When in Spain, speak Spanish

If this year you have decided to go on holiday to beautiful Spain, a few words here and there won’t go amiss to enrich your trip. Language is a gateway to experiencing lifestyle and culture from the inside. In these series of blogs we will cover small chunks of information concerning the airport. This place in particular lends itself to the use of a diverse range of vocabulary and situations.

So let’s start our Spanish lesson in Madrid. Our flight has just arrived at the Barajas airport. It’s been a long trip and we are hungry, thirsty and we need the loo. Let’s find the information point and find out about the airport’s facilities.

We are at the information point armed with our eight Spanish words. Let’s learn how to use those words in questions so that we can ask where things are.

Perhaps … we might need a few more words to get us started, have a look at the following.

disculpe: excuse me
donde: where
están: are
los aseos : bathrooms
por favor: please

So asking where the toilets are would look like this:

Disculpe, ¿dónde están los aseos por favor?
Hmmm, it turns out the toilets are on the second floor, let’s ask where the elevators are.
Disculpe, ¿dónde están los ascensores, por favor?
We are now ready to eat something, but we are in the gift section, where are the restaurants?
Disculpe, ¿dónde están los restaurantes por favor?

I think you get the drift, right? Easy!
I wonder if you noticed, though, that all the places we were talking about were in plural. Hence why we used the word están. However, if we had been referring to singular places, we would have had to use the word está. Read below.

Disculpe, ¿dónde está Starbucks por favor?
Disculpe, ¿dónde está la estación del tren por favor?
Disculpe, ¿dónde está el bar de tapas por favor?

I am sure you can now form this simple question, next lesson we will see vocabulary of directions so that we can understand the answer we are given. Below I will leave you with some more vocabulary so you can practise until our next Spanish lesson. Do get in touch if you have any questions.

La casa de cambio (money exchange)
El alquiler de coches (car hire)
La salida (the way out)
Salidas (departures)

Hasta la próxima,

Ángela Q