This document provides examples of differences between Spanish and English in various linguistic areas including phonology, orthography, morphology, syntax, semantics, and code switching. It gives examples of phonological differences in vowels, stress patterns, and specific consonants. Orthographic differences provided include spellings for specific sounds and punctuation conventions. Examples are also given for morphological, syntactic, and semantic differences as well as examples of code switching and Spanglish. Riddles using examples of semantic differences in translation are included at the end.

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SPANISH-AMERICAN
CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS
by Don L. F. Nilsen
and Alleen Pace Nilsen

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SPAIN, FRANCE, ITALY AND PORTUGAL

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SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

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Don Quixote’s Mind:
Rocinante, Dulcinea, Sancho Panza,
Lance & Windmills

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CODE SWITCHING
• L. Dabène said that in the case of the
first generation, Code Switching is
often used as a remedial strategy to
incompetence.
• However in the second generation,
code switching can fulfill different
functions:

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• It can enable the speaker to claim a
personal identity.
• It can express a kind of complicity with
the others or, on the other hand, it can
reveal a strategy of divergence from the
environment.

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• Code Switching can enable the speaker to
comment about the language (metalinguistic
use)
• Code Switching can also be used to comment
on what has just been said (metadiscursive
use).
• Or, finally, Code Switching can be used to
change the type of interaction, to select other
interlocutors or to switch from a dialogue to a
collective exchange (metacommunicative
use).

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SPANGLISH
• “Spanglish” is a new kind of slang finding its
way not only into conversations but also into
short stories, novels, popular music, comedy
acts, and television sitcoms.
• Sprinkled through English sentences are
such insertions as “Que no?,” “Tambien,”
and “Yo se.”

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• Sometimes English words are
combined with Spanish words, so that
“barber shop” and “peluqueria”
becomes “barberia.”
• Similarly, “chilling out” becomes
“chileando,” and “to park” becomes
“parkear.”

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HISPANIC NAMES
• In Spain and Latin America, if a girl
were named Ana Maria López Garcia,
she has two surnames. The first one is
her father’s (López), and the second
one is her mother’s (Garcia).

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• If Ana Maria López Garcia married Gregoria
Díaz Rodriguez, then she would write her
name as Ana Maria López de Díaz.
• In Mexico, Ana Maria López de Díaz would go
by her maiden name daily (Maria López
Garcia), but on formal documentation she
would identify herself with her married name
(Ana Maria López de Díaz).

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If she were to have a child,
Alicia, Alicia’s full name
would be Alicia López Díaz,
keeping both her father’s and
her mother’s surnames.

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SPANGLISH TEST 1
• bacuncliner
– vacuum cleaner
• biper
– beeper or pager
• boyla
– boiler
• chileando
– chilling out
• choping
– shopping
• fafu
– fast food
• jangear
– hanging out
• joldoperos
– muggers, holdup artists

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SPANGLISH TEST 2
• liqueo
– to leak
• maicrogüey
– microwave oven
• pulover
– T-shirt
• roofo
– roof
• sangüiche
– sandwich
• tensén
– ten-cent store like K-Mart or Woolworths

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Phonological Differences 1
• English has 13 vowels; Spanish has
only 5 vowels
• Spanish is a syllable-timed language;
English is a stress-timed language
• Spanish /d/ and /ð/ are alaphonic as in
“duda”

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Phonological Differences 2
• English has a retroflex /r/; Spanish has a
flapped /r/ and a trilled /r/ written as <r> and
<rr>
• English has no velar fricative <x> or <j>
• Spanish doesn’t distinguish between /č/
and /š/, or between /s/ and /z/

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Orthographic Differences 1
• Spanish <ll> is pronounced /y/; Spanish <l> is pronounced /l/
• Spanish <j> is a velar fricative
• Spanish <b> and <v> are both the same (bilabial fricatives)
• Spanish has <ñ> for the /ny/ sound
• Spanish <h> is not pronounced
• Spanish has a <q> but no <k> or <c>

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Orthographic Differences 2
• Spanish begins questions with <¿> and
exclamations with <i>
• Spanish uses a period for thousands,
and a comma for a decimal; English
does the reverse
• Spanish uses «…» for quotation marks,
not “…”

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Morphological Differences
• Spanish verbs are more highly inflected than
are English verbs
• Spanish adjectives agree with the nouns they
modify in number and gender
• Spanish has grammatical gender; English
has natural gender
• Spanish uses the definite article differently
as in “el señor Jones”

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Syntactic Differences
• English adjectives come before nouns;
Spanish adjectives come after nouns.
• Spanish has “pro-drop” which means
that a subject pronoun can be dropped;
English does not.
• Spanish has double negatives (“No
tiene nada”); English does not.

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Semantic Differences 1
• Some English-Spanish cognates don’t have
the same meaning.
• Consider the following Spanish words:
“actual,” “libraria,” “grocería,” “molestar,”
“embarazada” and “principio.”
• In English, these words mean “present,”
“bookstore,” “vulgarity,” “to bother,”
“pregnant” and “beginning,” respectively.

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Semantic Differences 2
• A single Spanish word can have more than one
English meaning:
• Spanish “hacer” means either “make” or “do”
• Spanish “su” means either “his,” “her,” or “its”
• Spanish “en” means either “on,” “in,” “into,” or “at”

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Semantic Differences 3
• Or, a single English word can have more than
one Spanish meaning:
• English “time” in Spanish can be “tiempo,”
“vez,” or “hora”
• English “hot” in Spanish can be “picante,” or
“caliente”

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In conclusion,
consider these riddles:
• Spanish “plata” means “silver,” Spanish
“oro” means “gold,” and Spanish “platano”
means “banana”
• Qué es come oro, pero plata no es?
• Platano es.

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• Spanish “se parecen” means
“similarity”
Spanish “manzano” means “apple”
Spanish “tren” means “train”
Spanish “pera” means “pear”
Spanish “espera” means “to wait”
• En qué se parecen una manzano y un
tren?
• No es pera. = No espera.

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• Spanish “estrellas” means “stars”
Spanish “hay” means “are there”
Spanish “cielos” means “heavens”
Spanish “cinquenta” means “fifty”
Spanish “sin cuenta” means “countless
• Cuantas estrellas hay en los cielos?
• Cinquenta. = Sin cuenta

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• Spanish “perezoso” means “lazy”
Spanish “mundo” means “world”
Spanish “nada” means both “nothing”
and “it swims”
• Cual animal es el mas perezoso del
mundo?
• El pez.
• Qué hace el pez?
• Nada.