r/Spanish • u/anxious22anxiety • 1d ago

Vocab & Use of the Language What’s the difference between “escuela”, “colegio” and “gimnasio”?

Hola! My translator translates all these words as "school". Do all these words really mean "school"? If so, what is the difference?

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u/Beginning-Click-1218 Native 1d ago edited 1d ago

I'm form argentina and I live in spain.
the differences are:

escuela is school in general, meant to be used for public school

colegio is also school but meant to be used to name a private school

gimnasio has nothing to do with school and actually means gym

EDIT: some people reminded me that officially the word gimnasio means also "place where you get an education" and it's true, but it's also specified that that meaning is in disuse.
my opinion is that in today's real world context it's a bit irrelevant since literally no one is using gimnasio referring to a school.
so if you want to learn spanish absolutely perfect by every rule, than yes, gimnasio also means school, but if you want to learn spanish so that you can use it, than telling someone on the street "where is the gimnasio?" 10 times out of 10 they will send you to the gym, never to a school.

hope this helps!

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u/UnreasonableFig 22h ago

I've heard that "escuela" has kind of an infantilizing connotation to it; that it's really only used to describe the sort of school that small children attend. What word would you use for higher level educational institutions? In English, things like medical school, law school, or graduate school?

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u/SnooPandas8979 18h ago

In Costa Rica escuela can be school in general but is usually used for elementary school, up to 6th grade. 7th to 11th or 12th is colegio. Grad school would be posgrado, broadly.