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Kallie Holzhueter
Professor Black
ENG310
25 February 2013
Comparing and Contrasting Languages
Since I began studying Spanish about five years ago, I’ve learned more about my
English than I ever had before. I’m not exactly sure why this is, but I think it helps to be able
to compare the two. This usually helps, but on the other hand it can be tricky sometimes
because not all languages are structured exactly the same, and many pieces contrast as
well. Being able to see how words function in the context of another languages has given
me a broader picture of languages and especially the grammar, and I’m able to understand
the grammar of my native language much better because of this. Dropped inflectional
endings, auxiliary verbs, and prepositions are three crucial elements in both English and
Spanish.
In English, inflectional endings are crucial to understanding what a word, phrase,
clause, or sentence means. If the incorrect ending is used, the entire meaning can change. If
I had to pick the easiest way to sum up inflectional endings in one word it would be
“agreement.” All verbs must agree with the subjects. Jeff Anderson gives the following
example in Mechanically Inclined: “Anyways, Mr. Anderson ask Elvia, ‘ Where you get them
blue contact lenses, Elvia?’” (Anderson 121). This sentence contains two errors, but let’s
take a look at the first one. Mr. Anderson asks a question because he is one man, so this
verb must be conjugated to match the third person singular form. Although I’ve studied
Spanish for five years, I still have problems now and again with agreement. For example, I
may accidentally conjugate the verb in the “tú” (second person) form rather than the
“él/ella/usted” form (third person singular form). Conjugating verbs to match the right
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person seems like a simple thing in our native language, but believe it or not, it can be
something that a person must pay close attention to while learning a language, and it takes
a lot of practice to master this technique.
Auxiliary verbs, which include “do” and “have” are crucial in English, but only one of
the two exist in Spanish. In English, forms of the verb “do” (do, does, did) are usually used
when asking questions such as “Do you run marathons?” while forms of the verb “have”
(have, has, had) are used in the perfect tense in sentences such as “I have studied at Grand
Valley for two years.” Anderson notes that all of these verbs “Need to be used with another
verb unless answering a yes-or-no question” (Anderson 124). In the examples I gave above,
the auxiliary verb is in bold print and the main verb is italicized. All sentences in English
that contain these words must have a main verb also, otherwise they will not make sense.
In Spanish, the verb “do” does not exist. Rather than using it in a question, the main verb
must be conjugated to match the subject. For example, “¿Corres en los maratones?” when
literally translated means, “You run in marathons?” but when loosely translated means the
same thing, just without the auxiliary verb “do.” On the other hand, forms of the verb “have”
do exist in Spanish and are used in the perfect tenses, just like in English. The structure of
the sentence would be almost exactly the same in many cases, and a main verb also must be
used along with the form of “have.” Have can also function as the main verb of a sentence in
both languages, such as “I have ten dollars,” but it can only be used this way to show
ownership. Thus, the auxiliary verb “do” only exists in English, while the auxiliary verb
“have” exists in both languages.
Prepositions exist in both Spanish and English, and they are used the same way.
Mechanically Inclined describes, “A preposition shows the relationship between a nound
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and other words in a sentence” (Anderson 74). Anderson gives the following sentence as an
example of a student error: “We were going towards San Antonio, but we stopped at San
Marcos to eat the McDonald’s” (Anderson 74). But when attempting to describe possible
reasons for this student error, Anderson says that “Spanish uses only one preposition, en, in
all sentences, which might confuse things for Vincent, a native of Mexico” (Anderson 74).
But this is not true. The Spanish Textbook Taller de escritores explains prepositions on page
14 by saying, “Prepositions…combine parts of a sentence to express a relationship between
those parts.” This sounds very similar to Anderson’s definition because prepositions have
the same function in Spanish and English. But the authors of Taller de escritores also note
that, “Spanish does not always use prepositions as English uses them” (Taller de escritores
14). For example, although “en” usually means “in,” it can also have other meanings, such as
“on.” This is one of the instances in which English cannot be translated word for word into
Spanish. Instead, the general idea or phrase must be used. For example, in English we use
the phrase “depend on,” but in Spanish the phrase is “depender de,” which when literally
translated means “depend of” but is still used in the same context as it is in English (to
depend on someone or something). So, Anderson was not correct in saying that only one
preposition is used in Spanish, but he is on the right track of finding where the student
error comes from because “en” is a very commonly used preposition in Spanish. But the
student’s error probably occurred because not all prepositional phrases can be translated
word for word between the two languages because they may have slightly different
meanings, even if the phrases overall have the same meaning.
All in all, inflectional endings, auxiliary verbs, and prepositions play key roles in
both the Spanish and English languages. In studying a second language, I’ve been able to
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learn much more about my native language. By comparing and contrasting the two
languages, I’ve gained insight into many grammar rules, and I feel more confident about my
English grammar now than before I began studying Spanish.
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Works Cited
Anderson, Jeff. Mechanically Inclined. Portland, Maine: Stenhouse Publishers, 2005. Print.
Taller de escritores. Boston, Massachusetts: Vista Higher Learning, 2012. Print.