Are you planning on learning a new language? Why not study Spanish? Many say that Spanish is not a very difficult language to learn. In fact, Spanish ranks among the top languages spoken in the whole world, next to English. But before starting on your endeavor to learn this language, you should know that there are major differences between Spanish and English. In fact they are two very distinct and dissimilar languages.

Difference in roots

Spanish is a true Romance Language. It is closely related to Latin, Italian, French, Portuguese, Catalan, Romanian and Provencal of the Indo-European language family. The English language, on the other hand, originated from the Germanic language family. It is closely connected to Dutch, modern-day Low German, Flemish, Afrikaans and Frisians. The difference in origins may explain why there are plenty of dissimilarities between the two languages.

Difference in alphabet

Whereas the English alphabet has twenty-six letters, the Spanish alphabet use the Latin alphabet. It has an extra letter, ñ. Acute accents on top of letters also characterize the Spanish vowels.

Difference in vocabulary

Spanish is less complex when it comes to vocabulary since it has remained pure. English, meanwhile, is a combination of words from various languages. In other words, while most words in the Spanish vocabulary are truly of Spanish origin, many English words are actually foreign. Many English words are borrowed from Latin, French, Arabic, Russian and even Spanish. This does not mean that Spanish has not a lot of words, too. But most of them are of Latin origin.

Difference in grammar

In the Spanish language, nouns have gender - the masculine and the feminine. Unlike in the English language where nouns do not take gender roles; it is only the personal pronouns, such as she, he, her, his, hers that indicate gender. When learning Spanish you need to use the appropriate gender of the noun and use the corresponding adjectives and article as well. This means that the article or adjective should take the gender of the noun. The masculine noun typically ends in "o", while the feminine noun is indicated by the ending letter "a."

Furthermore, the adjectives must be in plural forms when the noun is plural. This is different from English where only the verb needs to follow the form of the noun. In Spanish, there is typically an "s" added to the adjective to make it plural. Moreover, while the adjective precedes the noun in an English sentence, in Spanish, the adjective comes after the noun.

With verbs, English seems to be a bit simpler. In Spanish, the verb takes different forms in every tense, depending on the subject. For example, the word work/works, it could be trabajas, trabajo, trabaja, trabajamos or trabajan in Spanish. The word "you" can also be expressed in many ways in Spanish. For singular forms, there is the "Ud" the formal form and "tú" for casual use. Their plural forms are "Uds" and "vosotros."

Whether you want to learn Spanish as a beginner or you want to improve your mastery of the language, know that every language has its own complexities. So just persevere and reap the benefits of speaking another tongue.

Daniel C Howard is a language teacher living in Asia. He has over a decade of experience teaching all ages a variety of subjects. For free info and lessons on Spanish, please visit his blog here.

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