8 weeks

Learn Spanish basics in 8 weeks

25 minutes a day, 6 days a week

Basics means A1: roughly 400 words, the present tense of about a dozen verbs, and enough phrases to order food, ask directions, and apologise for your Spanish. That is a real, checkable level. It is not fluency, and anyone selling you fluency in eight weeks is selling you something.

Most people fail this by collecting apps instead of words. Three hundred days of a streak game teaches you to tap green buttons, not to say what you want. This protocol front-loads the highest-frequency vocabulary, adds verbs slowly, and forces you to speak out loud in week 4 — long before you feel ready, because you will never feel ready.

The protocol

  1. Week 1

    Sounds first, then the first 100 words

    • Learn the five vowel sounds and roll through them daily. Spanish spelling is phonetic — once you have the vowels, you can read any word aloud correctly.
    • Learn 15 new words a day, six days a week, from a top-1000 frequency list. Nouns and connectors only this week: casa, agua, pero, porque, mucho.
    • Set up a spaced-repetition deck and do the reviews before the new cards. Reviews are the whole point; new cards are the fun part.
  2. Week 2

    Ten verbs, present tense, three persons

    • Ser, estar, tener, ir, hacer, querer, poder, necesitar, hablar, comer. Only yo, tú, and él/ella forms. Ignore vosotros entirely for now.
    • Build 10 sentences a day out of your existing words: Quiero agua. No puedo hablar. Tengo que ir.
    • Cumulative vocabulary target: 200 words.
  3. Week 3

    Survival phrases and numbers

    • Numbers 1–100, plus prices and times. This is the single most useful hour you will spend.
    • Learn 20 fixed phrases whole, without analysing the grammar: ¿Me puede ayudar? La cuenta, por favor. ¿Cómo se dice…?
    • Read your phrases out loud while walking. Mumbling in your head does not build the mouth muscles.
  4. Week 4

    Speak to a human before you are ready

    • Book a 30-minute lesson with a tutor. Tell them you are at week 4 and want to talk, not do grammar drills.
    • It will be uncomfortable and you will forget words you know. That is the lesson, and it costs about the price of two coffees.
    • Cumulative target: 280 words. Drop the ones you keep failing rather than fighting them.
  5. Week 5

    The future without the future tense

    • Learn ir + a + infinitive. Voy a comer, vas a trabajar. This replaces the entire future tense for now and it is what people actually say.
    • Learn question words: qué, quién, dónde, cuándo, por qué, cómo, cuánto.
    • Write five questions a day you would genuinely ask a stranger.
  6. Week 6

    Listening, at last

    • Fifteen minutes a day of slow-Spanish podcasts made for learners. Native TV is still too fast and will only make you feel stupid.
    • Listen once without the transcript, once with it, then once without again. That third pass is where the gain is.
    • Cumulative target: 350 words.
  7. Week 7

    Two conversations

    • Two more 30-minute tutor sessions this week. Prepare three topics in advance: your job, your weekend, your family.
    • Ban English in the session. Point, mime, or say no sé cómo se dice.
    • Keep a list of every word you reached for and did not have. That list is next week's deck.
  8. Week 8

    Prove the level

    • Hold a 10-minute conversation with no English. Messy and slow counts. Perfect does not exist at A1.
    • Order a meal, ask for directions, and make a small complaint entirely in Spanish, even if only with your tutor.
    • Final target: around 400 words and 12 verbs you can use without pausing to conjugate.

How you'll know it's working

  • You start hearing individual words in fast Spanish instead of one long noise.
  • You reach for a Spanish word before the English one for at least a few things.
  • You can build a sentence you have never heard, rather than only replaying phrases.

When you miss a day

Miss a day and you do the reviews only, no new words — the deck stays healthy and the plan slides right by a day. Miss a week and you drop the new-word target to five a day for a week to clear the review backlog, because nothing here resets to zero.

How Mosey helps

You don't have to hold the plan in your head.

Reading a protocol is the easy part. Mosey turns this one into scheduled days, adjusts it when your week falls apart, and keeps the streak alive while it does.

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Life happened on Wednesday. I trimmed Thursday down — the plan still lands on time.

Questions

Is 400 words really enough for anything?

The 400 most common Spanish words cover a surprising share of everyday speech. It will not get you through a film, but it will get you through a market, a café, and a taxi.

Do I need a tutor?

You need a human. A tutor is the easiest human to find, but a patient friend or a language exchange works. Apps alone reliably produce people who can read Spanish and cannot speak it.

Should I learn Spain Spanish or Latin American Spanish?

Pick whichever one you will actually hear. At A1 the difference is a handful of words and one verb form. Do not let this question stall you for a week.

What if eight weeks is too fast?

Use the twelve-week version. It carries the same vocabulary curve with a lighter daily load and a proper consolidation week.

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