my name is, and what's yours
module: talking on day one
okay. two lessons in. you can say buenos días to a stranger and you know how to say "slower, please" when they answer too fast. that's already more than a lot of people who took two years of this in high school.
today's small. names. but small is where you build from.
me llamo
the phrase is me llamo [name]. literally it means "i call myself," which feels backwards the first ten times you say it and then just doesn't. don't fight it. spanish does this a lot — say it the way it wants, not the way english wants.
say it out loud right now. "me llamo kennedy." your name instead of mine, obviously, unless you're also a kennedy, in which case ✨.
there's also soy [name] — "i am [name]." shorter, works fine, javier uses it more than me llamo actually. either one's correct. use whichever one doesn't trip your tongue.
and what's yours
¿y tú? — "and you?"
that's it. that's the whole back-and-forth.
- me llamo kennedy. ¿y tú?
- me llamo [their name].
two lines. you've now had a conversation. don't sluff past how big that is. a week ago you didn't have any.
a caution, gently
here's the thing i have to tell you every single time i teach this lesson, because i learned it the hard way and i'm not letting you learn it the hard way too.
javier taught me a phrase once. told me it meant something friendly, something you'd say when you meet somebody. i believed him — why wouldn't i, he's my coworker, he corrects my spanish all day. i used it proudly on a customer at a job site. real confident. real wrong. turned out it was pretty rude, not dangerous-rude, just the kind of rude where the customer laughed instead of getting mad, which is honestly worse because now i had to sit with it.
i made javier write down what it actually meant so i'd never do it again. i still have the sticky note.
the point isn't "don't trust your coworker." the point is: when somebody teaches you a phrase, especially somebody being a little playful about it, ask them straight — is this polite. is this something i can say to anybody. people love teaching you the spicy stuff before the plain stuff. that's fine for a laugh. just know which one you're holding before you use it on a stranger.
me llamo and ¿y tú? are plain. safe. use them on anybody. that's why we start here.
practice this at home
you don't need a partner in the room for this one, though it helps.
- say your own name with me llamo ten times out loud. yes, ten. it needs to stop feeling stupid in your mouth, and it will, but not on try two.
- then say it with soy. same ten times.
- then practice the question. say the whole exchange to yourself, both parts, like you're two people. i know that's a little odd standing alone in your kitchen. do it anyway.
- if you've got a kid, a spouse, a dog that understands tone if not words — try it on them. melody drills me back at the kitchen table while i'm canning peaches and her accent's better than mine, which bugs me a little, but that's the price of having a kid who's a sponge.
if you're at the store this week — macey's, costco, wherever — you don't have to use this on the checkout person, that's a lot to ask of lesson three. but listen for it. people introduce themselves in line more than you'd think. i keep a notebook of stuff i overhear at costco. felt like a creep the first time i wrote something down mid-checkout. did it anyway. that's the work — listening for the real thing instead of just drilling flashcards. a vocab list won't teach you that the "y" in "y tú" gets swallowed almost to nothing when people say it fast. only a real ear does that.
before next time
find one person this week — anybody, doesn't have to be a stranger, your neighbor counts — and actually say me llamo to them, out loud, even if they already know your name. it feels silly. do it anyway. that's the whole assignment.