Fascinating Facts about the Spanish Language

Spanish from the perspective of the English speaker has certain quirks. They are not really quirks, but logical, way more logical than the illogical rules of pronunciation and grammar that we have in English. So they appear strange to us.

Etymology & Roots

Spanish is a Romance language derived from Vulgar Latin, meaning the Latin spoken colloquially. Its Latin roots make it like Italian and around 45% of the English register. It is therefore often easy to learn for English students if they are shown the Latin origins and links between English and Spanish.

Populous Language

It is today spoken by over 560 million people in more than 54 countries. The main reason was the colonization of South America by Spain, which led to the establishment of Spanish as a lingua franca in several countries of South America.

Phonetic Language

Spanish is a highly phonetic language. This means, that there are strict rules of pronunciation and reading and writing are aligned. Unlike in English, we read adhering to strict rules of phonetics with very few exceptions to rules.

Grammatical Genders of all Nouns

In Spanish, like in most European languages, all nouns including inanimate ones have a grammatical gender unlike in English. In English, we use the biological gender of living creatures and consider inanimate and most non-human nouns as neuter gender. In Spanish, however, there is no neuter gender, and all nouns are either masculine or feminine. Note, that this gender is grammatical, not biological. This is very similar to Hindi, where all nouns are either masculine or feminine. Strange, but true, two completely unrelated languages have a common grammatical feature.

Thus, for example, a table, a house and a class are feminine (la mesa, la casa, la clase), other nouns like a car, a book and a language are masculine (el coche, el libro, el idioma).

No Double Negation in Spanish

A common myth among Spanish learners is that it has a concept of double negation. This is not correct.  NO, NOT AT ALL. There is only a single negation, just like in English.

Take for example the sentence:

No, my name is not John.

At the face of it, it appears a double negation in English too. But is it really? It’s only two separate emphases on the negation. No. My name is NOT John,

No, no me llamo Juan.  Me llamo Pedro.

Simple!It’s a different matter, that both words „no“ and „not“ are „no“ in Spanish. So, it “appears” to be a double negation to the English reader.

Unlike French, which does indeed have a double negation with „pas“

Non, je no m’applelle pas John. Here no and pas form the double negation. This is not the case in Spanish.

Two Distinct Past Tenses

The amateur learner believes Spanish to have two past tenses. Well in one way yes, but not quite really. There is a preterit tense which is the simple past, and there is also an imperfect tense. The imperfect past tense talks about activities generally done and described in the past, whereas the preterit talks about a specific incident at a specific time in the past.