Questions tagged [spanish]
For linguistic questions about Spanish, one of the most widely spoken Romance languages, also known as Castilian. For non-linguistic questions about the Spanish language, visit our sister site Spanish Language Stack Exchange.
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How do you gloss "personal a" in Spanish?
The Spanish preposition "a" is used in transitive sentences when the object is definite and animate, for example in
Veo a mi hermana
see.1sg ? my sister
"I see my sister"
...
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Why do Spanish dialects sound so close to Spanish?
Spanish dialects sound very close to Spanish from Spain. From what I could find, a lot of Spanish dialects sound very close to Spanish accent, even Basque a totally unrelated language sound like ...
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To be or not to be - you got to be somewhere to be something or you are where you are? [closed]
I wonder, in Spanish we have to different words for to be (location) and to be (description) from my point of view, as a natural Spanish speaker tho I've spoken English all my life, just not as much, ...
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Why are the <tt> in <utter> (american English) and <r> in <cara> (Spanish) considered the exact same sound [ɾ]?
According to Wikitionary, the american pronounciation of <utter> is [ˈʌɾɚ] in IPA, and <cara> in Spanish is pronounced as [ˈka.ɾa].
According to the IPA these are both the same voiced ...
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How similar are the French and Spanish R sounds, linguistically speaking?
To preface, I'm not particularly knowledgeable about linguistics, but I did take several semesters of French and Spanish in college several years ago. I remember putting a lot of effort into learning ...
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Is “actual” both a false friend and a cognate?
English definition of “actual”:
existing in fact; typically as contrasted with what was intended, expected, or believed.
Spanish definition of “actual”:
current, present, contemporary
These are ...
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Is there any premise for Compounding Words in Spanish place names?
I'm trying to make a Fakemon (fanmade Pokemon) region based on Mexico, and I want to name a number of the cities with Spanish-sounding names. I admit that I'm terrible at making names, so I use this ...
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Why do Spanish words change meaning when put in a sentence? [closed]
The word "ponga" means "I put" but when put in this sentence: Que solo la mire de lejito y se ponga asi" is "That he only looks at her from afar and gets like this" &...
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How do Latin American Spanish speakers acquire vosotros forms?
In travels throughout Latin America, during which I spoke Spanish learned in Spain, local people had no problem understanding my use of vosotros forms even if they lived in very isolated rural areas ...
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Where can I find a set of Spanish-English comparable texts? ***(Not translations)***
This is my very first post, I hope I'm making myself clear.
What I'm asking for is a set of texts that are equivalent in both languages in terms of difficulty, word frequency and register (i.e. two ...
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Portuguese — Why use definite articles in front of possessive nouns? Why the extensive use of proposition contraction?
I can speak Spanish and French, and I am currently learning Portuguese. During my learning, I realized that there are some unique features in Portuguese — I don't speak Italian, so I don't know if ...
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Conjugation stem changes in Portuguese
Currently, I am learning Portuguese. I have some knowledge of Spanish as well.
The biggest difference in conjugation (indicative present tense) that I have found between Spanish and Portuguese is that ...
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Does Basque sound like Spanish, or vice versa?
I am always amazed by how similar both languages sound despite being very different in almost every other aspect.
I suspect that this is a classical example of a Sprachbund, but I am interested in ...
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Does -z / -ces in Spanish plurals reflect sound change in the past?
Spanish nouns ending with -z become -ces in plural forms. (e.g. lapiz-lapices, vez-veces, etc.) While -zes and -ces sound same in Modern Spanish, they represented different sounds between 15-16th ...
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What are the benefits of learning Latin using Spanish?
I am a native speaker of Spanish. I also learned English.
I am now trying to learn Latin. Obviously, the Spanish --> Latin route is a lot more preferable than the English --> Latin route given that ...
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Are [s] and [z] allophones of the same phoneme in Spanish? What is the rule that predicts the distribution?
What is the rule that predicts the distribution?
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Why does the Portuguese language sound similar to French language to me?
I thought Portuguese would sound very close to Spanish. However, to me, it sounds more like French?
Why is that?
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French & Spanish Accusative & Dative cases like German [closed]
I started learning French a couple of months back. My German proficiency is at B2 level (CEFRL).
I wanted to know if French also has the different Accusative & Dative forms for
Personal Pronouns,
...
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Is there such a thing as attributive vs. modifier uses of adj? Is un rojo carro vs. un carro rojo the same difference as 红房子 vs. 红的房子？
In teaching Spanish I often explain the difference between pre-nominal adjectives and post-nominal adjectives as the difference between an English noun phrase in which the adjective is stressed, and ...
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Do constructs like "going to do" and "ir a hacer" share a common origin?
I'm curious about the linguistic background between these phrases because they don't make sense word-for-word in either language, but they work almost identically. Wikipedia says that a similar form ...
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For adjectives which change meaning by position: why are they subjective before nouns but objective after?
Meaning-changing adjectives
[Source:] Some adjectives can mean different things depending on their placement around the noun they modify.
When placed after the noun like normal, the adjective carries ...
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"Ser"/"estar" acquisition in bilingual children (English-Spanish)
For the last week I've been wondering about how bilingual children (English-Spanish) might struggle with the acquisition of the "ser"/"estar" copulas, considering how these are ...
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Aramaic compared to Spanish
Is it possible to compare Aramaic to Spanish? If so, what are the differences and what are common? I have Spanish at school, and when I saw Passion of the Christ, I recognized lots of words (I don't ...
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Scientific sources/ literature regarding (spanish) speech rate
I'm interested in scientific sources or literature regarding speech rate/ tempo of speech of the Spanish language. Do you know any?
Specifically, I'm looking for sources that compare the speech rate ...
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Looking for socio research on "Latinx"
I'll crib the intro from Wikipedia:
Latinx is a gender-neutral English neologism, sometimes used to refer to people of Latin American cultural or ethnic identity in the United States.
"Latinx&...
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Expressions derived from Italian mafia
I apologize in advance for the explicit words, the question is anyway purely linguistical. Feel free to censore the words if appropriate.
I have heard that the American slang expression "Do not break ...
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Why do stem-changing verbs have a vowel change in Spanish?
It may just be that I'm demonstrating my gross ignorance, but I can't seem to find a 'why' for stem-changing verbs in Spanish. I understand that there is some sort of perceived weakness in the vowel ...
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Are Spanish "que" clauses following "parece" complements or postponed subjects?
The Spanish equivalent of It seems that they hate each other is Parece que se odian.
In both languages seem/parecer are one-place predicates (well, both can optionally accept a second argument with ...
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How should I understand these acoustic and perceptive terms from phonetics?
So, while reading the New Grammar of Spanish Language (a book from a very influential institute of the Spanish languague: Royal Spanish Academy) I found out these terms (they'll be in bold) from ...
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Which sounds in spanish sound louder: vowels or consonants?
I think vowels but I'm not so sure. I'm neither sure if vocal cords are what makes a phone be more audible and so what makes vowels be more audible than consonants or some of them.
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Italian 'gn' vs Spanish 'ñ' - Why does their use differ intervocalically and word internally?
First some examples. Here are the IPA transcriptions of 'bathroom' in Italian and Spanish:
bagno /baɲɲo/
baño /baɲo/
As you can see in Italian 'gn' becomes a geminate between vowels in the middle of a ...
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Spanish Dipthongs - Why does the verb Cerrar(to close) experience stem change but cerro (hill) is "fine" as is?
I know that vulgar latin experienced a diphthongization with several of the vowels when in tonic positions of a word.
My specific question is why did all latin originating words not consistantly do ...
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Apparent exceptions to the sound law f -> h in old Spanish
At some point during the evolution of Spanish, several initial [f] became silent (this is represented with an h in modern Spanish). This explains words such as hacer, harina, herir and many more. ...
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Why are native English speakers convinced that English language is a Romance language? [closed]
Most people I've know so far in the USA are always saying that learning Latin would be really easy because, since English comes from Latin, it cannot be a hard thing to do, and they really get shocked ...
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From Italian to Spanish, consonant + "i" goes to consonant + "l"?
Why is it, that in words like plaza / piazza, or blanca / bianca, the "l" in Spanish corresponds to an "i" in Italian? Is there a preference for this kind of sound in Italian, or ...
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Where did Spanish get its /x/? Arabic influence?
Most Romance languages don't have /x/ (like the j in hijo), nor did Latin. Where did Spanish /x/ come from? Internal development, Arabic influence, or something else? Since Moroccan Arabic also has /x/...
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Why does Spanish have obsolete tenses?
In Spanish, there are a few tenses that exist but are almost never used in daily life, like the subjunctive future and future perfect tenses. They are only utilized in legal documents and older pieces ...
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Plausible Language Origins and Meaning of The Puerto Rican Jibaro Word "lelo"?
Question: What might be a plausible language origin of the word, "lelo" as used in traditional jibaro musical form of Puerto Rico.
The word lelo is intensively used in the introduction of ...
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Why is Spanish SVO and not VSO?
I understand that Spanish sentences have an SVO sentence structure.
(S)(Yo) (V)compro (O)los zapatos.
What confuses me is the fact that when the subject is a pronoun, it is omitted so often that you ...
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(Latin) spondeo > (Spanish) esposas?
I am looking for the exact history of the Spanish word esposas ("handcuffs") and its connection with the Latin word spondeo ("promise").
I read several times on the web the ...
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Differences between free languages and official languages?
In short: as far as I know, English in the USA has no official standards from the government for how it's to be written and used. There are just dictionaries. Spanish however, has the RAE, which is an ...
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When did Spanish develop perfect aspect?
Latin and many other Romance languages do not have perfect aspect, but Greek has perfect aspect and Iberia was a land for Ancient Greek colonies.
So how and when Spanish integrates perfect aspect into ...
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Does California vowel shift occur in bilingual Spanish speakers?
I know that recently there has been a lot of research done on the California vowel shift being a key part of a California accent for younger kids who have grown up there.
Knowing that there is a ...
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Are there any recent studies on vowels of PRS?
Consonants and their phenomena are well studied for PRS (Puerto Rican Spanish). However, vowels and their phenomena are less well known. Known vowel phenomena in the dialect are unstressed/final vowel ...
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The double ⟨l⟩ in Spanish
In Spanish, some words start with the double consonant graphemes ⟨ll⟩ - that have indeed the value of /ʎ/.
Is there any language that have a similar pattern (starting with double consonants)? What is ...
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Why do many French and Spanish noun cognates have opposing grammatical gender?
While most French/Spanish noun cognates share the same gender (both descending from the same vulgar latin root), there are many exceptions having opposing genders (e.g. la couleur / el color; la ...
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Absence of vowel combination /ou/ in Spanish
Spanish has many words containing the diphthongs /au/, /eu/ and /iu/, but the only instances of words containing /ou/ (as a diphthong or in hiatus) are a very small set of foreign loanwords:
bou, ...
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How does Metathesis work?
How does it happen? What motivated latin "parabola" to change into Spanish "palabra" and why does english "ask" is often changed to "aks"?
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Why do swear words mean the same thing in both English and Spanish (possibly more languages)
Earlier today, I was talking about swearing in other languages with some friends (this is a serious question, bear with me), so I decided to look up some lists of Spanish swear words for fun. This ...
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Why does Spanish tend to swap letters in words?
I can't remember the source, but I recall hearing that Spanish (my native tongue) tends to swap letters in words (accidentally). Examples
Latin diabolo becomes diablo(o). (perhaps this is a non-...
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