Courtesy comes before information
In Mexico courtesy comes before information. Walking into a shop, getting into a taxi or approaching a market stall and launching straight into your question sounds abrupt, even in impeccable Spanish. What is expected first is a buenos días, buenas tardes or buenas noches, said clearly and while looking at the person, and only then whatever you actually need. That greeting changes the tone of the entire exchange: say it and you get patience, gentle corrections and sometimes a full explanation; skip it and you get an answer that is correct, brief and entirely uninterested in helping you further.
The rest of the scaffolding is just as simple and works across the whole country. Por favor and gracias in every exchange, a con permiso to squeeze past people or step into someone's space, and a disculpe before asking for directions. Usted is the default register with anyone not obviously younger than you, and nobody minds a foreigner using it too freely. Ten words placed properly will carry you across the entire country, and the effect is out of all proportion: limited vocabulary is always forgiven, while a missing greeting is never forgiven at all.
The phrases that do the work
Textbook Spanish teaches you to conjugate before it teaches you to ask for things, and on a short trip that is precisely the wrong order. What actually gets you through the day is about thirty fixed expressions that repeat without variation: asking for the bill, asking what something costs, saying you have not understood, asking someone to slow down. None of them requires conjugating anything, and all of them can be learned on the flight over. Memorising them, intonation included, pays off far more than three months of grammar classes that never quite reach the moment of ordering a coffee.
Two phrases are worth more than all the others put together. The first is más despacio, por favor, said with a smile: almost everyone slows down at once and repeats without taking offence. The second is ¿me lo puede escribir?, which turns an incomprehensible number or address into something you can read at your own pace. It also helps to download your phone's translator for offline use, because the signal fails in villages and on buses. A private conversation lesson, if you want to prepare beforehand, usually costs $10 – $25 USD (2025) an hour in any city in the country.
Numbers and the market
Numbers are the one part of Spanish genuinely worth learning, because they are the part that shows up whenever money is involved. In markets, prices are said fast and almost always in shorthand: twenty a kilo, fifty for three, two for thirty. Being able to handle one to a hundred by ear helps enormously, as does knowing that the Mexican peso is written with the same symbol as the dollar, so the figures on the signs look far more alarming than they are. A bag of fruit from a stall usually comes to $2 – $6 USD (2025).
The formula that opens a stall is simple: buenos días, ¿a cómo el kilo?, and then me da medio kilo, por favor. With that and the numbers you can shop in any market in the country. Two useful warnings: at food and fruit stalls prices are fixed and haggling is considered poor manners, whereas with crafts there is a reasonable margin for conversation. And carry small notes, because nobody wants to break a five-hundred at nine in the morning, and the answer will almost always be that there is no change.
The words no course teaches
A handful of words are heard every day in Mexico and appear in no course. The first is mande, which is what many people say instead of ¿qué? when they have not caught something, and also when answering the phone or responding to someone calling their name. The second is provecho, said on entering or leaving a dining room where people are eating, and to neighbouring tables as you get up. Neither translates comfortably, and both are returned simply by repeating them: gracias, igualmente, and everyone carries on with what they were doing.
The other thing that surprises people is the general softness of the register. Mexican Spanish wraps requests in diminutives and gentle formulas — un momentito, ahorita se lo traigo, ¿me regala un vaso de agua? — and avoids a flat no wherever it can. Nobody will tell you something is impossible; they will say it is complicated, or that they will see about it shortly. That is not dishonesty or indecision, it is a code of courtesy that cushions friction, and once you read it that way vague answers stop looking like deception. Copying the soft tone, even in four words, works better than blunt precision.
Where English runs out
English in Mexico occupies a narrow and very specific band. It works at the front desks of the big Caribbean hotels, in Los Cabos, in parts of Mexico City and in any business that lives off international tourism. Outside that band it thins out fast: on a second-class bus, in a neighbourhood pharmacy, at a ticket window in a bus terminal or in a village in Oaxaca, the odds are that nobody speaks it at all, not from any lack of willingness, but simply because there is no earthly need for it there.
The practical consequence is that the situations that matter tend to happen exactly where there is no English: a medical appointment, a breakdown, a timetable change at the bus station, an argument with a taxi driver. For those moments it is worth keeping four things written on your phone, allergies, medications, the hotel address and the full name of your destination, and showing them rather than trying to explain them. It also helps to ask someone young, who will usually have studied English at school, and to accept that the effort of communicating belongs to the traveller, not to the person serving.
Pronunciation, and when pointing is enough
Mexican Spanish has one enormous advantage for a beginner: it is pronounced as it is written, and the five vowels are always the same five. A, e, i, o and u never change their sound, so all you have to do is not drag them out or turn them into English diphthongs. Three further rules cover almost everything else: j, and g before e or i, sound like a strong breathy h; ll and y sound close to an English y; and ñ is its own sound, the one in mañana, worth two minutes of practice before you go.
And then there is the resource nobody recommends in writing but which genuinely works: pointing and smiling. At a food stall, gesturing at whatever the next table is eating and saying uno de eso, por favor settles the whole meal without knowing a single word on the menu. The same goes for a map, a photograph on your phone, or fingers for numbers. The gesture only fails when it replaces the greeting; paired with a buenos días at the start and a gracias at the end, it is a perfectly dignified way of understanding one another, and nobody takes it badly.
What people always ask
Six questions that come up before every first trip, answered without pretending the language can be solved in a fortnight. They run from the practical, how much Spanish you genuinely need, whether a European Spanish accent is understood, to the part that worries people most, which is what happens when something goes wrong and nobody nearby speaks English. The short answer to nearly all of them is the same: courtesy, numbers and patience take you much further than you would expect, and a translation app downloaded for offline use covers the rest without drama.
One thing does not fit into a short answer. The effort is noticed, and appreciated in a way that surprises almost everyone travelling for the first time: half a dozen badly pronounced words, offered with intent, open conversations that flawless English does not. Nobody will correct you impatiently or laugh; what normally happens is that they repeat themselves more slowly, make a point of praising the attempt, and bring the bill along with an explanation of what you have just eaten. Learning to greet people properly is, by a wide margin, the most profitable investment of the whole trip.