Work vocabulary in Spanish: talking about what you do

✌🏼 ¡Hola aventurero!

Monday morning, the coffee machine. A Spanish colleague smiles and says ¿Qué tal el finde? ¿Mucho lío hoy?

You know trabajo. You know oficina. But "lío"? And what do you say back? 😅

Work comes up all the time: with colleagues, at a party, with your neighbour, even at the hairdresser's. So here's the work vocabulary in Spanish you'll actually use: job names, workplace words, everyday verbs, and how people in Spain talk about their working day.

1Job names and how their endings work

Teacher bit 🤓 You don't need to learn every job as a separate word. Most of them follow a pattern, and once you know the pattern you can make the male and female forms yourself.

A few break the pattern. La piloto stays piloto, never pilota. And el policía is a policeman, while la policía can be a policewoman or the whole police force.

One more thing: when you say what you do, leave out un or una. It's Soy contable (I'm an accountant), not Soy un contable. You only add un when you describe the person too: Es un contable muy bueno (He's a very good accountant).

2Words for your workplace

These are the words that come up whatever your job is:

In Spain you'll also hear el curro for "work" and currar for "to work". It's very informal, like "my job" said with a sigh: Mañana tengo que currar (I've got to work tomorrow). Fine with friends, not in a job interview 😉

3Everyday work verbs

Here are the verbs you'll need to talk about a normal working week:

See estar de in the last two? Spanish uses estar de + a noun for temporary situations: estar de baja, estar de vacaciones, estar de viaje (to be away), estar de prácticas (to be doing an internship). It's estar because it's a situation right now, not who you are. More on that split in my visual guide to ser and estar.

4How a working day sounds in Spain

Spanish working hours have their own words, and they'll come up as soon as you ask anyone about their job.

5A chat at the coffee machine

Here's how it can sound. It's Emma's first week in a new office, and she meets a colleague on a coffee break:

Notice soléis, from soler (to usually do something). It's the vosotros form, because Emma is asking about the whole team.

6Saying how work is going

When someone asks ¿Qué tal el trabajo?, a one-word bien ends the chat. These phrases sound much more like a real person:

So back at the coffee machine, when your colleague asks ¿Mucho lío hoy?, you can say ¡Uf, estoy hasta arriba! and you're part of the conversation 💛

7Your work words this week

1. 1

   Say what you do in three sentences

   One with Soy and your job, one about where you work, and one about your hours. For example: Soy enfermera. Trabajo en un hospital. Hago turnos de noche dos veces al mes. Not working right now? Try Estoy jubilado, Estoy estudiando or Estoy buscando trabajo.

2. 2

   Make a small deck of work words

   Choose ten words from the workplace and verb tables that fit your job, like fichar and la reunión, and put them on flashcards. Here's how to make Spanish flashcards that actually work.

3. 3

   Use one "how it's going" phrase

   Next time someone asks about your work, in a class or a language exchange, answer with one phrase from the last table, like Estoy liadísima, and add ¿Y tú?

If you'd like to put this together with where you're from and why you're learning Spanish, read how to talk about yourself in Spanish.

Work is one of the everyday topics in my Roadmaps, with games, speaking prompts and cheat sheets so you can practise it step by step 🗺️

Now tell me 👀 What do you do, and which work word do you always forget in Spanish? Cuéntame in the comments!

Lucía · Linguist, translator, Spanish teacher and author of the Visual Spanish Grammar Book.
Come and learn Spanish with me and other aventureros like yourself at skool.com/learnspanish 🎉