A Letter to a Friend Moving to Mexico City Next Month

Marina,

I just got your message. The lease is signed. The flight is booked for the second week of next month. You asked me to send you what I would tell you if I were sitting across a table from you in a cafe on Orizaba Street, and I have been thinking about your question for two days.

So this is that letter. Not a guide, not a listicle. The thing I would say if we were splitting a cafecito on Sunday morning and I had your full attention for an hour.

I am writing from the kitchen table at my mother's place in Xochimilco. The dogs are asleep at my feet. There is a comal warming on the stove. My grandmother is somewhere upstairs listening to Radio Capital at a volume that would deafen anyone who did not grow up here. Picture all of that, because the city you are moving to is the city that produced this scene, and the Spanish you are about to live inside runs through it.

You told me you have been doing Duolingo for six months. You can read a menu, ask where the bathroom is, and you are nervous that nothing else has stuck. Put that worry down. The Duolingo Spanish is the floor. What I am going to tell you here is the part nobody told my other friends before they moved, the part that decides whether your first three months feel like a long warm welcome or a slow polite humiliation.

Pour yourself a coffee. This is going to take a minute.

What your first week will feel like

You will land at Benito Juarez on a Tuesday afternoon. The taxi to Roma Norte takes an hour because the traffic at that time is something nobody can prepare you for. The driver will call you jefa before you have told him where you live. The car will smell like air freshener and coffee. The radio will be on, low, playing a cumbia or a norteno song you will recognize in a year and not yet.

He will ask pa donde la llevo, jefa. You will hear the contraction pa and lose two seconds on it. By the time you parse it he will be looking at you in the rearview mirror, waiting. Just say the address. He will not judge you for the accent. We do not. The first lesson of Mexico is that almost nobody is going to judge your Spanish. They will be charmed that you are trying, and they will forgive you everything.

Day two you will walk to the corner store at Tabasco and Orizaba. The owner is a woman in her fifties with reading glasses pushed up on her head, and she will say que va a llevar, vecina. Vecina. Neighbor. You moved in yesterday. You are already her neighbor. That is Mexico.

Day three you will try to order tacos al pastor at the cart on Alvaro Obregon. The vendor will fire off cuantos le pongo, guerita, con todo, le pongo salsita in one breath, and you will stand there with your mouth slightly open while the line moves around you. This is the moment I want to prepare you for.

The Spanish that will betray you (and the Spanish that will save you)

The Spanish in your app is mostly Castilian or a flattened pan-Latin Spanish that does not actually exist in any specific place. That Spanish will get you through a hotel check-in. It will not get you through a tianguis, a taxi, a tortilleria, or a conversation with my tia.

Here is the short list of words that will betray you in your first week if you do not know them.

Mande. When somebody does not catch what you said, they will say mande back. It is the polite way to ask you to repeat yourself. Your textbook taught you como, and como is fine, but mande is what the lady at the tortilleria, the dentist's receptionist, and my mother will say. When somebody says your name in a noisy room, respond with mande. It will instantly upgrade how Mexican you sound. Use it.

Ahorita. The cultural trap nobody warns you about. Literally the diminutive of ahora (now), so logically it should mean "right now." It does not. Ahorita means anywhere from "in five minutes" to "in two hours" to "never, but I do not want to say no to your face." When the plumber says ahorita, ask him ahorita ahorita (right-now right-now) or ahorita al rato (in a while). It is not a flaw of the language. It is a feature of a culture that prefers warmth over precision in casual time-keeping. For the first month it will drive you slightly insane. Eventually you will love it.

No manches. "Do not stain me." It means "no way," "you are kidding," "really?" If somebody tells you a piece of gossip and you are surprised, the right response is no manches. If you want to be a little stronger, no mames is the same idea but vulgar. Use no manches with strangers. Save no mames for friends.

Chido. Cool. Awesome. Que chido tu departamento. Daily.

Padre. Same as chido but slightly more neutral and slightly more boomer. Esta padre. Daily.

Neta. Truth. La neta is "the truth." Neta? by itself, with a question mark, means "really?" De neta means "for real." This word does not exist in Castilian Spanish. You will hear it forty times a day in CDMX.

Guey. (Sometimes spelled wey.) "Dude." Constant among friends. Be careful using it with strangers, especially older strangers. With your same-age friends here, you will be calling everyone guey by month four whether you intended to or not.

Orale. Whoa, alright, let's go, sure, okay then. Multipurpose. It is the word my dad uses to end every phone call. Bueno, orale, nos vemos.

Chela. Beer. Vamos por unas chelas.

Lana. Money. No tengo lana. (Useful when negotiating at the tianguis.)

Camion. Bus. In Spain it is a truck. In Mexico the public bus is a camion. If you say autobus people will understand you, but camion is what you will hear.

Tianguis. Open-air weekly street market. From Nahuatl. Every neighborhood has a tianguis on a specific day of the week. The tianguis on Tuesdays in Condesa is on Pachuca. Find yours. Go on day five. Buy mangoes from the lady who looks like she has been there since 1985.

That is your survival kit for week one. None of it is in your app. All of it is in our mouths.

Roma, Condesa, Polanco, or Coyoacan, and which Spanish each demands

You picked Roma Norte. I think it was the right choice for you for the first year. Let me tell you what each neighborhood will sound like, because it matters.

Roma Norte and Condesa. The expat-and-creative belt. A lot of English in cafes, fluent Spanish in shops, and a cosmopolitan CDMX Spanish that is comfortable code-switching with foreigners. The barista at Cafe Nin or Tierra Garat will probably switch to English if your Spanish stalls. Resist that. Push through in Spanish. The barista will respect you for it within two visits.

Polanco. Wealthier. Spanish here leans fresa. You will hear o sea, tipo, super, elongated vowels, a soft sing-songy delivery associated with private school and a particular economic bracket. Do not adopt it. If you do, you will sound like you are mocking somebody, and that is worse than sounding like a foreigner.

Coyoacan. Slower, older, more bohemian. The Spanish here is closer to a literary middle-class CDMX. Frida Kahlo's house is here. You will love it on weekends.

Iztapalapa, Tlalpan, Xochimilco. Where I grew up. Fast Spanish, full of guey, full of diminutives, full of the nero register your app will never teach you. Que onda, mi guey, vente pa ca, no manches que pasaron de a tiro. You will eat in Xochimilco one Sunday and catch maybe sixty percent of what is said around you. That is fine. That is your whole first year.

The class layer in Mexican Spanish is real, and foreigners rarely see it. Fresa labels upper-class aspirational speech. Naco is the loaded opposite, used by the upper class to dismiss anything they consider lower-class, and it is racist and classist in ways nobody will explain out loud. Do not use the word naco. Ever. Recognize it when you hear it. Notice who uses it. It will tell you a lot about who you are with.

What gentrification means and why your accent will be read instantly

I want to be honest about something nobody is going to tell you to your face.

Roma and Condesa rents have doubled since 2020. They doubled because of expats, because of remote workers on US salaries, because of the second pandemic wave when people realized they could keep their jobs and live somewhere with sun and food. Some expats came thoughtfully and are trying to learn. Some never bother. The ones who never bother are why Mexicans in your neighborhood will sometimes be cool with you on day one, and why your accent and your effort matter more than you think.

The minute you open your mouth at the tianguis or the panaderia, you are being read. Not in a hostile way, just in the way humans read each other. The vendor is clocking your accent, your effort, your willingness to be in Spanish. If you try, even badly, the temperature warms instantly. If you default to English, it gets transactional. You are flagged as a tourist who happens to live here.

The single most powerful thing you can do in your first month is be the foreigner who tries. Not who is fluent. Who tries. Disculpe, todavia estoy aprendiendo el espanol mexicano, pero quiero practicar. Me ayuda, por favor? I have watched fifteen expat friends say a version of this to a vendor and watched the vendor light up every single time.

That sentence is your superpower. Memorize it. Use it on day three.

Bureaucracy you cannot dodge (CURP, RFC, residencia temporal)

This is the unromantic part of the letter. I am sorry. You asked.

Here are the acronyms that will run your first six months.

CURP. Unique Population Registry Code. Eighteen characters. You will need this on every form. Get it issued at your nearest oficina or online once your residency is in process.

RFC. Tax ID. If you are going to freelance or invoice anyone in Mexico, you need this. The agency is called SAT and SAT is every freelancer's slow-motion nightmare. Hire a contador (accountant). They are cheap. Worth it.

INE. The voter ID, which is also the de facto national ID for everything. Banks, notaries, contracts. As a foreigner you will not have one. Your residency card replaces it.

INM. National Migration Institute. Where your residency lives. First appointment at a consulate before you fly. Second appointment in CDMX within thirty days of arrival. Third for fingerprints. Bring every document twice. Originals and copies. A folder. Closed shoes. Water.

IMSS. Public health system. You probably will not use it. Most expats use private. A specialist visit at Hospital Angeles or Medica Sur runs you about eight hundred to twelve hundred pesos.

Comprobante de domicilio. Proof of address, usually a utility bill in your name. You will need this for almost everything. Get one issued in your name within your first thirty days.

Constancia de situacion fiscal. Tax status certificate. Your contador will get this for you.

Notario. A notary in Mexico is way more powerful than in the US. Notaries run real-estate closings, contracts, wills. Probably not your first year, but if you need one, it is a big deal.

Tramite. This word will live in your mouth. Tramite means "bureaucratic procedure." Que flojera el tramite means "this paperwork is exhausting." You will say it a lot in your first six months. It is one of the great unifying expressions of Mexican life.

Memorize the acronyms before you land. The first time you walk into INM, you do not want to be Googling tramite. You want to walk in knowing the words.

Ask me which contador and which immigration lawyer. I have names. I will text them separately.

What to eat your first month and what the food vocabulary signals about you

You are going to eat well. You already know that. What you may not know is that food vocabulary in Mexico is one of the fastest ways to signal whether you are paying attention.

If you order un taco al pastor and the vendor asks con todo, the answer is si. That means cilantro, onion, salsa. If you say sin cebolla (without onion) you have flagged yourself as picky. If you say con todo y pina you have flagged yourself as someone who has been here at least a month.

The diminutive will save you. Una cervecita, un cafecito, un aguita de jamaica. Mexican Spanish slathers diminutives on nouns to add warmth and politeness. Salsita, taquito, cervecita, cafecito. These are not "small salsa, small taco." They are "the salsa, but warm; the taco, with affection." If you are not building diminutives into your speech by month three, you sound stiff to Mexican ears. Build them in. Listen to the lady at the corner store. She will tell you ahi te lo dejo en cincuenta pesitos. Pesitos. Little pesos. The pesos are not little. The warmth is.

Food vocabulary for month one. Quesadilla (in CDMX, the with-or-without-cheese question is a regional debate). Tlacoyo (oblong corn cake, get one with beans and salsa verde at the tianguis). Huarache (giant oblong tortilla with toppings). Sope (thicker, raised border). Gordita (stuffed thick tortilla). Pambazo (deep-fried torta soaked in salsa). Esquites (corn in a cup, you will fall in love). Elote (corn on the cob, mayo, cotija, chile). Atole (warm thick corn drink, breakfast in October). Champurrado (chocolate atole). Aguas frescas (jamaica, horchata, tamarindo, everywhere).

Order these in Spanish, with the diminutive, with eye contact, and you will be quietly absorbed into your neighborhood within six weeks.

What I want you to do on your first day

You will land Tuesday afternoon. The driver will take you to your apartment. You will unpack the most essential bag. You will be tired.

Do not eat in your apartment that first night. I know you will want to. I want you to walk out the door, walk three blocks in any direction, find the first taqueria with a line out front, and get in line. Order in Spanish. Buenas noches. Tres tacos al pastor con todo, por favor. Una agua de jamaica. If you are nervous, say to the vendor disculpe, todavia estoy aprendiendo. Me corrige? (I am still learning. Will you correct me?) He will smile. He will correct you, gently, once. He will hand you the tacos.

Eat them standing at the counter. Watch the rhythm of the cart. Listen to how the next customer orders. Listen to the diminutives. Notice that the vendor calls everyone jefe or guerito or vecino. Notice that the language of the cart is not the language of your textbook. Notice that you understood seventy percent of it anyway. Notice that the person you were six months ago, the one who was nervous about ordering tacos in Spanish, is already a little bit gone.

Walk back to your apartment. Sleep ten hours. The next day, do it again.

That is the whole method. Repeat for six months. You will be functional. Repeat for two years. You will be conversational. Repeat for five years and you will be a Mexican who happens to have an accent, which is the highest honor my country gives to a foreigner.

A note about the app I built

I want to be honest about this part because we are friends.

I built Mynago partly because the apps I tested with my expat friends moving to Mexico were teaching them the wrong country. The Spanish in their lessons was either Castilian or a flattened pan-LatAm variant that did not match Mexico City, Merida, Guadalajara, or anywhere else they were actually moving to. So I made one that, when you set Mexico as your context, orients toward Mexican vocabulary, audio, idioms, and example sentences. The service-Spanish register I described above (pasele guerito, llevele marchanta, le pongo salsita, suba jefe) is in the curriculum. The diminutive habit is in the curriculum. The ahorita trap has its own lesson. I built it for you and the seven other friends who texted me last year asking variations of your same question.

The curriculum I built it around was the question your same friend texted me last year: how do I order at the tianguis, how do I talk to a taxi driver in CDMX, how do I survive a tramite at INM. That is the daily life of an expat in Mexico City. That is the curriculum nobody else is building because nobody else starts from that question.

If you want to use it, it is free to start, and the lessons in your first week will be in Mexican Spanish from minute one. If you want to use Pimsleur for pronunciation drills and Anki for the vocabulary you collect at the tianguis, do that too. The stack is the stack. The point is to be in Mexican Spanish every day, not to win the app wars.

What apps cannot do

Find a Mexican tutor on iTalki. Eight to fifteen US dollars per hour. One or two sixty-minute sessions a week, paired with daily app practice, is the combination that has worked for friends who became functional in Mexican Spanish in six to nine months.

Watch Roma (Cuaron's, not the neighborhood you live in, though you will walk past the houses it was filmed in), Y Tu Mama Tambien, La Casa de las Flores, Club de Cuervos, Amores Perros. With Spanish subtitles, not English. Your eyes and ears need to align on the same language.

Listen to El Hilo and No Hay Tos. The first is a deep news podcast from across Latin America. The second is a CDMX-based intermediate-level podcast designed for foreign learners.

Talk to your portero, your tendero, your vecina. They are the most underrated language tutors in Mexico. Most of them love that an extranjera is actually trying.

Be in Mexican situations on purpose. Order in Spanish even when the menu has English. Negotiate at the tianguis. Ask for directions in Spanish even when you could pull out Google Maps. Make small mistakes constantly.

I have written about this stack in more detail in the 9 Best Spanish Learning Apps post and in Learning Spanish: How a Polyglot Approaches It. Read both this weekend before you fly. There is a longer expat-language playbook at Language Learning for Expats and the method I use for any new language at How Polyglots Actually Learn. The system behind the app itself is at The Myna Method. If you ever want to take the DELE certification I wrote up DELE Exam Prep too.

If you ever want to find me publicly, I am on LinkedIn and on most platforms as @langaholic.

Last thing

Marina, my country is going to be good to you. Not because Mexico is uniformly good, it is not, but because you are arriving with the right disposition. You are nervous about the language, which means you respect it. You are asking a Mexican what to do, instead of a guidebook, which means you are paying attention. You will be okay.

The first six months will feel like a slow polite humiliation about half the time. You will mishear mande. You will misorder a torta. You will get the diminutive wrong. You will accidentally use vosotros in a meeting and somebody will gently tell you we do not use it. None of this matters. All of it is the price of admission. Pay it cheerfully.

The seventh month, something will click. You will be at a panaderia on a Saturday morning and the lady will say que va a llevar, vecina, and you will answer in your Spanish, and she will not switch to English, and you will walk out with a bolillo and a concha and have a small moment on the sidewalk where you realize you just had a complete interaction in your second language without thinking about it. That moment is the whole reason you are moving here. Wait for it.

Text me when you land. I will pick you up at the airport. We will get tacos al pastor on the way to your apartment. I will introduce you to the lady at the corner store. The rest is yours.

Bienvenida a casa.

Your friend, Alej