Learn Latin American Spanish by speaking it

What will you be able to say by the end of the course?

By the end of all 36 units you can handle everyday life in Spanish at about the CEFR B1 threshold: ordering, shopping, getting around, talking about your past and your plans, and sorting out problems. The course goes from A1 to early B1 and teaches about 2,000 words (counted as dictionary words, so tengo and tiene count once), and each unit is labeled with its level:

• CEFR A1 (Units 1–6): sounds and spelling, greetings and introductions, numbers, prices and time, eating out (tacos, cafés, restaurants), getting around by Metro, taxi and bus, and a unit about Mexico City and Latin America.
• CEFR A2 (Units 7–15): daily routine, shopping and markets, work, health and the pharmacy, weekend plans, travel, describing people (ser vs. estar), the preterite for what happened and the imperfect for how things used to be.
• CEFR B1 (Units 16–36): plans and the future, phone calls and WhatsApp, complaints, opinions, money and renting, technology, holidays such as Día de Muertos, job interviews, nature, school, sports, cooking and the arts, then eight vocabulary units (connecting ideas, feelings, places, safety, decisions, describing things, public life and getting things done).

Lessons mix flashcards, multiple choice, word-bank sentences, listening and matching pairs. Every exercise uses only words an earlier lesson already taught, and anything you miss goes into one review queue that brings it back a few days later until you get it right. A daily Quick Practice mixes in what you've already learned.

What are the Spanish stories like?

Each unit has two short stories or articles, 72 in all, written for that unit's level, with recorded audio on every line and an English meaning for every Spanish word, so a new word never stops you. A few questions at the end check that you understood. Four are free: a new teacher working out when to say tú and when to say usted, Liam ordering at a taco stand late at night, Emma getting lost in Coyoacán, and an article about how Spanish changes from Mexico to Argentina.

Which Spanish does CiaoSpeak teach?

CiaoSpeak teaches neutral Latin American Spanish that leans Mexican, the Spanish of the Americas, where most of the world's Spanish speakers live. Where countries use different words, the course teaches the Mexican or most widely understood one and adds a note when another is common. Spain's words come up only so you recognize them:

The free article Un idioma, muchos países (One Language, Many Countries) explains how Spanish changes from Mexico to Argentina, and why that is no problem: people from different countries understand each other, the way an American and a Brit do.

When do you say tú and when do you say usted?

Use tú with friends, coworkers, classmates and people your own age, and usted with people who serve you, older strangers and officials. CiaoSpeak teaches both in Unit 2 (the lesson “Being polite: usted”), and the speaking practice follows the same rule: Ana, your language-exchange partner, and Diego at the office say tú, while the taco man, the barista, the taxi driver and the hotel receptionist say usted to you, and you answer the same way.

• tú: ¿Cómo estás? (How are you?) to a friend.
• usted: ¿Cómo está? to the pharmacist, with the same verb form as “he” or “she”.
• ustedes: every plural “you” in Latin America, for friends and strangers alike. Vosotros (Spain) and vos (Argentina, Uruguay, much of Central America) get one note each so they don't surprise you.

The free story Mucho gusto, señora (Nice to Meet You, Ma'am) follows a new teacher who has to work out exactly this.

What do English speakers get wrong when they speak Spanish?

The most common mistakes are gliding the vowels (“no” said as “nou”), a soft English r, and grammar that English doesn't have, like ser vs. estar and “tengo 20 años” (I have 20 years). Unit 1 spends a whole unit on the sounds before you learn many words: five pure vowels (café con leche with no glide), the tapped r in pero and the rolled rr in perro, ñ, the silent h in hola, b and v sounding the same, and where the stress falls (papa, potato, or papá, dad).

Then come the false friends, words that look like English and mean something else. The course teaches each one as a “which means…?” question:

• embarazada means pregnant, not embarrassed.
• éxito means success, not exit (the exit is la salida).
• librería is a bookstore; the library is la biblioteca.
• actualmente means currently, not actually.
• realizar means to carry out; to realize is darse cuenta.

What is the 80/20 rule for learning Spanish?

The 80/20 rule for learning Spanish means spending most of your time on the small share of words and patterns that come up in most everyday conversations, instead of trying to learn everything evenly. In practice: the most frequent verbs (ser, estar, tener, ir, querer, poder), the phrases you need every day, and saying them out loud early.

CiaoSpeak picked its vocabulary this way. We checked the course against a frequency list built from Spanish film and TV subtitles, and it teaches more than 2,100 of the 3,000 most common word forms on that list, skipping the ones only crime dramas need (forms such as tengo and tiene count separately on that list).

Where are the speaking scenes set?

The speaking practice is set in Mexico City, plus one weekend trip to Oaxaca: 26 scenes with 22 characters, each with their own recorded voice. A few of them:

• Coyoacán: meeting Ana, your language-exchange partner, at a café; Doña Lupe's fruit stall at the market; school pickup with your neighbor Claudia.
• Around the city: Don Chuy's taco stand, Sofía's café in Colonia Roma, Memo's taxi, a busy Metro station, a clothing store in the Centro, a pharmacy, a bank, an apartment viewing, a phone repair stand, a job interview and a museum tour.
• Your life there: Diego at the next desk, a video call before the team meeting, a first day at the gym in Colonia Narvarte, and lunch at Ana's family's house, where her mom Carmen is cooking.
• The Oaxaca trip: check-in at Mexico City's airport, a small hotel in the center of Oaxaca, checking out (with a few complaints), and a bus ticket back.

How long does it take to learn Spanish?

The U.S. Foreign Service Institute puts Spanish in its easiest group for English speakers and expects about 30 weeks of full-time class to reach professional working proficiency in speaking and listening. That is a diplomat's target. Everyday conversation comes well before it: CEFR B1, where this course ends, describes someone who can deal with most situations likely to come up while traveling where the language is spoken.

Time matters less than regular speaking. The FSI's own figure is for full-time class plus self-study (State Department, Foreign Language Training); a few minutes of saying real sentences every day is what keeps you moving between those hours.

How can I teach myself Spanish?

You can teach yourself Spanish by following one structured course in order, saying what you learn out loud every day, reading easy texts at your level and reviewing your mistakes. With CiaoSpeak, all of that comes without a subscription:

• A course in order: all 438 lessons, each one unlocking the next.
• Speaking every day: up to five speaking questions a day.
• Reading: four free stories (greetings, tacos at night, getting lost in Coyoacán, and the article about Spanish across countries), every Spanish word with its English meaning.
• Review: the mistake queue and the daily Quick Practice.

When you want more, the other 68 stories and speaking practice in every scene are in CiaoSpeak+.

Free to start: what does CiaoSpeak+ add?

CiaoSpeak is free to start, and every lesson stays free; CiaoSpeak+ is an optional subscription for people who want to practice more. Here is the exact split:

CiaoSpeak+ costs US$5.99 a month or US$39.99 a year in the United States. The yearly plan starts with a free trial for new subscribers: 3 days on the App Store, 7 days on Google Play. Your store shows your local price before you confirm.

Who makes the Spanish course?

CiaoSpeak is made by one person, Robertas Gaumanas, who started the app with a Chinese course. Every lesson has to pass automated checks before it ships (no word in an exercise before a lesson teaches it, accents, paired ¿ and ¡, an English meaning for every Spanish line). If you spot a mistake, email [email protected] and it gets fixed.