Comparison Of English And Spanish Languages; Defining Similarities And Differences
Table of Contents
An opening
Comparing Sounds
Compare Grammar
English Spanish
The Relationship Between Language and Thinking
Obtaining
In conclusion
An opening
English was my first language during childhood. It is also the only native language I have. Sherman Oaks is a Los Angeles-area suburb in the San Fernando Valley. Sherman Oaks, a predominantly English-speaking area, is where I grew up. As a result, English was my first language. My extended family is also from communities similar to Sherman Oaks (i.e. Edina is a suburban area of Minneapolis and Hastings is a New York City suburb. Both have English as the primary language. Since English was my only exposure to language during my childhood, I have been exposed to it almost exclusively.
As I grew up, and ventured outside of my own neighborhood to visit friends or to eat in restaurants located in other cities of the Valley, it was then that I noticed many different languages from Spanish to Hebrew. Initially, I listened to their sounds and noticed how much they differed from English. As time went on, I began to learn words and phrases in these languages just by being exposed to them. Hebrew is one language I am familiar with because I learned Jewish prayers in Hebrew during my youth at my temple. Although I wasn’t taught vocabulary or grammar, I had experience speaking Hebrew in a religious context.
In elementary and secondary school I studied Hebrew/Judaism a lot, but this stopped when I went to highschool. Cleveland High School was located in Reseda in another Valley neighborhood. The linguistics of this area was quite different to my home town, Sherman Oaks. There was a large Spanish-speaking population. The only foreign language taught in highschool was Spanish. These classes focused more on vocabulary and grammar than speaking the language. Each chapter contained vocabulary words, as well a new rule of grammar (e.g. The past tense conjugation. After I had reached Spanish 3, my teacher would give us one or even two days each week when we could only speak Spanish. This was to test how well we knew the language. The material was not retained well because the teacher’s approach was not focused on the words and rules that are used most often in everyday conversation.
Spanish and English both have voiced and voiceless fricatives, but the pronunciations are different. Both languages use voiced as well as voiceless alveolar fricatives. The major difference, however, is that there are only two of these voiced fricatives. The first one is produced by flattening the lips while pushing the tongue toward the alveolar area. For the second, rounding the mouth and pushing the same way towards the alveolar area will work.
This sound is not found in the English language. The voiced nasal alveolar sound [n] can be heard in many Spanish words, including nino or pequeno. The same as the alveolar sound in the paragraph above, you can make this sound by putting your tongue on the alveolar bone and simultaneously exhaling through your nose. This sound is not in English, but I’ve had no trouble making it.
In English, there is no voiced alveopalatal fluid [r]. This sound is common in Spanish and is used to describe words such as perro, carro, etc. In English there is only one voiced alveolar [r] sound, which can be found in words including rope and vehicle. Both sounds are produced by slightly unrounding the lips and pressing your tongue against the alveolar ridge. When producing the Spanish [r] sound, however, you need to rapidly vibrate your lips and tongue in order to achieve the rolling sound. It took me a while to get used to this sound, because in English there’s nothing similar.
Comparing GrammarSpanish and English both have a subject-verb-object order in their sentences. Below is an example in each language of how the SVO structure works.
Bill come la manzana. Bill eats an apple.
The student is going to the library
English uses the SVO even when there is no object. The English rule “Carlos ate oranges” is the same as the Spanish one, but the Spanish version does not follow this rule. In Spanish, this would result in a word order change.
Carlos comio las naranjas Carlos las comio.
Carlos ate his oranges.
Both languages modify nouns differently. A noun phrase in English is made up of a determinator, an adjectival phrase and noun. A noun is never placed before an adjective, regardless the circumstances (e.g. big balloon, orange bottle, etc.). In Spanish, on the other hand, descriptive modifi cations come before nouns. It is true that adjectives are usually descriptive. However, those adjectives that have an emotional or subjective aspect to them will follow the noun.
English SpanishYoung man El hombre viejo
Black pants Los pantelones negro
Red apple La manzana roja
*Three computers *Tres computadoras
This is a Spanish example where the adjective follows the noun.
It was difficult at first to write and say Spanish sentences correctly, even though I understand the differences between the two. Because I was taught English during “critical age,” I have the grammar rules deeply embedded in my memory. While I am still learning Spanish, I must still think about the rules and make mistakes when applying English rules. When I was talking to a Spanish friend the other night about my “old mobile phone”, I returned to English word ordering by using ‘el vejo telefono,’ rather than ‘el telo viejo.
The two genders of Spanish grammar are masculine and female. This can be seen across the Spanish-speaking world, particularly in nouns. The endings for nouns can indicate gender by using -o and -a. The.o ending signifies masculine nouns (ex. The -o ending denotes a masculine noun (ex. Nina and Manzana. In Spanish, the articles are used to indicate gender. If a male noun preceded with ‘el/un chico’ or by a feminine noun, then ‘la/una Chica-the/a girl’ is used. Nouns in Spanish that are not gender-specific must also follow the above rules. The Spanish language assigns articles to even gender-neutral nouns. It’s a lot different than English where nouns have no gender and ‘the article’ is all there is.
Whorfian determinism is the Whorfian hypotheses. It states that our language structure determines the way we see the world. It is a hypothesis that suggests that certain languages cause their speakers to perceive the world differently from other languages. One could then assume that Spanish native speakers see the universe as a dualism because they divide all things, ideas, and concepts into two categories, masculine and femininity. In this way, a Spanish speaker could attribute masculinity or femininity to certain characteristics based only on the nouns they use. It seems logical at first glance, but if you analyze it closely, it’s a circular reasoning fallacy. Spanish speakers are said to view the world from a feminine or masculine perspective because they categorize the world in linguistic terms. Spanish speakers categorize the world according to gender, and they do this by seeing certain aspects as masculine or female. Circular reasoning ultimately disproves Whorfian thought and language.
AcquisitionAs a native English-speaker, I went through the normal language acquisition process during my critical childhood years. Because of this, I can speak English with ease and construct grammatically-correct utterances easily without having to think about it. My Spanish is not as good. My Spanish is not as fluent as my English because I have only been studying it for a very short time. My utterances often aren’t grammatically correct or meaningful. I have to struggle with producing them in a timely way. I am not a native Spanish speaker, so it is difficult to create a coherent grammatical expression that includes all terms and tenses. The vocabulary can be a problem as well, because multiple words may have the same definition, but they are all used in different contexts. In Spanish, for example, the words ser and estear both mean to be. However, they are used in different contexts. Physical description, possession and other things are used for estar. This is one of many examples of my English learning continuing to surpass my other languages.
ConclusionAlthough English, Spanish and other languages may seem similar, there are still differences between them in terms of morphology and syntax. Over the long term, learning a foreign language can be challenging for older people. They will likely never be able understand all the rules or structures of another language.
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