weird things about spanish

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here are some weird things about Spanish

False cognates

False cognates are when a word seems like you know what it means, but you don’t actually.

A cognate example is ‘ficción’ meaning ‘fiction’.

Some of these are harmless and funny, like ‘grapa’ seeming like it means ‘grape’, but actually meaning ‘staple’ (the correct is ‘uva’), but with ones like ‘éxito’ seeming like ‘exit’, but actually meaning ‘success’ (the correct is ‘salida’) can be very dangerous for learners.

inconsistencies

Spanish is full of inconsistencies, like most ‘-a’ words being feminine, but words like ‘turista’ are both and words like ‘mapa’ being masculine. The reverse is also true for ‘mano’.

More examples include:

• the plurals for words like ‘lápiz’ are like ‘lápices’

• the plurals for words like ‘autobús’ are like ‘autobuses’

• ‘vídeo’ can be spelled as ‘video’, without the accent

• ‘vosotros’ is only used in Spain, as most places use the formal ‘usted’ in plural, ‘ustedes’

• on the topic of place specific words, ‘hubo’ is only used in Columbia, and ‘instituto’ is in most dialects, but also means ‘high school’ in Spain

• ‘vosotros’ and ‘vosotras’ are gendered, but ‘tú’ isn’t

• ‘usted’ has no gender, same with ‘ustedes’

• ‘nosotros’ and ‘nosotras’ are gendered, but ‘yo’ isn’t

• not to mention the crazy number of irregularities in verb conjugation, I counted 34 for ‘estar’ on spanishdict.com.

• borrowed words that can be fixed to follow Spanish’s rules don’t

  • e.g. ‘koala’ should be ‘quoala’, but isn’t

proper name changing

In Spanish, proper names get changed a lot, like Christopher Columbus is Cristóbal Colón, which is really different. ‘Christopher Columbus’ is the anglicization of ‘Christophorus Columbus’, but at least that is similar. I saw that example in a text recently.

the articles and pronouns being one step off of perfection

just look

type	masculine	masculine plural	feminine	feminine plural
definite	el	los	la	las
indefinte	un	unos	una	unas
pronoun	él	ellos	ella	ellas

numbers just being weird

just look. the following are the numbers 0-40 in Spanish, with irregularities highlighted:

0. cero
1. uno (but un/una if used as an article)
2. dos
3. tres
4. cuatro
5. cinco
6. seis
7. siete
8. ocho
9. nueve
10. die==z==
11. on==ce==
12. do==ce==
13. tre==ce==
14. c==atorce==
15. qu==in==ce
16. diecis==é==is
17. diecisiete
18. dieciocho
19. diecinueve
20. veint==e==
21. veintiuno (but veintiún/veintiuna if used as an article)
22. veintid==ó==s
23. veintitr==é==s
24. veinticuatro
25. veinticinco
26. veintis==é==is
27. veintisiete
28. veintiocho
29. veintinueve
30. treinta
31. treinta== y uno ==(but treinta y un/treinta y una if used as an article)
32. treinta== y ==dos
33. treinta== y ==tres
34. treinta== y ==cuatro
35. treinta== y ==cinco
36. treinta== y ==seis
37. treinta== y ==siete
38. treinta== y ==ocho
39. treinta== y ==nueve
40. cuarenta

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