Major
problematic differences
between English & Spanish
We have titled this section "major problematic differences between English and Spanish" because we are referring to differences that are not so obvious and as a result often lead to faulty expressions. These types of differences are the foundation upon which we have developed most of the material in this book.
We believe an understanding of where errors come from can in most cases lead to improvements in your mastery of Standard American English, more so than just saying "That's wrong." For example, if you automatically write sentences such as "There was much people," it might be helpful to recall that gente in Spanish is singular but the equivalent word in English ("people") is plural so you can break this erroneous "Spanish connection" and establish a new one. We hope that doing so will increase your chances of writing "There were many people" in the future.
Below is a list of some of the "major problematic differences between English and Spanish." In the introduction to Chapter 1, you will also find a list of often problematic verb-based differences between English and Spanish that includes the first four below and six others.
- Verb Forms: English verbs work differently from Spanish verbs. By far, most English verbs are regular and use "-ed" for the past tense; it is very easy to learn these forms. However, English has many irregular verbs (most are very common verbs) whose forms need to be mastered one by one. Because most of the English verbs are regular, the tendency is to try to regularize the irregular verbs by using "-ed" endings. If you don't know that "to seek" is an irregular verb, you might be tempted to say "She seeked the truth" rather than "She sought the truth."
- Helping Verbs: English relies more on helping verbs than Spanish does to accomplish what Spanish verbs usually achieve through inflections (verb endings). A perfect example is hablaba, which can only be rendered in English with two words, a helper and the participle, "was talking." Spanish also has helping verbs, of course, and some of them are used just about the same way as in English, as in Ella ha visitado for "She has visited." However, Spanish helping verbs are also inflected much more so than their English counterparts, which sometimes means even more helping verbs will be required in English. Thus, whereas Spanish has only one helper in Hubiera sido feliz, English must have two because "have" can't be inflected as haber can. Thus we need to say, "He would have been happy."
- Prepositions in Two-Word Verbs: Many verbs require that certain prepositions be used with them to indicate their proper meanings or to change their meanings in a variety of ways. For example, "throw the spoiled food" does not mean to "discard the food in a trashcan," the meaning the speaker probably intends, but literally means, "toss the spoiled food into the air." "Throw out the spoiled food" is needed instead. Be careful, however, because "Throw up the spoiled food" creates a totally different meaning (as in "Vomit the spoiled food up")! To omit these prepositions because Spanish doesn't use them or to use the wrong preposition in a two-word verb can result in either major or minor miscommunication.
- Subjunctive and Conditional Moods: The subjunctive and conditional moods (which deal with conditions that are contrary to fact or that are not certain, or maybe not even possible) are less common and much less elaborate in English than in Spanish. In fact, English doesn't have a real conditional mood - but rather uses modal helping verbs ending in "-ould," as in "He could go" for Podría ir. Also, whereas Spanish would use the subjunctive vayamos in Pueda ser que vayamos en junio, English speakers indicate such subjunctive meanings by stating the situation in another way that shows uncertainty or by using the helpers "may" and "might": "There's a chance we will go in June" or "We may or might go in June." English uses an actual subjunctive verb (that is, without a helper) only in a limited number of contexts. Such "true" English subjunctive verbs aren't formed by adding special endings to the verb but rather by using a more common form of the verb in a context different from its normal use. For example, "were" is usually reserved for the regular past plural as in "In those days they were happy," but to create a subjunctive meaning, "were" can be used with a singular subject to refer to the present time: "If he were ready, he would go with you." Mastering the strange English subjunctive (or what is left of it) can be challenging, but it occurs often enough that it cannot simply be ignored.
- Active and Passive Voice: English has a preference for active voice instead of passive constructions. When the doer of the action is the subject of the sentence ("The teacher punished the student"), we have the active voice, but we have the passive when the receiver of the action is the subject of the sentence ("The student was punished by the teacher"). While it is incorrect to say Spanish speakers use the formal passive anymore often than English speakers do (El alumno fue castigado por el maestro), they do frequently rely on the pasiva refleja to say such things as Eso ni se sabe ni se pregunta. Instead of saying "That isn't known and it isn't asked" (although grammatically correct), native speakers of English would be more likely to use an active construction and say, "Nobody knows that, and nobody asks it either." English prefers the more direct approach of the active voice in most contexts unless the "doer" isn't known ("My car was stolen last night") - and even then we often use an active construction ("Someone stole my car last night").
- Expressing Subjects: In English, sentences that are not questions or commands must have a word or word group before the verb, which is usually (but not always) the subject. If we wrote a sentence that said "Have a lot of money," it wouldn't make any sense because we wouldn't know who has the money - they, he, you, or I. Spanish doesn't have that problem because verb endings convey the various meanings, as in Tienes mucho dinero or Tenemos mucho dinero. There is no need to say tú or nosotros. But even when the meaning in an English sentence is clear, it is still wrong to begin a statement without placing the subject or other word(s) before the verb. "Were many people at the party" is completely clear but totally wrong if it is intended as a statement rather a question. We must either move the subject and say "Many people were at the party" or use the expletive "there" and say "There were many people at the party."
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Word Order: There is less flexibility in word order in English than in
Spanish. Here are the options that can be used in Spanish to provide different
types of emphasis:
Maribel fue muy tarde a trabajar.
Maribel fue a trabajar muy tarde.
Muy tarde Maribel fue a trabajar.
Of these three options, in normal conversation English has only one: "Maribel went to work very late." We do not ordinarily say, "Maribel went very late to work" or "Maribel very late went to work." - Possession: Unlike Spanish, English can show ownership or attribute qualities to nouns with forms that in writing use the apostrophe ('), a piece of punctuation Spanish doesn't use. These two uses of the apostrophe must be sorted out - the 's (as in "one girl's book,") and the s' (as in "many girls' books"). The apostrophe can be confusing because it can also be used for contractions, that is, the joining together of two words in an abbreviated fashion to make speech easier (as in "don't" for "do not"). English can also indicate possession with "of" phrases just as Spanish uses de, but the situations in which we do so are much more limited than in Spanish, as in "the blessings of democracy," but never "the blessings of Lucy." Some Spanish-speakers also over generalize apostrophe possession by making statements such as "the box's side" rather than "the side of the box."
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Double Negatives: English does not like double negatives. In Spanish they
are properly used to convey negative meaning. In English, one negative technically
cancels another one out and makes the meaning positive, just as in math. Nadie
me dijo nada doesn't mean the same thing as "No one told me nothing." "No one
told me nothing" literally means "There was not one person who said nothing to
me," but we can be fairly sure that most speakers are not trying to convey the
positive meaning, "Everybody told me something." Therefore, we should say instead,
"No one told me anything." Although there are certain contexts when English speakers
use the double negative to convey a positive or at least a neutral meaning, generally
it is not done due to possible confusion. To say "I don't want him not to come"
means the speaker is not against his coming, but is not necessarily for it either.
In colloquial contexts and in certain dialects, you will often hear double negatives
used as negative expressions ("Don't do nothing I wouldn't do"), but you are advised
against using such constructions in academic or professional environments - and
certainly in most writing.
The problem many Spanish speakers (and even native English speakers) often have in this area is related to less obvious negatives such as "hardly" and "scarcely," both of which usually mean "not very often." "Mark doesn't hardly go out anymore" is a double negative; for correctness it should be "Mark hardly goes out anymore" (that is, "Mark does not go out very often"). - Articles: Although English articles ("a," "an," and "the") are in some way similar to those in Spanish, they are different enough to create a few problems for the Spanish speaker. For example, unlike Spanish, English doesn't allow for the use of "the" in front of general abstract nouns, such as the word "peace" in this sentence: "The world needs peace" for El mundo necesita la paz. Notice that "world" is a specific concrete place, so it is "the world," but "peace" is a general abstraction and does not need to be preceded by "the." However, we could say, "The peace between the United States and Mexico is a model for the rest of Latin America." Here we are speaking of a specific peace. Another problem with articles is deciding when to use "a" and "an." It's "an herb" because the "h" isn't pronounced and so we begin with a vowel sound, but "a Hispanic" because it is pronounced and so we begin with a consonant sound.
- False Cognates: Because English and Spanish have a wide range of word pairs that are almost identical, it is tempting to assume that the meanings are also almost identical. In many cases, the meanings are indeed the same (as in rápido and "rapid," for example), but sometimes the meanings may be slightly different. For example, "idiom" in English refers to the conventional way something is said in a particular language, whereas idioma in Spanish refers to the whole language. Thus, the sentence "I don't speak your idiom" doesn't really make any sense. The only way to avoid errors here is to learn which cognates are false and instead to use the term(s) that say what you actually mean. (Notice again that "actually" and actualmente are false cognates: the English word here means "really" or "in fact" whereas the Spanish word means "presently" in English.)
- Verbals: English has three verb forms that function as other parts of speech: participles ("-ing" forms used as adjectives as in "the singing nun"); infinitives as in "to err is human"; and gerunds as in "Swimming is good exercise." Spanish has similar forms but their uses are not always comparable to those of English. Often, for example, when Spanish prefers the infinitive as in No fumar, English prefers the gerund as in "No smoking."
- Conceptual Distinctions: English makes distinctions between some closely related concepts that Spanish doesn't and vice versa. An example is the difference between "in" and "on." English sees a distinction that Spanish doesn't emphasize. Thus Spanish uses en to cover both concepts. We live "in" a house, not "on" a house. We live "on" a street, not "in" a street. We also call the walking surface inside a house a "floor," and outside the house "the ground." In Spanish, piso can be used for either. These differences can easily result in confusion and miscommunication if the wrong word choice is made. Imagine being told to "clean the floor" before the party, only to learn that it's an outside party, and the speaker really wanted you to pick up the trash and junk from the yard. You might have wasted quite a bit of time inside the house!
- Idioms: Because idioms, by definition, are unique ways of saying things that aren't derived by rules or sometimes even any obvious logic, you must learn them one by one. For example, in English, we "pay" attention; in Spanish, you "put" it. In English we "make" a decision; in Spanish, you "take" it. In English, we go on a "vacation"; in Spanish, you go on "vacations." To talk about "vacations" in English would mean more than one vacation. This book, however, will not deal with interpretive idioms, which are called "figurative" because they are not literal, such as "between a rock and a hard place," the English equivalent of entre la espada y la pared. Neither expression has anything to do with real rocks or swords, and that's why they are called "figurative."
- Interrelated Word Forms: In both English and Spanish, words change forms to take on special meanings or to create different parts of speech, but the derived forms of similar words in English do not always parallel their Spanish equivalents. For example, impresión and "impression" correspond to one another very closely, but the other related forms of the word are quite different. The English verb "impress" is used to mean impresionar; there is no "impressionate." Likewise, the equivalent of impresionante in English is "impressive"; there is no "impressionant." Because there are in fact many perfect matches, as in "vibrate" for vibrar and "vibrant" for vibrante, students often over generalize and make errors by assuming there are matches where they don't exist, as in "I was very impressionated by that movie." We call such word "logical nonwords" because they were derived by a logical comparison of patterns between the two languages, but because the patterns don't overlap one another completely, they are nonwords. To simply say they are "spelling errors" misses the point. When in doubt about the derived forms of a word, don't assume a perfect match between the two languages. Rather, use your Spanish/English dictionary to find the correct form.
- Connotations: Some words in English don't have the same emotional overtones, or connotations, associated with them as in Spanish. For example, to say someone is "unhappy" in English is merely an observation and not the insult that infeliz is in Spanish. Even though two words may be similar in terms of what they literally mean in both languages (that is, their denotations), they may have quite different emotional dimensions. Again, these differences have to be learned individually. Sometimes problems with connotations are mixed in with problems related to denotations. For example, "little" means "a small amount of" when used with a singular word, as in "little patience," but when used with a plural, it means "small in size" rather than number. Thus, to say "You have little problems" suggests that the speaker thinks the listener's problems are insignificant. The listener might consider the remark insulting, even though it wasn't intended that way. To convey the meaning of "small in number," you should say, "You have few problems." The error is to assume that poco and pocos can always be translated as "little," but doing so can create different denotations and also connotations.
- Capitalization: Many words that would be considered proper nouns in English, and thus capitalized, are not capitalized in Spanish. For example, English capitalizes the days of the week (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday) while Spanish doesn't (lunes, martes, miércoles) and the names of languages and nationalities (English, Spanish, Portuguese but inglés, español, and portugués). Also, Spanish and English capitalize titles differently. Errors occur in this area because students don't always pay attention to the technical details that only relate to the written form of a language and so might write sentences such as "I have my english class on monday."
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Spelling: One of the main drawbacks of English is its antiquated and unregulated
spelling system. Although many words are spelled similarly between the two languages,
such as "organization" and "organización," the similarities in spelling are not
a reliable guide. Spanish spelling is consistently rule-based. Although there
are rules for English spelling, they have so many exceptions that they're not
very helpful, though there are a few rules that we will discuss that have some
value. The biggest problem is that one letter does not correspond to one sound
in English as letters generally do in Spanish. English pronunciation has also
changed over the years, but the spelling has remained the same. For example, the
strange "k" in "know" and "knight" used to be pronounced as a hard "k," and the
"gh" used to exist as a kind of throat-clearing sound. To further complicate the
spelling problem, many Spanish speakers resort to phonetic spellings (as in "enuf"
for "enough" or "thru" for "through"); to make matters worse, such spellings are
sometimes even seen on signs, as in "Drive-Thru" and "Nite Deposit."
Without a doubt, spelling can be a headache in learning English. Thank God for dictionaries, spell checkers, and secretaries! However, beware of the "spell-check" feature on word processing programs. As of yet, they can only tell if a word is misspelled, but not if it is misused. Thus, "spell-check" will see nothing wrong with "Nora is hopping for a good grade in math." "Hopping" is a correct spelling that comes from "hop" and means to jump up and down, which is probably not what Nora is doing. She's probably "hoping for a good grade," but the computer doesn't know that. The writer wrote one thing but meant another, a common problem dealt with in the next section. There is also the constant problem of double letters in English. Whereas Spanish has acomodar English has "accommodate." These little differences can be maddening.
