English and Spanish being Indo-European languages, show remarkable similarities owing to the unique origins in Eurasia. Their Latin-based vocabulary results in comparative grammatical constructions that make it easier for a native speaker of one language to learn the other language quickly. Their distinctions and spread over time have brought about differences in parts of speech. Pronouns describe parts of speech that represent a noun in a sentence or phrase which has already been mentioned is already known or belongs to those discussed above or known noun. Both English and Spanish use pronouns in mostly similar constructions, with differences in how object pronouns are applied (Erichsen, 2019). Direct objects are acted upon by the verb in a sentence, while indirect things are affected by the verb's action. Spanish has a distinction between direct and indirect pronouns when it comes to third-person inferences.
English uses the same pronouns whether the article is direct or indirect, which are in the singular "him," "her," and "it" and plural for all is "them." Standard Spanish has pronouns for direct and indirect objects, namely; "lo" (masculine) and "la" (feminine) for singular natural items with the plural form being "los" (masculine) and "las" (feminine), respectively. For singular indirect objects, "le" is the pronoun that becomes "les" in plural form. Example of pronoun application in the different languages in a sentence context, "I found her and I sent her a letter" user the same pronoun for both the direct and indirect objects in the sentence, which is "her" (Erichsen, 2019). In Spanish, a distinction in pronoun use would be evident as the sentence would be, "La encontre le mande una carta," where "la" delineates the direct object and "le" outlines the indirect object in the sentence.
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English and Spanish have many similarities, such as sentence construction that follow the SVO structure (Subject Verb Object). The languages share the same parts of speech from nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, and prepositions. Using a Latin-based alphabet system in both languages makes it easier for a native to quickly learn the other, understand the slight differences, and implement translations. The sentence in Spanish and English used above clearly shows the SVO structure in both languages. Focusing on pronouns, both languages show gender aspect and consideration in pronouns (Erichsen, 2019). Spanish has more gender pronouns in use, with English showing vestiges of gender.
Furthermore, Spanish nouns themselves are distinguished as masculine or feminine, which is slightly less used in English in an occupation context. Spanish also uses gender pronouns for inanimate objects, where "it" is used in English. For instance, a tree can be referred to as "el" or "ella," which are masculine and feminine pronouns, respectively. In English, the president can be both male or female, but Spanish uses gender pronouns "presidente" (masculine) and "presidenta" (feminine) for the same occupation. And this is true for most of the language, with English having a few examples: a hero (masculine) and heroine (feminine). Pronoun differences between the languages are also evident on placement in a sentence (Erichsen, 2019). The SVO structure is still maintained, but Spanish incorporated object pronouns before the verb in a sentence reversed in English.
"Lo escribio Cervantes" is a sentence in direct translation becomes, "The book wrote it," which is ungrammatical in English but acceptable in Spanish. Another example of word order and pronoun placement variation is in a sentence like, "No recuerdo el momento en que salio Pablo," which in English translated to, "I don't remember the moment in which left Pablo." Perfect sentence construction in Spanish but does not make much sense in English. Another variation between English and Spanish is double negatives in a sentence, which is not present in English. Still, Spanish incorporates a negation before and after a verb in grammatical sentence construction (Erichsen, 2018). An example includes "No tengo ninguno," which translates to "I don't have any." In English, the sentence is off and correctly written as, "I don't have," but the Spanish language allows for single, double, and even triple negatives.
English speakers have a relatively more comfortable learning Spanish than other language-speaking people such as Japanese, Mandarin, and Swahili. English and Spanish origin are similar, with emerging differences occurring over thousands of years and interactions with other cultures and civilizations. The sentence structure and phrase construction follow identical SVO structure patterns using similar parts of speech and alphabet. Challenges likely to be encounter by native English speakers when learning Spanish would be the order and organization of the elements of speech in an SVO structure, which slightly varies from English (Erichsen, 2019). As described above, an English speaker must learn that most nouns of occupation in Spanish exist in gender forms and not only in occupation but any context that warrants a gender delineation. Word order is changed in Spanish, which might not make sense in an English speaker's mind but makes perfect grammatical sense. The major challenge would, however, be faced conjugation where words in English change quickly when writing in plural and different tense forms by adding suffixes such as "-s," "-es," "-ed" and "-ing" ad also use of auxiliary verbs such as has, have, will and did. Spanish conjugation approach is more complicated, where words can have thirty different variants in the form to indicate a change in tense or plurality even without the use of auxiliary verbs. This means a learner must understand what specific form of a word to use and in what context.
An example would be "hablar" (to speak). Forms of the word include "hablo" (I speak), "hablan" (they speak), "halbaras" (you will speak), "halbarian" (they would speak), and "hables" (a subjunctive form of you speak) (Erichsen, 2019). Mastering all the forms of every word is a very asking task, but it is the core of understanding the Spanish language.
References
Erichsen, G. (2018, Sep 20). Double Negatives? They’re OK in Spanish. Retrieved from ThoughtCo .: https://www.thoughtco.com/double-negatives-spanish-30794324
Erichsen, G. (2019, Mar 18). 5 Differences Between Spanish and English Object Pronouns. Retrieved from ThoughtCo .: https://www.thoughtco.com/differences-between-spanish-english-object-pronouns-3079037
Erichsen, G. (2019, Jun 13). Grammatical Differences Between Spanish and English. Retrieved from ThoughtCo .: https://www.thoughtco.com/grammatical-differences-between-spanish-and-english-4119326
