voy a hacer than haré
- Try speaking in shorter sentences
- Give yourself a break when you feel inarticulate in Spanish, because even people who grew up speaking it often stumble over their words and speak in incomplete thoughts.
Eso es todo por hoy.
Buen fin de semana,
Connor
P.S. I hear from a lot of people that they can understand written Spanish far better than spoken Spanish. A lot of that relates to how well you hear the sounds of Spanish. If that’s a challenge for you, this can help.
