Language Structure

Introduction

The Spanish language is a member of the Romance group of the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. The official language of Mexico, Spanish is spoken as a first language by about 330 million persons worldwide and as a second language by perhaps another 50 million.  Spain is where the language originated and it was later brought by Spanish explorers, colonists, and empire-builders to the Western Hemisphere and other parts of the world during the last five centuries. Spanish vocabulary is basically of Latin origin, although it has been enriched by many loan words from other languages, especially Arabic, French, Italian, and various indigenous languages of North, Central, and South America. The oldest extant written records of Spanish date from the middle of the 10th cent. AD

Vowels

All vowels of the Spanish language are the same as in English language with the exception of using y as an alternate vowel.

Consonants

Spanish has the same 21 consonants as the English Language with the addition of ch, ll, ñ, and rr.  A tilde is placed over the n ( ñ ) indicates the pronunciation ni, as in English pinion.  The acute accent (´) is used to make clear which syllable of a word is to be stressed when the regular rules of stress are not followed. The acute accent is also employed to distinguish between homonyms, as in sé ( “I know” ) and se ( “self” ).

Grammar

Nouns - Spanish nouns can be either masculine or feminine.  If the noun is masculine it will be can preceded by el (the) and end in an o, while a feminine noun can be preceded by la (the) and end in an a.  See below for examples:

"El" and "la" both mean "the."

Definitive and Indefinitive Articles

In English the definitive article is always the same no matter how many or what gender (i.e. the cookie, the cookies).  In Spanish there are four different forms depended on the article's number and gender (i.e. el gato - one male cat, los gatos - plural male cats, la gata - one female cat, las gatas - plural female cats).

In English the infinitive article is the word a, an, or some.  In Spanish the infinitive article has four forms depending on if the noun is masculine, feminine, singular, or plural.  For example;

Formal and Familiar Language Usage

Spanish has a formal and an informal form of the word you.  Usted is more formal and generally used to express respect.  Tú is familiar and is used among friends, family, co-workers, relatives, or when addressing a child.  For example when speaking to your teacher you would use usted, but when talking to a classmate you would use tú.

Verbs

All Spanish verbs are either regular or irregular.  Verbs that are regular end in er, ir, and ar.  Each category of verb has it's own conjugation rules dependent on the subject of the verbs.

Irregular verbs have conjugations that must be memorized as they are independent of the verb and the subject.

Adjectives

In Spanish adjectives are dependent on gender and number.  In addition the adjective almost always follows the noun.  For example instead of saying the blue ball you would say the ball blue.

Questions

In Spanish there may be several ways to ask the same question.  For example to ask if Maria speaks Spanish you can ask her in one of the following ways:

Maria speaks Spanish?

Speak Maria Spanish?

Speak Spanish Maria?

Also inverted questions marks begin each questions (i.e. ¿María habla español?)

Click here to pronunciation of the Spanish Language