Fascinating Facts about the Spanish Language

HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE SPANISH LANGUAGE? Spanish is the second most spoken language in the United States, and there are almost 399 million Spanish-speakers in the world. HOLA! 2, Spanish is the 3rd most used language on the Internet. The use of Spanish on the Internet has grown 1,312.4% from 2000 to 2015. Considering the three Moods (Indicative, Subjunctive and Imperative), there are 17 tenses in Spanish. 5. Many Spanish nouns are spelled the same but change meanings if they are used with a different grammatical gender. For example, el cometa (the comet) and la cometa (the kite). Exclamations and questions in Spanish need to begin with an "inverted" exclamation mark (i) or question mark (¿). These punctuation marks do not exist in other languages, except some minority languages in Spain. Around 8% of Spanish vocabulary is of Arabic origin. The letter "c," when it appears before the letters "e" and "i,"is pronounced differently by speakers in Latin America and Spain. The first group pronounces it like an "s," whereas the latter group pronounces it like a "th" in "thanks." The word yo (English: I) can be pronounced in at least four different ways depending on the location of the speaker. 10 There are many words in Spanish that can't be translated in one word in English. An example is empalagarse (meaning: to feel sick because of too much sweetness in food, but also figuratively as in romantic situations). There are around 30,500 words that contain all the vowels (a, e, i, o, u). New verbs can be easily created by adding the suffix -ear. This is how modern-technology-related words have been invented from English words; for example, escanear (to scan) and tuitear (to send tweets). Many English words have been adapted to 13 Spanish in the 20th century. For instance, fútbol (football), suéter (sweater), pulover (pullover), and overol (overall). 14 There are two phrases in Spanish that can be translated to "I love you": Te amo and te quiero. The first one is said between lovers or closely-related family members. The second one is mostly friendly and typically not romantic. 15 There isn't a verb in Spanish that can be literally translated to "like." "Me gusta la pizza" can be translated to the approximation "the pizza is pleasing to me." 16 English and Spanish share plenty of similarly-written words that don't mean the same. They are called false cognates (or "false friends"). For example, embarazada means "pregnant" in English, not "embarrassed." Spanish is the official language in 22 countries. 18 Spanish is expected to be the first language of 50% of the population of the United States within 50 years. 19 People who speak Spanish may call it español 1 (meaning: that it comes from Spain) or castellano (meaning: that it comes from Castilla, Spain), and many people use both words interchangeably. 20 The letter "ñ" is the only Spanish letter of Spanish origins. t takelessons Learn more at http://takelessons.com/blog/language-of-Spain-z03