Quick answer
¿Quedamos el sábado? Vamos a cenar a las nueve.
Shall we meet on Saturday? We are going for dinner at nine. Two structures carry almost every plan: quedar and ir a plus a verb.
The words of this lesson
Texting a friend on Thursday
The everyday verb for arranging to meet is quedar, and it has no clean English equivalent. ¿Quedamos el sábado? means "shall we meet on Saturday?" Add the details afterwards: quedamos a las ocho en la plaza. Notice the pattern — a for the time, en for the place.
To float an idea rather than fix it, use ¿te apetece ir al cine? or ¿qué tal si vamos el domingo? Both are softer than a direct proposal and leave the other person room to say no.
Talking about the future without a future tense
You do not need the future tense to make a plan. Ir a plus an infinitive does the whole job: voy a llamarte, vamos a cenar fuera, van a llegar tarde. The forms of ir are voy, vas, va, vamos, vais, van.
The a is not optional. English speakers drop it because "I am going eat" feels close enough; in Spanish voy comer is simply broken. And going to a place also needs a: voy al cine, where a + el contracts to al.
Saying yes and saying no
Agreeing is short: vale, perfecto, me apetece mucho, nos vemos el sábado. Declining works best in three pieces — apology, reason, alternative: lo siento, no puedo, tengo que trabajar. ¿Qué tal otro día?
A bare no sounds sharp. Offering otro día is what keeps it friendly, and it is expected rather than merely polite.
Where you are matters
<span class="es-inline">Vale</span> for "okay" is very Spanish; Mexico says <span class="es-inline">órale</span> or <span class="es-inline">sale</span> and Argentina <span class="es-inline">dale</span>. <span class="es-inline">Quedar</span> in this sense is far more common in Spain than in Latin America, which often uses <span class="es-inline">vernos</span> or <span class="es-inline">encontrarnos</span>.
Memory trick
Ir a plus a verb is your future tense: voy a llamarte needs the a, always.
A short dialogue
Typical mistakes
Voy llamarte mañana.
Voy a llamarte mañana.
The a between ir and the second verb is obligatory; leaving it out is the most common English-speaker slip here.
¿Encontramos el sábado?
¿Quedamos el sábado?
Encontrar means to find or bump into by chance. An arranged meeting uses quedar.
Vamos a el cine.
Vamos al cine.
A followed by el always contracts to al; the two words are never written separately.
Practice
Practise these making plans
0/8 matched — tap a Spanish word, then its translation
Check yourself
Which sentence says "I am going to call you tomorrow"?