Nomás

A few days ago I was having lunch in a Mexican restaurant, chatting with one of the meseras (waitresses) . She was a Hondureña, a woman from the Honduras. We weren't talking about much of anything, just some friendly chit-chat. She asked me where I was from, and after answering, I asked her why, and she answered "nomás".

Nomás is a simple word with many uses. It's a contraction for nada más, literally translated "no more". But like many words in Spanish, it has colloquial meanings as well, such as "just" or "that's it". You can read about the various usages at WordReference. But in this case, it means "just wondering", or "just asking".

Now, you could say something like "me estaba preguntando" or "solo me estaba preguntando". There's also "nada, curiosidad", which is something like "no reason, just curious", but personally I like nomás. It's certainly less of a mouthful than the first two alternatives, and a heck of a lot easier to remember.

This is a nice bit of Spanish to put in your bag of tricks, making you sound more a little bit more like a native. Experiment with it, and have fun.

¡Hasta la próxima!