Kim V. Steier
Wilkes University
SPANISH AND ENGLISH
LANGUAGE COMPARISON
The Spanish Language
 Spanish is a Romance language, descended from
Latin and belonging to the Indo-European
language family (Grolier, 1991, p. 143).
Historically, it has been spoken mainly in Spain
and Latin America, but today is the first
language of an increasing number of ELLs in the
United States. This language comparison
presentation examines the similarities and
differences between Spanish and English from
the perspective of explaining the types of
language errors made by L1 Spanish speakers
and the resulting instructional implications for
ESL classroom settings.
The Spanish Alphabet
 The Spanish language is written using the
Spanish alphabet, which is the addition of
one letter, eñe (ñ), to the Latin alphabet.
This difference in alphabets does not present
a problem for native Spanish speakers
learning English. While there are many
similarities between the Spanish and English
consonant systems, the differences between
the vowel systems and sentence stress
present significant difficulties for ELLs.
Coe (1987) defines the vowel
differences as follows:
 Spanish has 5 pure vowels and 5 diphthongs. The
length of the vowel is not significant in
distinguishing between words. This contrasts
with English, which has 12 pure vowel sounds
and 8 diphthongs. The length of the vowel sound
plays an important role. It is not surprising,
therefore, that Spanish learners may have great
difficulty in producing or even perceiving the
various English vowel sounds. Specific problems
include the failure to distinguish the sounds in
words such as ship/sheep, taught/tot,
fool/full or cart/cat/cut (p. 91).
Consonant Sounds
 Although less problematic, there are some
difficulties that L1 Spanish speakers may have
with consonant sounds when learning English.
These include: failure to pronounce the end
consonant accurately or strongly enough,
problems with the /v/ sound, difficulties in
sufficiently distinguishing words such
as see/she or jeep/sheep/cheap, the tendency to
prefix words beginning with a consonant cluster
on s- with an /ε/ sound, and the swallowing of
sounds in other consonant clusters
(next becomes nes and instead becomes istead).
(Coe, 1987, p.95)
Intonation Patterns
 Spanish is considered a syllable-timed
language. This results in Spanish speakers
often transferring the intonation patterns of
their mother tongue into English, which is a
stress-timed language. The resulting speech
may be barely comprehensible to native
English speakers.
Spelling
 There is a strong correspondence between the
sound of a word and its spelling in Spanish. The
irregularity of English causes problems when
Spanish learners write a word they first
encounter in spoken language or say a word first
introduced in written language. A specific
problem concerns the spelling of English words
with double letters. Spanish has only 3 doubleletter combinations- cc, ll, rr. English, in
comparison, has 5 times as many. Spanish
learners often reduce English double letters to a
single one, or overcompensate by doubling a
letter unnecessarily. (Coe, 1987, p.99)
Grammatical Differences
 Numerous grammatical differences between the
two languages result in other examples of
negative transfer. For instance, a native Spanish
speaker may say “I have 43 years,” because the
verb used for expressing age in Spanish is
translated to the English verb have. “The term
transfer is used to describe the process whereby
a feature or rule from a learner’s first language is
carried over to the IL [interlanguage] grammar.”
(O’Grady, 2010, p. 393). The easiest way to
illustrate these interlanguage grammar
challenges for ELLs is by looking at the data
analysis journal of an L1 Spanish student.
Data Analysis
The data analysis
journal that follows
documents and
analyzes written and
spoken language usage
and errors made by an
adult English language
learner attending ESL
classes at Vista Adult
School in Vista,
California.
 The student, Rafael Z., is a 43year-old native of Mexico City
whose first language is
Spanish. Rafael has been living
and working in the United
States for ten years. He began
taking ESL classes three years
ago, starting in the Low Preliteracy class (Level 1) and is
presently in the HighBeginning class (Level 4).
Collection of Data
 A list of language errors has been compiled
by utilizing writing samples obtained from
Rafael’s classroom journal, notebook and
other written assignments. Additional data
was collected from recorded oral interviews
that have been transcribed. These written
and spoken errors have been categorized in
the following chart, providing a visual means
to assist in the detection of error patterns.
Category of Error
Student Samples
 Adjective-Noun Order
 I like the food Chinese.
 You like the food
Mexican?
 Auxiliary Verbs
(missing)
 I __ no(t) like the
hamburger.
 __ You like drink the
coffee?
Category of Error
Student Samples
 Orthographical Errors
 The childrens injoy legolan_
 Sentence Structure/Awkward
 Today is a day very hard for
Word Order
the saturday.
 I need speack more inglish.
 School is tree hours.
me.
 I was all day Sunday at home.
Category of Error
Student Samples
 Subject-Verb Agreement
 My uncle go to the
 Use of Articles (omitted
or inserted)
church.
 My friend drink too
much.
 My uncle is _ teacher in
the church.
 We go to the Walmart.
 I go __ church the
Sundays.
Category of Error
Student Samples
 Use of Prepositions
 I live on Vista ___ about
(incorrect or omitted)
 Verb Tense
ten years.
 The sons of my uncle go
__ the park for ride
bicycle.
 My uncle is in home now.
 I __ going now.
 I eat fish yesterday.
 I __ from Mexico.
Category of Error
Student Samples
 Word Usage (incorrect)
 We drink a cup a beers
__ the weekend.
 Too much peoples go
at the party.
 I have 43 years.
 Miscellaneous
 My boss no pay me
nothing one month.
Types of Error Patterns
and Causes of Errors
 There are several patterns of errors made by Rafael
that are common among English language learners
with Spanish as their native language. Therefore, I
believe that the majority of his errors can be
attributed to language interference.
 In the first category (adjective-noun order), adjectives
follow nouns in the Spanish language, hence we see
the reversed order. Use of the auxiliary verb “do” is
difficult to acquire because there is not an equivalent
Spanish word used in forming questions nor in making
negative statements.
Spelling errors
 Many of Rafael’s
orthographical errors are due
to substituting the Spanish
spelling for English vowel
sounds, writing a word the
way he pronounces it (“tree”
instead of “three”), following
L1 capitalization rules (days
of the week and languages
are spelled in Spanish with
the initial letter in lowercase),
or by over generalizing newly
learned spelling patterns
(applying the ending “-ck”
incorrectly in the word
“speack”).
Word order
 Spanish syntax is generally
more flexible than English
syntax, which often leads
English language learners to
use awkward sentence
structures or word order,
even when they are
otherwise grammatically
correct.
3rd Person
 Another area of confusion
concerns the third-person
singular verb form. Spanish
verb conjugation is the same
for the subjects “you”, “he”,
and “ she”, whereas in English
an –s must be added to the
ending for “he,” “she” and
“it”.
Articles
 The use of articles in English
can be very confusing for
Spanish speakers. For
example, in English, one must
say, “I am a teacher,” but the
Spanish equivalent translates
literally as “I am teacher.” A
student “thinking in Spanish”
may incorrectly express “on
Sundays” as “the Sundays”,
and even when saying the
specific name of a store
(versus “the store”), the
Spanish equivalent is “the
Sears” or “the Walmart.”
Prepositions
“Apostrophe-s”
 Prepositions are very
tricky as well,
 The “apostrophe- s” is
not used at all in
especially since the
Spanish preposition
“en” can be translated
as “in” or “on”.
Spanish, so it is
common for native
Spanish speakers to
say “the (something) of
(someone)” to indicate
possession (“the sons
of my uncle” instead of
my uncle’s sons).
Verb and Miscellaneous Errors
 Verbs that are irregular in
the past tense are
problematic because they
must be memorized. Even
though the present
continuous is formed the
same way in English as in
Spanish, students such as
Rafael may tend to omit
the verb “be” because they
often perceive “I’m going”
as “I going.”
 The verb “tener” (have) is
used to express age in
Spanish, hence “I have 43
years.” Rafael heard
someone say “a couple of
beers” and wrote “a cup a
beers.” He also incorrectly
made “people” plural, as
one might add an “s” to
change “person” to
“persons.” “Much” and
“many” is essentially
interchangeable in
Spanish, the Spanish word
“a” can be translated as
“to” or “at”, and the double
negative is correct to use in
Spanish grammar.
Language Interference
 The research I did for my language
comparison paper served mainly to confirm
the conclusions I had already reached
regarding the reasons for the L1 Spanish
student’s errors. Having previously studied
for a degree in Spanish language and
possessing the ability to use both languages, I
was already able to analyze the errors caused
by language interference.
Instructional Implications
 I think it would be useful to integrate L1/L2 comparison
study into ESL lessons so that students could better
anticipate what errors might be made (and repeated), and
learn to self monitor their use of English.
 Visuals/charts featuring common English errors and
correct usage could be created to display in the classroom.
Students could make flashcards with the correct usage for
practice.
References
 Coe, N. (2001) Speakers of Spanish and Catalan. In
M. Swan & B. Smith (Eds). Learner English.
Cambridge University Press, 2001. Cambridge
Books Online
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511667121.0
08
 Romance Languages. (1991) In Grolier (Ed.),
Grolier Encyclopedia of Knowledge (Vol.16, p.143)
 O’Grady, W., Dovrolsky. M., & Aronoff, M. (Eds.)
(2004). Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction
(5th Edition). Boston, MA: Bedford/ St. Martin’s.