Spanish Cheat Sheet printable pdf download

Spanish

What the language does

Comments: How English differs and/or

Example or description of errors

how the language will interfere with

Category

English

Phonology

(the sounds that exist

in the language)

Vowels Spanish has ‘ee’ sound which is spelled

Spanish speakers use ‘this’ for ‘this’ and

I think all this problems are related to poverty.

with ‘i’, but has no ‘i’ sound, as in ‘it’.

‘these’. The distinction is unusually not

acquired until they are advanced in their

The word will be pronounced like ‘these’.

English learning.

Consonants (th) Some speakers will have ‘th’ sound,

The ‘th’ sound at the beginning or end of

teeth = teet

and there is evidence that ‘th’ sound is

English words may be substituted with ’t’ or

becoming more prevalent, however not

‘d’.

all speakers have it or use it.

Consonants (Clusters) There is a tendency to add an ‘e’ sound

This is a spelling error they will not catch if

espace

before words starting with ’s

reading aloud.

+consonant’

eschool

Syntax

(parts of speech and

rules)

Parts of Speech The default word order for Spanish is

English has very rigid word order and does

El libro lo escribió Juan. (John wrote the book.

subject-verb-object. However, this is

not allow movement outside of poetics. The

But lit.: The book [itself/himself] wrote John. This

not a rigid standard. Spanish has

closest match to the Spanish case is passive

puts the focus on the book and thus the student

constructions that allow for a freer word

construction in English. While English allows

may write it this way.)

order. For instance, Spanish allows the

passives, they are stylistically discouraged.

object and subject to swap places with

Academic writing in English insists on

the use of a reﬂexive pronoun where

prescribed word orders.

the reﬂexive is not interpreted literally,

but allows the object to move to the

beginning of the sentence and become

the topic.

Pronouns (General) Person and number is encoded on the

Dropping the subject pronoun often carries

[She] Is a woman. (Where ‘she’ is omitted and ‘is’

verb for the subject of the sentence.

over into English. Usually an issue with

is the ﬁrst word of the sentence.)

For this reason Subject pronouns are

beginners.

omitted in Spanish.

Pronouns (his, her, its,

The Spanish pronoun su represents

A Spanish writer may use the wrong

She is making his bed. (Intended: She is making

their, your)

his, her, its, their and your (formal).

possessive pronoun in English.

her bed.)

Spanish Cheat Sheet

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