Rocket Spanish Community

Which is correct when asking for a map?

Hola Vince. Welcome to the forum. Before I answer your question, I want to say that if you're at all serious about wanting to learn Spanish, you should get a Spanish/English English/Spanish dictionary. There are plenty of inexpensive ones, as well as a number of free ones online. Here are two free ones:
http://www.wordreference.com/english_spanish_dictionary.asp
http://www.spanishdict.com/

Both of those dictionaries will tell you that mapa is masculine, and thus you'd ask for un mapa.

I'm just learning, too, but it appears that there are two different Spanish words for different kinds of maps: un mapa covers a large region, while a map of a particular city or town showing the streets and such is un plano. I'm guessing that you'd probably get the right thing if you asked someone for "un mapo de la ciudad," but it certainly wouldn't hurt to use the right word.

wmm wrote:I'm guessing that you'd probably get the right thing if you asked someone for "un mapo de la ciudad," but it certainly wouldn't hurt to use the right word.

It also would be a good idea to say "un mapa, not un mapo.
WordReference.com has an interesting discussion of mapa vs. plano: http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=304391.

Ah, yes, my fingers got carried away -- I got it right the first time I wrote "un mapa," but wasn't paying close enough attention to what they were doing the second time and just hit the "o" because of "un".

Thanks for the link! Good information.

Thanks for all of the replies.