Spanish Cheat Sheet Page 2
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3What the language does
Comments: How English differs and/or
Example or description of errors
how the language will interfere with
Category
English
Adjectives In Spanish, the adjective comes after
Adjectives generally come before the noun in
He had a dog brown.
the noun.
English (there are a handful of specific
exceptions that put the adjective last). A
Spanish speaker may use the Spanish word
order.
Agreement (not with
In Spanish, possessive pronouns,
In English, a Spanish speaker may add -s/-es
The pretties girls
verb)
adjectives, and nouns agree in number.
to adjectives and possessive pronouns as
well as nouns.
The fats cats
These crayons are mines.
Articles (indefinite) The indefinite article is not used before
The article is omitted when English requires it. She is [a] lawyer.
a profession.
Articles (definite) The definite article is used before place
English does not use articles for the names of
He swam in the Lake Michigan.
names and body parts.
places like New York or DC. English uses
possessive pronouns for body parts.
She brushes the hair.
Verbs (to have) In Spanish, hacer means both ‘make’
Early Spanish ELLs have trouble
I make homework.
and ‘do’.
distinguishing ‘do’ and ‘make.’
Orthography
(spelling)
Silent letters and homophones are
Since English is almost unruly with spelling
buy, by, and bye may be reduced to just one of
Silent letters/
homophones
minimal in Spanish.
conventions, misspelled words will occur.
those spellings.
Contractions Spanish writers often omit the final ’t’ in
In informal writing and in speech, words like
don’t —> don
negative contractions in both speech
‘don’t’ and ‘won’t’ will be missing the
and writing.
apostrophe+t
won’t —> won
False cognates
(words that look
similar in both
languages, but have
different meanings;in
reading and writing
they may think/intend
the meaning of the
original language)
Word from the language
Meaning of the word
English word used
actualmente
currently
actually
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Parent category: Education