Issues about the Spanish Language

Last week I read an article in The Age that describes how a software program being developed by the State Library of Victoria is helping minority language groups to preserve and maintain their language and culture. Developing this type of technology can contribute to arrest the decline of many languages spoken by small ethnic groups.

By being able to use technological progress to aid the preservation of minority languages, humanity may be able to care for the treasure found in the rich linguistic and cultural contents of every language spoken in the world especially when a language is in danger of extinction. Preserving written forms of traditional oral stories are worth any amount of effort. These oral traditions are unique; they are able to explain views on life and reality unknown to most people.

The software being developed by the State Library of Victoria – according to the article mentioned above – is also providing the tools to write a language that has not yet had a written form. This aspect of technology, namely to serve the linguistic and cultural needs of minority languages, is even more important when we consider that every language through their particular grammatical structures convey a special form of codifying meaning.

Another welcoming feature derived from having useful technologies helping the preservation of languages with small number of users, is that such languages can be disseminated using the internet and by doing so have the potential to reach many of their users  or be readily available for people interested in language studies or that are learning about  particular features of not very well known languages.

Living in a global village and having with us the help of new technologies, I think is a great way of helping minority languages not only to be preserved, but also of helping them to flourish, spread, and be studied. Every human being will in the long term benefit by this process.

Students learning Spanish need to have a clear understanding about the general aspects of the way in which subjects pronouns are used. This includes being fully knowledgeable about their written forms and meanings, the pronoun’s particular individual features as well as the relationship existing with the subject pronouns of the students’ mother tongues.

I want to focus on this post on the relationship between the Spanish subject pronouns and English subject pronouns – referred to from here as SSP’s/SSP and ESP’s/ESP, respectively.  In general terms, the SSP’s and the ESP’s have their equivalents in both languages. The exceptions are here the feminine plural forms – nosotras, vosotras and  ellas. There are also the situation related with the lack of English specific equivalents for usted, ustedes and the pair vosotros/vosotras.

The first person plural of the SSP’s has two forms in Spanish: nosotros (masculine) and nosotras (feminine). On the other hand, English does not have feminine ESP’s. Because of this feature of the English language, the same situation for vosotras, the second person plural and ellas, the third person plural, is observed. For the SSP’s pair vosotros/vosotras, beginner Spanish students need to be able to identify what their real meanings are in Spanish. This however, is easier said than done, as by general rule it takes a little while for learners to understand this particular concept.

The third person formal singular SSP’s usted is normally translated into English as you. This ESP is also used for the plural form. According to my own experience in the classroom some beginner learners of Spanish usually find it quite daunting relating to the differences between tú and usted or ustedes and vosotros.

In addition, some beginner students of Spanish sometimes can get confused by the written structures yo/you by supposing that yo means you ; they can also find ella ,the feminine singular third person SSP, difficult to fathom; or even thinking of the pair ella/ellas as structures that supposedly have feminine verb conjugation forms.

Once the students manage to sort out the obstacles presented by the aspects described above, they are able to move forward with ease.  Most students of Spanish at the intermediate level – in possession of a detailed knowledge of the special particularities of the SSP’s – should be able to use this grammatical feature without getting confused.

Through proper teaching and their own learning efforts, students can manage to establish a clear understanding of the basic usage and nature of the Spanish subject pronouns. I will come back to this subject on a future post.

One of the nicest rewards of teaching a language is to be complemented by your students about aspects not directly connected to you as a teacher but to the language that they’re learning from you.

It happens to me quite often. One of such rewarding aspects relates to comments they make about the nature of the Spanish sounds; as it happened during the development of a lesson today, while going over the standard pronunciation of some words, one of my students mentioned to me how interesting and ‘nice to the ear’ are the Spanish sounds when spoken loudly.

Getting to a situation were a student can make comments about the nature of the sounds of the language they’re studying tells a lot about how well they’re making progress in mastering basic aspects of their learning process.

The student that I’m making reference to here has clearly been able to understand how consonant and vowels when combined to form Spanish words change according to certain inherent properties attached to a particular letter whether they are a consonant or a vowel.

Consonant letters in Spanish have a soft sound when they are used between two vowels – in the words abeja, guayaba, envergadura, ataviada, alabado or escalada for example, all the consonants between vowels, are pronounced in a very soft manner.

For the words from above, the sounds of the b of abeja, the v of ataviada and the d of envergadura lend to these words certain phonological properties that change their particular nature. This produces very soft oral structures that create a feeling of auditory softness when they are pronounced in a loud voice.

Understanding how the consonant sounds mix with vowels within the basic language structures – nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, etc, is for me a very delicate but appropriate area to start phonological work with any student that may be unfamiliar with the nature of the Spanish sounds.

Students can obtain great benefit in acquiring the standard basic aspects of Spanish phonology by focussing in an analytical way on the individual structure of the lexical repertoire that they are learning in the classroom, namely, to be observant about the way that any word is written and pronounced. To do this they need to have a good understanding of all the basic phonological properties attached to the sounds used in Spanish words.

As I have written elsewhere here, students must be able to relate and use the basic symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet in order to be able to succeed in their endeavour to become fluent, intelligible speakers of the charming Spanish language.

Getting to know the correct way of pronouncing and using the different written patterns in which letter g is used can be an arduous task for the beginner learner of Spanish.  In my classroom experience I have found that most students can get quite confused about the correct pronunciation of the sounds represented by this letter. Most of their confusion tends to arise from their lack of a detailed knowledge regarding the phonological nature of g.

Letter g possesses three basic sounds: /g/ / γ/ and /x/ – represented here in the International Phonetic Alphabet (API) symbols. It requires a good amount of classroom work for the beginner student to get to correctly use these three sounds.

In general terms, /g/ is used when letter g is found in the written patterns: ga, go, gu, gue, gui, güe, and güi placed in initial positions like in gato, goma, gula, guerra, guiso, güero and güisquil. This sound can also be found in structures where the written patterns we are referring to here are preceded by a consonant sound as in the words ángulo, gorgojo or engalanar.

The sound / γ/ can be found in the written patterns that have been described above -  ga, go, gu, gue, gui, güe, and güi – when they are preceded by a vowel as in the words agarrar, egoísta, cigüeña and gigante.

Letter g is pronounced as /x/ when it is found in the written patterns ge and gi, like in the words gemela, ángel or ingeniero.

The /x/ sound for g as used by Spanish is mainly an unfamiliar sound connected with this letter, as for the majority of speakers of other languages learning Spanish, the phoneme /x/ is applied to other letters. On top of this learners must also come to terms with the sound of letter j in Spanish, which is also/x/.

The triple phonological values of the Spanish g – two of them quite often unknown for beginner learners – and the complexities of the written and sound patterns of the structures, in which they are found, contribute to make the learning of the correct usage of this letter quite difficult, according to my own classroom experience.

Students of the Spanish language at the beginner level need to learn to use these sounds with the help of a professional language teacher or a linguist that can provide them with sufficient oral practice and written exercises of each sound.

Without an early intervention, learners may acquire wrong phonological traits when making use of the sounds of g in their oral language. I have taught many students that even though they may be quite fluent in their spoken Spanish, still do repeatedly improper use of the sounds of this letter.

Getting to master the written patterns of letter g and their accompanying sounds, is without doubt one of the most difficult hurdles that the beginner learner needs to get through in order to be able to become a competent user of spoken and written Spanish.

One of my students asked me yesterday if I could prepare a lesson that could deal with the nature of the ‘small words’ in the study of Spanish grammar. I replied to him that I could certainly do that, but that I could also write something on my blog about this particular subject.

For the purpose of this post I consider as ‘small words’ only those containing one, two or three letters. However, some four letter words must be included as well because they are intrinsically related as in the case of the small words grouped grammatically as articles.

Every small word can be classified in several grammatical categories. There are lots of nouns like té, pan, paz, can, luz, cal, pus, res, and fin. There are however, many other small words that fall on to certain categories that may present the student with a considerable amount of difficulties when trying to understand their role or their usage in structuring meaning in a phrase or sentence.

These small words can be classified in several groups, the most important are: articles – la, el, unas, etc; pronouns of several types – que, te , le, mío, se, etc; verbs – most of them conjugated forms such as voy, va, fui, ríe, or des, adverbs like tan, mal, sí , ya, allá, aún/aun or muy; conjunctions such as y, o, or ni and prepositions like por, para, a, de or en.

There are also some adjectives of several types that are also small words, such as mal, un, una, qué, mi, tu, or su.

It is obvious that a full classification of all these words can’t be presented here, especially in relation to nouns. A complete list of grammatical structures such as articles, pronouns, adverbs and conjunctions can be found in any good Spanish grammatical source.

Students must be taught about how to use these extremely important grammatical structures and try learning as many as possible of them in order to be fully competent speakers and write Spanish properly. Preferably these words should be learnt in contextual situations, but this does not exclude the possibility of learning them in their pure grammatical forms.

Making correct usage of these ‘small words’ is more important than knowing their grammatical classifications. Students can also create their own classification charts of these words if they wish to make sure that they can have a clear knowledge of the grammatical labels and language meanings that are applied to them.

I haven’t been able to write a post for quite a while. But there is plenty to write about, especially in relation to many of the news found in elcastellano.org website. One of the news items is about some Spanish language academies criticizing what they see as “a vulgarization of the Spanish language” by radio and television media in the Spanish speaking countries.

On the other hand I’m reading at the moment a really interesting and magnificent book about the nature of language. The book is “The Unfolding of Language” by Guy Deutscher. By reading this text I have been able to understand more closely some more aspects in relation with the scientific, social and cultural nature of language.

Deutscher presents in his work some very comprehensive analyses about the way in which all languages have historically evolved. How every living tongue used by any speaker is the result of complex and subtle never ending changing processes. I recommend this book to any person interested in getting a good grasp of the fascinating way in which all languages evolve and keep forever changing their intrinsic nature.

The news article I’m talking about here attracted my attention because it fits with the line of thought presented by “The Unfolding of Language”. Deutscher Lists a historical account of how since ancient  times until the present there has been a constant criticizing of the way language is used in the social setting; of how “language usage has always been superior” at a certain point in the past. He presents us with detailed analyses of why arguing about any perceived superior language usage in past epochs exists only in the mind of the person making such judgement.

What I’ve learned from this excellent book is that no matter from what point of view a language is analysed, the only judgement that any sensible person can pass about the nature of language – especially of the particular  ways in which it is used by a large human group – is one of open-mindedness and of critic outlook at the amazing wonder of what we call language.

Language usage cannot be legislated, controlled or imposed in any given manner. If the media presents a “vulgar” or poor language usage can only be the result of the social context where that particular usage is taking place.

What I’m saying here doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be an encouragement for everyone to have a “better” usage of  language as registered in the grammatical rules or prevalent social conventions. The real issue here, however, it’s to do with with the fact that the quality of the language used by any group of people has nothing to do with the assumption that their particular language usage is better, poorer or of vulgar character.

Last month I wrote a post here, about the nature of Spanish for travel courses. A Spanish course for specific or special purpose doesn’t have the same characteristics as a typical Spanish for travel course as presented on the post in reference. On the other hand, a lengthy Spanish for travel course can certainly be classified within a specific or special purpose category.

A Spanish course for specific or special purpose usually requires a complete learning of all the language features necessary to achieve language competence in a given field. A medical doctor or an electronics engineer, for example, has specific language needs which must be fulfilled by a course designed to satisfy their particular needs.

No course of this nature is exactly the same even if they are intended for an identical field. A biologist may need specific language structures that may differ with a course designed for an enologist (wine industry scientist).

Spanish courses for specific or special courses require that the student learn all the general aspects of Spanish before engaging in the acquisition of the specialized features needed to become an effective user of Spanish in both written and spoken language.

As stated above, to be really effective, a Spanish course for specific or special purpose involves that a student must fully learn all aspects of the language. This implies that the learning process can be time consuming and that the student must be prepared to do a good amount of homework, apart of engaging in a constant tuition arrangement with an experienced Spanish language professional.

There are lots of words in Spanish that have a very close connection to an English word. Just to tease my students, when studying the sound and structure of some Spanish words, I list orally or on the whiteboard Spanish words such us ‘visible’, ‘posible’ or ‘motor’.

In most cases they find it quite amusing and curious that words like ‘visible’ and ‘motor’ are exactly the same in both languages except for the different pronunciation. Then when I write twice the word ‘visible’ on the whiteboard and asked them to tell me which word is the Spanish or the English word, they really think that I’m going crazy; as for them both words are just the same. Things get sort out when I pronounce either of them as Spanish or English word.

Spanish and English share a vast amount of cognate words. Cognate words share a common origin; however, the meaning of a word can be different. For example the Spanish ‘sensitivo’ is not the same as the English ‘sensitive’, even though they originate from the same source. The Spanish ‘sensible’ and the English ‘sensible’ don’t mean the same thing either, even though they look exactly the same!

Students learning Spanish should, if in doubt check with their teacher or a dictionary to make sure that a given cognate word has the meaning that they intend to convey.

Cognates are of great help when pursuing a faster and efficient learning of Spanish as they make the sometimes tedious process of learning vocabulary an easier and more enjoyable task.