Spanish 3.10. Directions

In this lesson, we cover directions in Spanish.

A direction in Spanish is “una dirección.” The word “una dirección” can also refer to an address of a house or a store. A map is “un mapa,” and a street is “una calle.” Let us look at more vocabulary related to directions in Spanish.

The four geographical directions of a compass or “una brújula” are:

east	estem	south	surm sudm
north	nortem	west	oestem

And the four main directions right, left, up, and down are:

right	derecha	up	arriba
left	izquierda	down	abajo

To describe the location of an object with respect to another, one can use one of the following:

above on top (of)	sobre encima (de)	there	ahí allá allí
here	acá aquí	to the left of	a la izquierda de
inside	dentro (de)	to the right of	a la derecha de
near	cerca (de)	far (from)	lejos (de)
outside	fuera (de)	toward	hacia
straight ahead	derecho recto	under beneath	bajo debajo (de)

“Here” vs. “There”

There is a subtle difference in Spanish between “aquí” and “acá” both translated as “here,” as “aquí” tends to be less specific about the location. However, this subtle difference is not often respected, and “acá” tends to be used more often in Latin America.

While “ahí,” “allí,” and “allá” all mean “there,” “ahí” is used more often for things that are within reach whereas “allí” and “allá” are sometimes better translated as “over there,” with “allá” being more popular than “allí” in Latin America.

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