DELE A1 Vocabulary List (Beginner Spanish)

DELE A1 is the entry diploma in the Diplomas de Español como Lengua Extranjera, awarded by the Instituto Cervantes on behalf of the Spanish Ministry of Education. It tests the survival core of Spanish: introducing yourself, asking prices, ordering, telling the time, and handling the immediate present with ser, estar, tener and ir.

For candidates preparing DELE A1. Maps to CEFR A1.

About DELE A1

DELE A1 is the entry diploma in the Diplomas de Español como Lengua Extranjera, awarded by the Instituto Cervantes on behalf of the Spanish Ministry of Education. It tests the survival core of Spanish: introducing yourself, asking prices, ordering, telling the time, and handling the immediate present with ser, estar, tener and ir. The vocabulary is concrete and personal rather than abstract, and the exam checks reading, listening, writing and speaking separately. Unlike most language tests, a DELE diploma does not expire.

Who this list is for

DELE A1 suits learners in their first few months of Spanish who want an official record of where they are, and it is often the first step for people who have moved to a Spanish-speaking country and are learning the language around them. It is not usually required by anyone; the level that carries legal weight is A2, which is accepted in Spanish nationality applications. Take A1 if you want a deadline and a structure rather than because a form asks for it.

How to study

The A1 word list is small enough to learn completely, which makes it the one level where finishing the list is a realistic goal. Learn nouns with their article attached, el problema and la mano rather than the bare word, because gender errors set hard and are expensive to unlearn later. Drill the first-person and third-person forms of the ten most frequent verbs before touching full conjugation tables. Spaced repetition earns its keep here precisely because there is nothing to understand yet, only to retain.

The list (454 words)

Some example sentences come from the Tatoeba Project (tatoeba.org), CC BY 2.0 FR. The rest were written for MindDory. Tatoeba, CC BY 2.0 FR.

Where do the words after this list come from?

A list has an end. The words you keep for good usually turn up somewhere else — in a page you read, a show you watched, or a conversation you had — one at a time, and rarely at the level you planned for.

MindDory connects to Claude, Cursor, and other assistants that speak the Model Context Protocol, so a word you meet while you are chatting is saved to your deck as a flashcard without you leaving the conversation. There is no copy and paste, no CSV export, and no browser extension.

How the assistant connection works

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