By the end of this guide, you’ll learn ten conversation connectors you can use in almost any situation. These connectors will help you gather your thoughts, steer a conversation gracefully, and even ask for clarification the way that a native speaker would do it.
Want even more practice? Download this full set of flashcards on conversation connectors from this guide, and many more. They were all written by our native-speaking coaches at LearnCraft Spanish, so you’ll know you’re practicing true, authentic Spanish.
Question Starters
Let’s start with how to ask a good question. Sometimes, one of the hardest parts of speaking Spanish is just getting the conversation started. So let’s practice two conversation connectors that will help you ease into a conversation by politely asking a question.
The first one is Quería preguntarte…. which simply means, “I wanted to ask you…”
Let’s say you’re at dinner with your in-laws, and you want to ask your brother-in-law something about his job. But you don’t want to sound too blunt.
Normally in English, you wouldn’t just say something like: “José, do you still work at the hospital?”. That sounds pretty abrupt and sudden. Instead, you’d ease into it casually, like this:
- “José, I wanted to ask you… do you still work at the hospital?
In Spanish, this would be:
- José, quería preguntarte, ¿todavía trabajas en el hospital?
This sounds much more casual and natural than just diving straight into the question!
Next, let’s learn a conversation connector you can use to ask someone’s opinion on something. Just start like this: ¿Qué opinas de…?
Let’s say you want to ask José’s opinion about a movie you both watched. You’d say:
- ¿Qué opinas de esa película?
Notice that this is very different from just asking “Did you like that movie?” (¿Te gustó esa película?). If you did that, they could just answer yes or no. If you instead start your questions with ¿Qué opinas…?, it helps open up a more thoughtful discussion.
Both of these connectors are great ways to gently steer the conversation into something — instead of sitting in awkward silence, wondering what to say next, or just robotically jumping into a simple question.
Responses
Now let’s learn some conversation connectors for sharing YOUR opinion.
Imagine that José just answered your question. How do you keep the back-and-forth flowing naturally?
We’ll learn three conversation connectors that are natural and flexible responses. You can drop these into all kinds of conversations.
First, let’s say José said something that you totally agree with. You want to respond with enthusiasm.
You can say:
- ¡Estoy totalmente de acuerdo!
This literally translates to: “I totally agree!”
This is a great way to connect with someone over a shared idea. It also helps keep the conversation flowing. You can start with ¡Estoy totalmente de acuerdo!, and then continue on to say anything else on your mind.
Next one: What if they respond with something you hadn’t thought of?
You can say:
This is literally, “I hadn’t thought of it.” This one’s perfect when someone surprises you with an idea. You’re being honest, plus you can say this phrase while you’re trying to think of what to say next; it buys you a few seconds of thinking time, without awkward silence.
As a third option, let’s say you don’t really agree with their response. Maybe you want to politely share an alternative perspective.
You can say:
This literally means, “I understand your point, but…”
Once again, this is polite, natural, and buys you a little bit of time. If you memorize this phrase and practice throwing it into conversations, you can use this to give your brain a few seconds to breathe while you think of what to say next.
So these three connectors are all great ways to help you share opinions with the people you’re talking with, whether you agree with them or have a different point of view.
Sentence Starters
Next, let’s imagine you want to move the conversation in a new direction. These conversation connectors will help you pivot a conversation naturally.
Imagine your in-laws have started talking about a hot topic they don’t all agree on. Maybe you want to share a more nuanced perspective that’s different from theirs.
In English, you might say: “The thing is… it’s more complicated than that”. So the really handy connector here is that first phrase: “the thing is…”
In Spanish, you would say
- La cosa es que… (literally “The thing is that…”)
That entire sentence would be: La cosa es que… es más complicado que eso. Again, the important thing to remember here is that conversation connector, la cosa es que. This is great for introducing a new idea or giving helpful context.
It’s also really helpful for buying you time while you try to think of what to say next. If you memorize and practice la cosa es que, you can easily say that while you’re actively trying to come up with how to say your alternative opinion.
Next, let’s say you want to change the subject altogether. For example, imagine they’ve spent too much time talking about this controversial topic, and you’d rather move on and make plans for what to do today.
In English, you might say, “Well, changing the subject, what do you want to do today?”
In Spanish, you would use:
So in the case of this conversation with your in-laws, you would say: Bueno, cambiando de tema, ¿qué quieren hacer hoy?
These connectors are like conversational steering wheels — they help you change course without crashing the conversation.
Making Suggestions
Our next connector is something you might use while you’re planning the day. The connector is:
You’ll use this when you want to make a suggestion. For example, maybe you want to suggest to your in-laws that you might all go to the beach today. In English, we might say something like, “Why don’t we go to the beach?”
In Spanish, this would be: ¿Por qué no vamos a la playa?
This structure — ¿Por qué no…? — is incredibly useful. You can use it to make any kind of suggestion, and it sounds natural every time.
Asking for Clarification
For the last two connectors, we’ll learn some ways that you can ask for clarification in Spanish.
Even fluent speakers misunderstand things in Spanish mid-conversation. The difference is that if you’re fluent, you know how to recover smoothly! These next two connectors will help you sound like a native when you need to backtrack or ask for clarity.
Let’s say someone is trying to tell you when something is happening, but you’re not sure if they said “martes” or “miércoles”.
In English, you could say something like, “Sorry, I didn’t get that. When is the event?”
The conversation connector is: “Sorry, I didn’t get that.” Here’s the Spanish equivalent of this sentence: Perdón, no entendí. ¿Cuándo es el evento?
The phrase to remember is:
Now, that phrase might be a little bit much, so let’s learn an even simpler one. (It might surprise you!)
Let’s imagine that you didn’t just mishear the day — you actually didn’t understand anything the person just said. Maybe they spoke too fast, or maybe you’re in a noisy place and couldn’t hear a thing.
In English, sometimes we say “What?” in these situations. But saying “What” is a little bit blunt. We sometimes soften this by saying “what’s that?” or “come again?”
In Spanish, to do this, native speakers usually just say:
You might be thinking, “Wait, doesn’t cómo mean ‘how’?”
Yes, cómo literally means “how”. But this is the most common way that native speakers ask someone to repeat themself!
You CAN use qué in these situations, but it’s not as natural and polite, or as common.
These two connectors can help keep the conversation going when you don’t understand what someone said.
Keep Practicing with Free Flashcards
We covered just a few of the most powerful conversation connectors in Spanish. If you start using just one or two of these every day, your conversations will start to feel smoother and more natural right away.
However, there are a lot more conversation connectors that you can use in even more situations, including correcting your own errors when you mess up in Spanish. To keep practicing the conversation connectors from this video, and dozens more, you can download a set of free flashcards that includes all the examples in this guide and plenty of new ones too.
All of these were created by our native-speaking coaches, so you’ll be practicing true, authentic Spanish.
