How Spanish speakers really talk about work
Coffee Break Spanish
Radio Lingua Network
4.4 • 5.9K Ratings
🗓️ 27 April 2026
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Pablo goes beyond "trabajo" and introduces the real words Spanish speakers use when they talk about work, from "curro" and "currar" in Spain to "chamba" and "chambear" in Mexico. Along the way, he shares a cultural insight about how and when to ask someone about their job. Which of these words will you start using first?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, what'stá'all you're |
| 0:02.0 | Pablo, the coffee break Spanish and up next we're going to explore one of my favorite topics about languages, slang. But in particular, we're going to focus on slang words to talk about work in Spanish. Preparate, because we're Let's start with one of the first land words |
| 0:28.6 | for work you'll hear in Spain |
| 0:31.6 | Curro. It sounds cool, right? |
| 0:33.6 | This one is super common and it means work. |
| 0:38.1 | So, for example, if someone te pre-pregunt, |
| 0:42.3 | now you know that they're asking, |
| 0:46.7 | how's work or how's work going. |
| 0:50.1 | So curro is a noun, |
| 0:52.3 | but you can also use the verb currar, which means to work. |
| 0:58.9 | So you can say things like, manana, no curro, I'm not working tomorrow. |
| 1:05.0 | Lucky you, if that's the case. |
| 1:06.5 | Or you can also ask someone, to ask them what they do for a living. |
| 1:14.2 | There are other derived words from curro, such as currante, |
| 1:20.0 | which essentially means worker. |
| 1:23.0 | However, currantes sometimes also has the connotation of a hard-working person, someone who is very |
| 1:31.5 | committed to what they do. So if you hear someone say, it's very currante, that means that that |
| 1:38.7 | person is very hard-working. So so far, we've seen curro, |
| 1:45.1 | currar, and currante. |
| 1:47.5 | But we actually use |
| 1:49.0 | many other slam words |
| 1:50.4 | for work in Spain. |
... |
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