Telephone use

Question

When making a phone call and you want to say, "This is David from Acme", is it correct to say "Habla David de Acme"? Or should I use estar?

Welcome to SpanishDict. - rac1, Dec 13, 2016

Answer 1

Well, there are a few things that you could say. "Habla David de Acme", is missing a part of the phrase. There needs to be the preposition "con" in between "Habla" and "David". Otherwise, it would be "Talk, David from Acme!" (as if you are commanding someone named David from Acme to talk).

Depending on the situation, you could use (and I'm assuming that this is for a business):
1. Este es David de Acme
2. Soy David de Acme.
3. Está hablando con David de Acme.

If it is for your personal phone, there's seems to be an endless number of ways to say this:
1. Bueno (Sometimes people will say "Buenó")
2. ¿Halo?
3. Hola, este es David

There's more things that can be said, but you just have to play around with it and learn what works best.

"Habla David" in this situation means "David is speaking" and is perfectly correct - 005faa61, Dec 13, 2016

Depends on how you look at it, I would say. What you said is one of a few meanings and there are better ways to answer a phone than that. - codyandrews1993, Dec 14, 2016

Answer 2

I assume this link is Mexican protocol, as they use Bueno for hello, which I believe is a Mexican thing, I do not where else it might be:

http://www.learn-spanish-smart.com/polite-phone-spanish.html

Starting the call

If you are the person making the call, you will hear on the other end

"¿Bueno?" for our basic "Hello?"

Sometimes you may hear "Diga." or "Si, dígame". Basically some form of decir (to speak) in the command form.

The first Spanish phrase to say is:

"Buenos dias, habla (your name) . "

You could say, "Buenos dias, habla Señor Hill ." or "Buenos dias, habla Sandra de la compañía Swan en Denver."

(Now, you may be thinking, isn't "habla" the 3rd person singular form of hablar? Yes, it is. It is a way of saying, this is Mr. Hill speaking or calling.)

It is good polite phone Spanish, to open with the appropriate greeting depending on the time of day. So it's fine to start with "Buenos dias", "Buenas tardes" (good afternoon) or "Buenas noches" (good evening) accordingly. This makes for a friendly greeting and a pleasant beginning of your phone call in Spanish.

The identical is posted here:

http://www.officesense.com/using-polite-phrases-answering-making-spanish-language-phone-calls/

Answer 3

In Spanish what you would say would be "Hola, soy David de Acme" or "Hola, te habla David de Acme", atlhough in european spanish the second sentece would sound weird since it's not very usual to use the third person when you are introducing yourself to someone we always the first person.