SPANISH AND

ENGLISH
LANGUAGE
COMPARISON
KIM V. STEIER
WILKES UNIVERSITY
The Spanish
Language
 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
 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).
Intonation Pattern
 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  The student, Rafael Z., is
and analyzes written and a 43- year-old native of
spoken language usage Mexico City whose first
and errors made by an language is Spanish.
adult English language Rafael has been living
learner attending ESL and working in the
classes at Vista Adult United States for ten
School in Vista, years. He began taking
California.  ESL classes three years
ago, starting in the Low
Preliteracy class (Level 1)
and is presently in the
HighBeginning class
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

 Auxiliary Verbs (missing)  I like the food Chinese

 You like the food
Mexican?
 I _ no(t) like the
hamburger.
 __ You like drink the
coffee?
Category of Error Student
Samples
 Orthographical Errors

 The childrens injoy

legolan_ the saturday. I
need speack more
 Sentence inglish. School is tree
Structure/Awkward Word hours.
Order

 Today is a day very hard

for me. I was all day
Sunday at home.
Category of Error Student
samples

 Subject-Verb
Agreement  Use of  My uncle go to the
church.  My friend
 Use ofarticles (omitted drink too much. 
or inserted)   My uncle is _ teacher
in the church.  We go
to theWalmart.  I go __
church the Sundays.
Category of Error Student
samples

 Use of Prepositions
(incorrect or omitted) 

 I live onVista ___ about

ten years.  The sons of
my uncle go __ the park
for ride bicycle.  My
 Verb Tense 
uncle is in home now. 

 I __ going now.  I eat fish

yesterday.  I __ from
Category of Error Student
Samples
  Word Usage (incorrect)  Miscellaneous 

 We drink a cup a beers __

the weekend.  Too much
peoples go at the party. 
I have 43 years.

  My boss no pay me
nothing one month.
Types of Error Patterns and
Clauses 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 Word Order
 Many of Rafael’s
orthographical errors are  Spanish with the initial
due to substituting the letter in lowercase), or by
Spanish spelling for over generalizing newly
English vowel sounds, learned spelling patterns
writing a word the way (applying the ending “-
he pronounces it (“tree” ck” incorrectly in the
instead of “three”), word “speack”). 
following L1 Spanish syntax is
capitalization rules (days generally more flexible
of the week and than English syntax,
languages are spelled in which often leads English
language learners to use
awkward sentence
structures or word order,
 3 Person
rd
Another area of confusion concerns the
Articles

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  The use of articles in English can be
to the ending for “he,” “she” and “it. 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”
 Prepositions are very
tricky as well, especially
since the Spanish
preposition “en” can be  The “apostrophe- s” is
translated as “in” or “on”. not used at all in
 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  The verb “tener” (have) is used
present continuous is formed the to express age in Spanish, hence
same way in English as in “I have 43 years.” Rafael heard
Spanish, students such as Rafael someone say “a couple of beers”
may tend to omit the verb “be” and wrote “a cup a beers.” He
because they often perceive “I’m also incorrectly made “people”
going” as “I going.”  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
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.