Mexican Spanish for the exact moment you get stuck

Less than you're afraid of. Greetings, numbers, ordering, and asking for the bill will carry you through most of a week, because you repeat the same ten interactions the entire time. Knowing the handful of set phrases for each one beats a broad vocabulary you can't deploy under pressure.

Some do, and it depends enormously on where you're standing. In tourist areas, nicer restaurants, and among younger professionals in Roma or Condesa, often yes. In markets, taquerías, the metro, most Ubers, and anywhere outside the centre, usually not. English gets you further in CDMX than in most of Mexico, and then it stops.

Start with what and how many: me das tres de pastor, por favor. Con todo means with everything — onion, cilantro, salsa, lime. Sin cebolla drops the onion. ¿Pica mucho? asks how brave you need to be about the salsa. Then ¿cuánto es? at the end, with cash, because most stands still don't take cards.

Buenas tardes as you get in, then confirm where you're going: ¿vamos a [place], verdad? Drivers often open with ¿cómo va todo? or something about the traffic, and bien, gracias, ¿y usted? covers it. If you'd rather ride in silence, a warm nada, gracias does the job. Gracias, que le vaya bien on the way out.

Rarely with a flat no. Mexican Spanish softens a refusal — no, gracias with a smile for an offer, or something like uy, ando bien ocupado, pero gracias for an invitation. A bare no lands harder here than it does in English. And learning to hear the softened no aimed at you is every bit as useful as producing one.

Disculpe, for strangers and anyone working. Joven works for a waiter of any age, including one visibly older than you, and señor or señora for older people generally. Oye is friends only. Skipping the opener and going straight into your question is the single most common way foreigners come across as brusque without meaning to.

Not rude, but opening in English lands differently from trying Spanish first. Almost everyone responds warmly to a foreigner having a go, however badly, and it changes the temperature of the whole exchange. When your Spanish runs out mid-sentence, ¿hablas inglés? is a completely normal thing to ask.

Ordering food, then transport. Those are the two you'll repeat most and the two where getting stuck is most visible. After that the greetings and small-talk pages pay off fastest, because Mexican interactions open with more social ritual than English speakers expect and skipping it is noticeable.

Not word for word. Each situation has two or three phrases doing most of the work and those are worth knowing cold — the rest you only need to recognise. Understanding what's said to you matters far more than delivering your own line perfectly, and it's the half people under-practise.

Cash for street food, markets, and small shops; card is fine in restaurants, supermarkets, and chains. ¿Aceptan tarjeta? asks whether they take cards. Keep small bills — breaking a 500 at a taco stand is a genuinely awkward way to start a conversation, and ¿tiene cambio? only helps so much.

¿Mande? — it's the standard Mexican way to ask someone to repeat, and it's softer than ¿qué? Más despacio, por favor asks them to slow down. Mexicans use both constantly with each other, so neither one marks you out as a foreigner, which is more than can be said for standing there nodding.