La ciudad: cómo llegar y cómo no perderse
Two sentences hold this lesson up: ¿Dónde queda…?, which is how you ask, and Siga derecho, which is most of what you will be told back. Around them sits the furniture of any Latin American city — la cuadra, la esquina, el semáforo, la plaza — and five small expressions that put things in place: cerca de, lejos de, al lado de, enfrente de, entre. Distance here is counted in blocks and not in meters, so a tres cuadras is the answer you should expect. Very little of this is hard grammar. What earns it a whole lesson is that half the words change at every border, and that one of them, derecho, means two different things depending on whether a la is standing in front of it.
The pieces of a city
la ciudad is built out of la calle and la avenida, and the stretch between two corners is la cuadra — a block. This is the region's unit of walking distance: Queda a tres cuadras. Camine cuatro cuadras. (la manzana in Latin America is an apple and nothing else.) Where two streets meet is la esquina, the crossing itself is el cruce, and the light hanging over it is el semáforo. The strip you walk on has no pan-regional name at all — la banqueta in Mexico, la vereda in Peru and the Southern Cone, el andén in Colombia, la acera in the Caribbean, in Venezuela and in writing everywhere — so learn the one where you are going and recognize the rest. In the middle of town you find la plaza, called el zócalo in Mexico City and simply el parque in many Colombian towns, and around it the things you actually need: el banco, la farmacia, la iglesia, el supermercado, el mercado, la tiendita on the corner. el centro is downtown; el centro comercial is the mall out where the parking is.
Saying where something is
Location is estar, never ser: El banco está en la avenida Juárez. The expressions that do the placing are cerca de, lejos de, al lado de, enfrente de and entre, and around them a second row: atrás de, adelante de, arriba de, abajo de, adentro de, afuera de. Everything on both lists except entre needs its de before the noun, and de plus el collapses into del: al lado del banco, enfrente de la iglesia, lejos del centro, but entre la farmacia y la iglesia. Books print detrás de and delante de; everyday Latin American speech says atrás de and adelante de far more often, and both are correct. Two habits of this region show up immediately here. acá and allá do the work that aquí and allí do elsewhere — Está por acá, Queda allá atrás — and the diminutive turns distance into reassurance: cerquita means close, and it also means the person does not want to discourage you.
¿Dónde queda? — quedar as the location verb
estar is never wrong for location, but for something that does not move, Latin America reaches first for quedar: ¿Dónde queda el correo? La plaza queda a dos cuadras. El hotel queda sobre la avenida. It is the verb in the question you will ask most often on a street corner, and the one you will hear in the answer. Learn to recognize its other three lives while you are here, because they come up constantly and none of them is about location. quedar is to be left over: Solo quedan dos boletos. quedar en is to agree on something: Quedamos en vernos en la plaza a las seis. And quedarle a alguien is to fit or to suit: Ese suéter te queda grande. Same verb, four jobs, and context sorts them out every time.
Getting there: carro, camión, subte
el carro is the car in Mexico, Colombia, Central America, the Caribbean and the Andes, and el auto in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay; both are understood everywhere. Driving it is manejar, leaving it somewhere is estacionar or parquear, and the lot is el estacionamiento — el parqueadero in Colombia. The bus is where the map fragments most: learn el autobús, which everyone understands, then recognize el camión in Mexico, la guagua in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, el colectivo or el bondi in Argentina, la micro in Chile, el bus and la buseta in Colombia, el ómnibus in Peru and Uruguay. You wait for it at la parada or el paradero. Underground it is el metro in Mexico City, Santiago and Medellín, and el subte in Buenos Aires. Then la bicicleta, clipped to la bici, and el taxi. Transport takes en: en carro, en autobús, en metro, en bici. Walking is the single exception — a pie, never en pie. And the verb for catching one is tomar or agarrar: Tome el metro hasta Insurgentes.
Asking the way
Open with Disculpe or Perdón, and use usted, because a stranger on the street is exactly who usted exists for. Then pick your question: ¿Dónde queda el banco? ¿Cómo llego a la plaza? ¿Hay una farmacia por acá? ¿Está lejos? ¿Me puede decir dónde está la parada? ¿Voy bien para el centro? For distance, the region's own construction is qué tan plus an adjective — ¿Qué tan lejos queda?, ¿Qué tan grande es? — used alongside ¿A cuántas cuadras queda? If the answer comes too fast, do not fire back a bare ¿Qué?, which lands hard: say ¿Cómo?, or ¿Me lo puede repetir, por favor?, or Más despacio, por favor. In Mexico you will also hear ¿Mande? when someone wants you to say it again. And one sentence buys you patience and a slower answer anywhere in the region: No soy de acá.
Siga derecho — and the derecho trap
Siga derecho means keep going straight. Siga a la derecha means keep to the right. One little a la stands between them, and it is the single most expensive mistake in this lesson. derecho as an adverb is straight ahead — todo derecho, or the very common diminutive derechito — while la derecha is the right-hand side and a la derecha is the turn. For turning, doblar is the pan-regional verb: Doble a la izquierda. Mexico says dar vuelta — Dé vuelta a la derecha — Colombia and Central America also say voltear, and girar is what road signs and the GPS use. The rest of the toolkit: Cruce la avenida en el semáforo. Camine dos cuadras. Está a tres cuadras. Queda en la esquina de Bolívar y Madero. Está al final de la calle. Queda a diez minutos a pie. Every one of those commands is the usted imperative, which is what a stranger gets: siga, doble, cruce, camine, tome. To a friend: sigue, dobla, cruza, camina, toma. To two people, it is ustedes and the plural — Sigan derecho, crucen la avenida — the same form for your friends and for people you have never met, because ustedes is the only plural 'you' this region has. And soften an order the way locals do, with no más: Siga no más. Derecho no más y ahí está.
dónde, adónde, de dónde, por dónde
English uses prepositions to tell these apart; Spanish bakes them into the question word, and directions is where all four turn up in one conversation. ¿Dónde queda el museo? — location, something standing still. ¿Adónde vas? — direction, something moving toward a place; written ¿A dónde vas? just as often. ¿De dónde viene este camión? — origin, and the same question asked about a person is where you are from: ¿De dónde es usted? ¿Por dónde se va al centro? — which way, along what route, and this is the one travelers underuse. por is the preposition of the path taken: Vamos por la avenida, Pase por acá, por la izquierda. Keep them apart with the verb: estar and quedar pull dónde, ir and llegar pull adónde, venir and ser pull de dónde.
Perdido, and how to get unstuck
Estoy perdido if you are a man, Estoy perdida if you are a woman, and it is estar, because being lost is a state you fell into rather than a fact about you. The region also says ando perdido, with andar doing the work of estar. The verb is perderse: Me perdí en el centro. No se pierda is what the person giving you directions says when they suspect you will. Two practical notes. First, ask twice, in two different shops, because in much of Latin America leaving a stranger with no answer feels ruder than guessing — a confident answer is not always a correct one. Second, learn to hear the vague ones for what they are: acá nomás, ahí mismo, a la vuelta, a la vuelta de la esquina and derechito all mean 'not far' and none of them is a number of blocks, so follow up with ¿A cuántas cuadras? And if the answer involves waiting for someone, remember ahorita: ahorita llega can mean in a minute, in an hour, or sometime today, depending on the country and the tone.
