SPANISH-AMERICAN
CONTRASTIVE
ANALYSIS
SEE ALSO “SPANISH-AMERICAN HUMOR”
AND “CISNEROS’ HUMOROUS NAMES”
by Don L. F. Nilsen
and Alleen Pace Nilsen
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SPAIN, FRANCE, ITALY
AND PORTUGAL (Parra Guinaldo 4)
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SPAIN AND PORTUGAL (Parra
Guinaldo 5)
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Don Quixote’s Mind:
Rocinante, Dulcinea, Sancho Panza,
Lance & Windmills
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CODE SWITCHING


L. Dabène said, “In the case of
the first generation, Code
Switching is often used as a
remedial strategy to
incompetence.”
“In the case of the second
generation, code switching can
fulfill different functions:”
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

“It enables the speaker to claim
his/her identity.”
“It expresses a kind of complicity
with the others or, on the other
hand, it reveals a strategy of
divergence from the
environment.”
 (Dabène 160)
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
“Code Switching enables the
speaker to express commentaries
about the language
(metalinguistic use), to comment
on what has just been said
(metadiscursive use), or to
change the type of interaction, to
select other interlocutors or to
switch from a dialogue to a
collective exchange
(metacommunicative use).”
 (Dabène 160)
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SPANGLISH


“Spanglish” is a new kind of slang
finding its way not only into
conversations but also into short
stories, novels, popular music,
comedy acts, and television sitcoms.
Sprinkled through English sentences
are such insertions as “Que no?,”
“Tambien,” and “Yo se.”
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

Sometimes English words are
combined with Spanish words, so
that “barber shop” and
“peluqueria” becomes
“barberia.”
Similarly, “chilling out” becomes
“chileando,” and “to park”
becomes “parkear.”
 (Nilsen & Nilsen 283)
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HISPANIC NAMES

In Spain and Latin America, if a
girl were named Ana Maria López
Garcia, she has two surnames.
The first one is her father’s
(López), and the second one is
her mother’s (Garcia).
 (Bengoa 3)
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


If Ana Maria López Garcia married
Gregoria Díaz Rodriguez, then she
would write her name as Ana Maria
López de Díaz.
In Mexico, Ana Maria López de Díaz
would go by her maiden name daily
(Maria López Garcia), but on formal
documentation she would identify
herself with her married name (Ana
Maria López de Díaz).
(Bengoa 3-4)
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 If
she were to have a
child, Alicia, Alicia’s full
name would be Alicia
López Díaz, keeping both
her father’s and her
mother’s surnames
(Bengoa 3).
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SPANGLISH TEST 1

bacuncliner
• vacuum cleaner

biper
• beeper or pager

boyla
• boiler

chileando
• chilling out

choping
• shopping

fafu
• fast food

jangear
• hanging out

joldoperos
• muggers, holdup artists
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SPANGLISH TEST 2

liqueo
• to leak

maicrogüey
• microwave oven

pulover
• T-shirt

roofo
• roof

sangüiche
• sandwich

tensén
• ten-cent store like K-Mart or Woolworths
• --Alvarez 487
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Phonological Differences 1



English has 13 vowels; Spanish
has only 5 vowels
Spanish is a syllable-timed
language; English is a stresstimed language
Spanish /d/ and /ð/ are
alaphonic as in “duda”
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Phonological Differences 2



English has a retroflex /r/; Spanish
has a flapped /r/ and a trilled /r/
written as <r> and <rr>
English has no velar fricative <x> or
<j>
Spanish doesn’t distinguish between
/č/ and /š/, or between /s/ and /z/
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Orthographic Differences 1






Spanish <ll> is pronounced /y/;
Spanish <l> is pronounced /l/
Spanish <j> is a velar fricative
Spanish <b> and <v> are both the
same (bilabial fricatives)
Spanish has <ñ> for the /ny/ sound
Spanish <h> is not pronounced
Spanish has a <q> but no <k> or <c>
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Orthographic Differences 2



Spanish begins questions with
<¿> and exclamations with <i>
Spanish uses a period for
thousands, and a comma for a
decimal; English does the reverse
Spanish uses «…» for quotation
marks, not “…”
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Morphological Differences




Spanish verbs are more highly
inflected than are English verbs
Spanish adjectives agree with
the nouns they modify in number
and gender
Spanish has grammatical gender;
English has natural gender
Spanish uses the definite article
differently as in “el señor Jones”
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Name Differences

In Spain and Latin America, if a
girl were named Ana Maria López
Garcia, she has two surnames.
The first one is her father’s
(López), and the second one is
her mother’s (Garcia).
 (Bengoa 3)
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

If Ana Maria López Garcia married
Gregorio Díaz Rodriguez, then she
would write her name as Ana Maria
López de Díaz.
In Mexico, Ana Maria López de Díaz
would go by her maiden name daily
(Maria López Garcia), but on formal
documentation she would identify
herself with her married name (Ana
Maria López de Díaz).
 (Bengoa 3-4)
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If she were to have a
child, Alicia, Alicia’s full
name would be Alicia
López Díaz, keeping
both her father’s and
her mother’s surnames.
 (Bengoa 3).

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Syntactic Differences



English adjectives come before
nouns; Spanish adjectives come
after nouns
Spanish has “pro-drop” which
means that a subject pronoun
can be dropped; English does not
Spanish has double negatives
(“No tiene nada”); English does
not
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Semantic Differences 1



Some English-Spanish cognates don’t
have the same meaning
Consider the following Spanish words:
“actual,” “libraria,” “grocería,”
“molestar,” “embarazada” and
“principio”
In English, these words mean
“present,” “bookstore,” “vulgarity,”
“to bother,” “pregnant” and
“beginning,” respectively
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Semantic Differences 2


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A single Spanish word can have
more than one English meaning:
Spanish “hacer” means either
“make” or “do”
Spanish “su” means either “his,”
“her,” or “its”
Spanish “en” means either “on,”
“in,” “into,” or “at”
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Semantic Differences 3

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Or, a single English word can have
more than one Spanish meaning:
English “time” in Spanish can be
“tiempo,” “vez,” or “hora”
English “hot” in Spanish can be
“picante,” or “caliente”
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In conclusion,
consider these riddles:

Spanish “plata” means “silver,”
Spanish “oro” means “gold,” and
Spanish “platano” means “banana”

Qué es come oro, pero plata no es?

Platano es.
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!Spanish “se parecen” means
“similarity”
Spanish “manzano” means “apple”
Spanish “tren” means “train”
Spanish “pera” means “pear”
Spanish “espera” means “to wait”



En qué se parecen una manzano y
un tren?
No es pera. = No espera.
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
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!!Spanish “estrellas” means
“stars” Spanish “hay” means “are
there” Spanish “cielos” means
“heavens” Spanish “cinquenta”
means “fifty” Spanish “sin
quenta” means “countless
Cuantas estrellas hay en los
cielos?
Cinquenta. = Sin quenta
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
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!!!Spanish “perezoso” means “lazy”
Spanish “mundo” means “world”
Spanish “nada” means both
“nothing” and “it swims”
Cual animal es el mas perezoso del
mundo?
El pez.
Qué hace el pez?
Nada.
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References # 1:
Agosín, Marjorie. “Always Living in Spanish”
(Eschholz 116-118).
Ahern, Maureen V., and Don L. F. Nilsen. “A
Comparison of Animal Dead Metaphors in
English and Spanish Speech.” The Bilingual
Review/La Revista Bilingue 3.2 (1976): 163175.
Alvarez, Lizette Alvarez. “It’s the Talk of Nueva
York: The Hybrid called Spanglish” (Clark,
483-488).
Ardila, Alfredo. “Spanglish: An Anglicized
Spanish Dialect.” Hispanic Journal of
Behavioral Sciences 27.1 (2005): 60-81.
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References # 2:
Bausa, Vanessa. “Internet Spanglish” (Eschholz 517519).
Bengoa, Sharon. “Phenomena Born from Languages in
Contact: Spanglish and Chicano English.” Tempe, AZ:
ASU LIN 515 Paper, April 25, 2006.
Clark, Virginia, Paul Eschholz, and Alfred Rosa.
Language: Readings in Language and Culture, 6th
Edition. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1998.
Dabène, L. “Le Parler Bilingue Issus de l’Immigration en
France.” in Jacobson, 159-168.
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References # 3:
Eschholz, Paul, Alfred Rosa, and Virginia Clark, eds.
Language Awareness: Readings for College Writers,
Ninth Edition. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005.
Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman, and Nina Hyams. An
Introduction to Language, 8th Edition. Boston, MA:
Thomson Wadsworth, 2007.
Jacobson, R., ed. Codeswitching as a World
Phenomenon. New York, NY: Peter Lang, 1990.
Morales, Ed. Living in Spanglish: The Search for Latino
Identity. New York, NY: St Martins Press, 2002.
Nilsen, Don L. F. “False Cognates in English and
Spanish.” in Studies in Descriptive and Historical
Linguistics. Ed. Paul J. Hopper. Amsterdam,
Netherlands: John Benjamins, 1977, 174-185.
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References # 4:
Nilsen, Alleen Pace, and Don L. F. Nilsen.
Encyclopedia of 20th Century American
Humor. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000.
Parra Guinaldo, Victor. The Development of the
Latin Initial F- in Old Spanish. PowerPoint
Presentation. Tempe, AZ: A.S.U., April, 2006.
Rodriguez, González F. Spanish Loanwords in
the English Language: A Tendency towards
Hegemony Reversal. New York, NY: Mouton
de Gruyter, 1996.
Stavans, Ilan. Spanglish: The Making of a New
American Language. New York, NY: First
Rayo/HarperCollins, 2003.
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