Yet in Spanish, these are all different forms. We have I talk, you talk, he/she/it talks, we talk, and they talk. One can see that there are only two forms in the present tense. Most English verbs are basic in the number of forms that they have. Gendered nouns are difficult at first, but they are one of the fundamental parts of the Spanish language. If someone was talking about a tall man, they would say un hombre alto because the “o” is the masculine adjective ending. La lámpara alta which means the tall lamp features an “a” at the end of alta because this is the feminine ending for the adjective. This is a big adjustment from English because there are no gendered nouns in English.Īdding onto this, adjectives have to match these gendered nouns. The lamp and a bottle would be la lámpara y una botella. Here, el means the but it is the masculine version of the. In Spanish, however, one of the largest initial differences is the gendered nouns that are used in Spanish. The same is true for a lamp, a bottle, and all nouns in English. False cognates are very important when first learning Spanish.Ī car in English is simply a car. So a conversation where someone wants to say “sorry, I’m embarrassed” quickly becomes “sorry, I’m pregnant”. This is particularly bad for male speakers because this word actually means pregnant. Many native English speakers, male and female alike, will confuse this word for embarrassed. A more comical example of this can be seen with the word embarazado/a. One might see the Spanish word balón and think it means balloon, but it actually means ball and could be used to refer to something such as a soccer ball. There are, however, false cognates which exist as well. Concentración for example, is almost identical to its English equivalent concentration. Many other Spanish words translate almost directly into English, which makes the initial learning experience much easier a beginner will quickly find themselves able to understand a large proportion of the language without any formal training because of cognates.

Some words in Spanish look almost exactly like their English counterparts. This is something that Spanish beginners should know before diving deeper into the language. In this post, I want to discuss the top 5 language differences that one may find between Spanish and English when they begin learning Spanish at a beginner level. Regardless of their nature, these differences which are both large and small help to form a language. It quickly becomes clear that all languages have rules, some of which make sense and others seem arbitrary.

Any new language is a big first step and each language has its own oddities and differences, but the language differences between English and Spanish are particularly clear when first learning Spanish. Learning Spanish with only an English background can seem like a difficult endeavor at first.

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