Let's talk about sport in Spanish!

Want to play a bit of fútbol? Fancy a quick round of golf? If you understand both of those words in bold, you already know a bit of Spanish vocabulary about sports. It’s actually incredibly easy to learn Spanish words for different sports as an English speaker, as a lot of them are very similar with pretty much no falsos amigos (false friends) to worry about. Here are just a few:

That’s easy, isn’t it? Now we just need to construct a sentence to say which of these sports you actually play, and for that we need the verb jugar (to play). This verb has a stem change in that the “u” becomes “ue” when we use it to talk about certain people. Let’s have a look at what that means:

• I play = Juego
• You play (singular) = Juegas
• He/she plays = Juega
• You play (plural) = Jugáis
• We play = Jugamos
• They play = Juegan

Then, to make a full sentence with this verb, we always add a + noun and now we can start having a proper conversation! If I want to say I play football I should say Juego al fútbol. Or, if I’m talking about my friend Juan, then I would say Juan juega al fútbol. Simple! But, not all sports are “played” obviously, and so we need to learn some other verbs to expand our vocabulary.

Both of these verbs can be used with different sports to give us the chance to speak about many more activities. For instance:

• Hago/Practico boxeo = I do boxing
• Hago/Practico natación = I do/go swimming
• Hago/Practico bicicleta = I do/go cycling

Once we’ve established which sports we do, maybe you’d like to tell people how often you do things. Again, this is fairly straightforward in Spanish as you simply say how many veces (times) per day/week/etc. So, I can say Juego al baloncesto dos veces al día/a la semana/al mes/al año which means I play basketball twice a day/week/month/year. You can simply swap out the word dos for any other number you like.

So, to sum up so far, we can now say which sports we play or do and how often we do them. It might be useful at this point to also mention how we can ask other people for this same information. Here are the questions you’ll need to start chatting about sport with your Spanish-speaking friends:

• ¿Qué deportes haces? = Which sports do you do?
• ¿Con qué frecuencia los haces? = How often do you do them?

Try and get speaking to some native Spanish speakers, or your classmates on your course at Hablamos about which sports they like to do and when!

You might also like to know some specific vocabulary for different sports, so here are some lists of the most common words for a variety of activities. Why not try using them next time you’re out and about to strike up a conversation?

El fútbol – Football

El tenis – Tennis

El golf – Golf

La natación – Swimming

And there you have it – a guide to how to start speaking in Spanish about sports and some useful vocabulary for when you’re learning how to read and listen in Spanish to information about different activities.