subject: Beginners Spanish Lessons To Get You Started With Learning Spanish [print this page] Differences and similarities that Spanish Beginners must know between English and Spanish as a language: As Spanish language beginners, one quick key to expanding your Spanish vocabulary is learning to recognize the word patterns as seen in many English- Spanish cognates. In a sense, English and Spanish as languages are cousins. They have a common ancestor known as Indo-European. Sometimes the English and Spanish meanings can overlap. For example, an argumento in Spanish can refer to the plot of the story. Words that are alike or similar in the two languages but have different meanings are known as false friends. Many English words that have a "ph" in them have an fin the Spanish version: photo foto, metamorphosis metamorfosis, graph grfica.
Beginners Spanish Lesson One The Basics: If you know the alphabet in English you can easily learn basic Spanish lessons . Spanish alphabets are very similar to the alphabets of most European languages. a- z make up Spanish alphabets which are similar to English ones. Spanish alphabet has an additional which is known as an acute accent. As far as the alphabet in Spanish and its pronunciation, there are only a few letters or characters we have to be careful with:
The G in the Spanish word genio is pronounced like the H in hello.
The G in the Spanish word guarro is pronounced like the GW in Gwen.
The G in the Spanish word gafas is pronounced like the G in gag.
The H is always silent.
The in the Spanish word otoo is pronounced like the first NI in onion.
It may interest you to know that as recently as 2010, the Spanish alphabet, as recognized by the RAE (Research Assessment Exercise), included two other letters, ch and ll, which were considered separate letters. They continue to have distinctive pronunciations (just as do "ch" and "sh" in English).
Beginners Spanish Lesson Two The numbers: Improve your Spanish vocabulary easily by learning to pronounce and count the numbers. Lets have a look at numbers from one to ten and their pronunciation in Spanish:
0 cero1 uno2 dos3 tres4 cuatro 5 cinco
6 seis7 siete 8 ocho 9 nueve 10 - diez
In some cases, the use of Spanish cardinal numbers can be confusing for persons who are Spanish beginners, because some numbers may vary conforming to the gender of the nouns that they precede.
For example, when counting you must use "uno"
- uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco...
However, if the number precedes a masculine noun, the number "uno" becomes "un:
- un perro (one dog)
- un lapiz (one pencil)
If the number precedes a feminine noun, the number "uno" becomes "una:
- una taza (one cup)
- una nia (one girl).
Learn Spanish cardinal numbers through our Spanish lessons for beginners.
