I am looking for recommendations on a good IPhone ap to supplement my limited ability to speak Spanish - especially with rapid native speakers. Thanks for your help.

What I have found most useful is "mas despacio, por favor". This seems to work well enough for tourist level spanish.

If you want to try for lengthy discussions of more complicated topics not sure how well an ap would work. Or how frustrating it would be.

mas despacio, por favor=slower, please

Google Translate works for all languages and has an audio feature too. Just set it for Spanish. I use "mas despacio por favor" too. I used it a lot on our recent trip.

You're not going to find any app that will work on a conversational level, unless it's something out of Star Trek. Just go with what you have/ You should find that most Spaniards have some command of the English language when you're in the major tourist destinations.

What Robert said...
As someone fairly fluent in Spanish , I find myself asking the speaker
to repeat what he/she was saying more often than I like.

The OP said they had limited Spanish. Assume that something as basic as "mas despacio, por favor" would be included in limited spanish.

Even thought I have not had any Spanish lessons since high school - more than 40 years ago - being in NYC I see/hear quite a a bit and have found that being in a foreign country concentrates the mind wonderfully and it all comes flowing back. I must admit that when I speak I sound like a not very bright 3 year old - but between the basic english many Spaniards understand and my basic understanding if they speak slowly everything works out fine. Even when dealing with auto mechanics and other people outside the tourist infrastructure who you would not expect to know english.

Even thought I have not had any Spanish lessons since high school - more than 40 years ago - being in NYC I see/hear quite a a bit and have found that being in a foreign country concentrates the mind wonderfully and it all comes flowing back.>>

nyt - the same happens with me with french and german, though I haven't had a formal lesson in either for over 40 years [that's not quite right re the german, in that I've had opportunities to speak it pretty often which helps a lot]

I think that what we learn at that age becomes hard-wired, as it were; it is a lot more difficult to get the same effect when you try to learn a new language at the age of 50 as I have found with both Italian, which I've been learning for about 6-7 years, and spanish, which I've been trying to learn for the last 3 months or so in preparation for our trip to Cuba in January.

I can see "mas despacio por favor" coming in very useful!

Thanks all for the advice - mas despacio por favor will come in handy and I'll use Google translate to help occasionally with the harder to pronounce phrases!