7 Key Grammar Differences Between Spanish and English

7 Key Grammar Differences Between Spanish and English Because Spanish and English are Indo-European languages- the two have a common origin from several thousand years ago from somewhere in Eurasia- they are alike in ways that go beyond their shared Latin-based vocabulary. The structure of Spanish isnt difficult for English speakers to understand when compared with, for example, Japanese or Swahili. Both languages, for example, use the parts of speech in basically the same way. Prepositions (preposiciones) are called that, for instance, because they are pre-positioned before an object. Some other languages have postpositions and circumpositions that are absent in Spanish and English. Even so, there are distinct differences in the grammars of the two languages. Learning them will help you avoid some of the common  learning mistakes. Here are seven major differences that beginning students would do well to learn; all but the last two should be addressed in the first year of Spanish instruction: Placement of Adjectives One of the first differences youre likely to notice is that Spanish descriptive adjectives (those that tell what a thing or being is like) typically come after the noun they modify, while English usually places them before. Thus we would say hotel confortable for comfortable hotel and actor ansioso for anxious actor. Descriptive adjectives in Spanish can come before the noun- but that changes the meaning of the adjective slightly, usually by adding some emotion or subjectivity. For example, while an hombre pobre would be a poor man in the sense of one not having money, a pobre hombre would be a man who is poor in the sense of being pitiful. The two examples above could be restated as confortable hotel and ansioso actor, respectively, but the meaning might be changed in a way that isnt readily translated. The first might emphasize the luxurious nature of the hotel, while the second might suggest a more clinical type of anxiety rather than a simple case of nervousness- the exact differences will vary with the context. The same rule applies in Spanish for adverbs; placing the adverb before the verb gives it a more emotional or subjective meaning. In English, adverbs can often go before or after the verb without affecting the meaning. Gender The differences here are stark: Gender is a key feature of Spanish grammar, but only a few vestiges of gender  remain in English. Basically, all Spanish nouns are masculine or feminine (there also is a less-used neuter gender used with a few pronouns), and adjectives or pronouns must match in gender the nouns they refer to. Even inanimate objects can be referred to as ella (she) or à ©l (he). In English, only people, animals, and a few nouns, such as a ship that can be referred to as she, have gender. Even in those cases, the gender matters only with pronoun use; we use the same adjectives to refer to men and women. (A possible exception is that some writers differentiate between blond and blonde based on gender.) An abundance of Spanish nouns, especially those referring to occupations, also have masculine and feminine forms; for example, a male president is a presidente, while a female president is traditionally called a presidenta. English gendered equivalents are limited to a few roles, such as actor and actress. (Be aware that in modern usage, such gender distinctions are  fading. Today, a female president might be called a presidente, just as actor is now often applied to women.) Conjugation English has a few changes in verb forms, adding -s or -es to indicate third-person singular forms in the present tense, adding -ed or sometimes just -d to indicate the simple past tense, and adding -ing to indicate continuous or progressive verb forms. To further indicate tense, English adds auxiliary verbs such as has, have, did, and will in front of the standard verb form. But Spanish takes a different approach to conjugation: Although it also uses auxiliaries, it extensively modifies verb endings to indicate person, mood, and tense. Even without resorting to auxiliaries, which also are used, most verbs have more than 30 forms in contrast with the three of English. For example, among the forms of hablar (to speak) are hablo (I speak), hablan (they speak), hablars (you will speak), hablarà ­an (they would speak), and hables (subjunctive form of you speak). Mastering these conjugated forms- including irregular forms for most of the common verbs- is a key part of learning Spanish. Need for Subjects In both languages, a complete sentence includes at least a subject and a verb. However, in Spanish it is frequently unnecessary to explicitly state the subject, letting the conjugated verb form indicate  who or what is performing the verbs action. In standard English, this is done only with commands (Sit! and You sit! mean the same thing), but Spanish has no such limitation. For example, in English a verb phrase such as will eat says nothing about who will be doing the eating. But in Spanish, it is possible to say comerà © for I will eat and comern for they will eat, to list just two of the six possibilities. As a result, subject pronouns are retained in Spanish primarily if needed for clarity or emphasis. Word Order Both English and Spanish are SVO languages, those in which the typical statement begins with a subject, followed by a verb and, where applicable, an object of that verb. For example, in the sentence The girl kicked the ball, (La nià ±a pateà ³ el balà ³n), the subject is the girl (la nià ±a), the verb is kicked (pateà ³), and the object is the ball (el balà ³n). Clauses within sentences also usually follow this pattern. In Spanish, it is normal for object pronouns (as opposed to nouns) to come before the verb. And sometimes Spanish speakers will even put the subject noun after the verb. Wed never say something like The book wrote it, even in poetic usage, to refer to Cervantes writing a book but the Spanish equivalent is perfectly acceptable, especially in poetic writing: Lo escribià ³ Cervantes. Such variations from the norm are quite common in longer sentences. For example, a construction such as No recuerdo el momento en que salià ³ Pablo (in order, I dont remember the moment in which left Pablo) is not unusual. Spanish also allows and sometimes requires the use of double negatives, in which a negation must occur both before and after a verb, unlike in English. Attributive Nouns It is extremely common in English for nouns to function as adjectives. Such attributive nouns come before the words they modify. Thus in these phrases, the first word is an attributive noun: clothes closet, coffee cup, business office, light fixture. But with rare exceptions, nouns cant be so flexibly used in Spanish. The equivalent of such phrases is usually formed by using a preposition such as de or para: armario de ropa, taza para cafà ©, oficina de negocios, dispositivo de iluminacià ³n. In some cases, this is accomplished by Spanish having adjectival forms that dont exist in English. For example, informtico can be the equivalent of computer as an adjective, so a computer table is a mesa informtica. Subjunctive Mood Both English and Spanish use the subjunctive mood, a type of verb used in certain situations where the verbs action isnt necessarily factual. However, English speakers seldom use the subjunctive, which is necessary for all but basic conversation in Spanish. An instance of the subjunctive can be found in a simple sentence such as Espero que duerma, I hope she is sleeping. The normal verb form for is sleeping would be duerme, as in the sentence Sà © que duerme, I know she is sleeping. Note how Spanish uses different forms in these sentences even though English does not. Almost always, if an English sentence uses the subjunctive, so will its Spanish equivalent. Study in I insist that she study is in the subjunctive mood (the regular or indicative form she studies isnt used here), as is estudie in Insisto que estudie. Key Takeaways Spanish and English are structurally similar because they have common origin in the long-gone Indo-European language.Word order is less fixed in Spanish than it is in English. Some adjectives can come before or after a noun, verbs more often can become the nouns they apply to, and many subjects can be omitted altogether.Spanish has a much more frequent use of the subjunctive mood than English does.