Presents

Spanish
Part 1

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 Introduction
Spanish, also called Castilian, is a Western Romance
language of the Italic branch of Indo-European. It is
spoken by 480 million native speakers all over the
world and is an official language in 20 countries (Spain,
Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica,
Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador,
Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua,
Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela).

Family
As a Western Romance Language, Spanish is closely
related to Italian, Portuguese, and French. As an Indo-
European language, it is also related to the Germanic,
Slavic, and Celtic languages.

Grammar
Spanish is an inflected language like most of the Indo-
European languages. Most of the time, the personal
pronoun is omitted as the conjugation suffixes
indicated both tense and person. Even though
pronouns and verbs are usually written as separate
words, object pronouns are attached at the end of
infinitives, gerunds and imperatives.
 Phonology
The Spanish phonemic system descends from Latin.
Spanish features 5 vowels phonemes and 19 consonant
phonemes (a couple being lost in some dialects).
Spanish has six falling diphthongs and eight rising
diphthongs. Spanish spellings are largely phonetics.
The /θ/ sound if often replaced by a /s/ in Latin
American countries.

Grammatical Gender
Spanish is an Indo-European language, and like almost
all Indo-European languages, it has grammatical
gender. Spanish does not however have case
declensions.
There are two genders in Spanish: masculine and
feminine. Some pronouns can however have a neuter
gender in the singular.
It must be learned for the most part, but there are
some patterns that make it easier to learn, for
instance, most words ending in -o are masculine, and
words ending in -a tend to be feminine.
 Pronouns
Nominative (subject)
I - yo You (singular – informal) - tú
He - él, She - ella You (singular – formal) - usted
We (masculine) – nosotros
We (feminine) - nosotras
You (plural – informal – masculine) - vosotros
You (plural – informal – feminine) - vosotras
You (plural – formal) - ustedes
They (masculine) - ellos
They (feminine) – ella

Phrases
The IPA transcription appears after the phrase
Buenos días /bwenos ˈdias/ - Good morning
Buenas tardes/ˈbwenas ˈtardes/ - Good evening
Hola /ˈo.la/ - Hello
¿Cómo estás? /ˈkomo esˈtas/ - How are you?
Muy bien, gracias /mwi bjen ˈɡɾa.θjas/ - Fine, thank
you
¿Cómo te llamas? /ˈkomo te ˈʎamas/ - What is your
name?
Me llamo ___ /me ˈʎamo/ - My name is ___
Sí /ˈsi/ - Yes
No /no/ - No
No puedo hablar español /no ˈpweðo aˈblaɾ espaˈɲol/ -
I can’t speak Spanish
No entiendo /no enˈtjendo / - I don’t understand
¿Hay alguien aquí que hable inglés? /ˈai ˈalɡjen aˈki ke
aˈble inˈɡles/ - Is there someone here who speaks
English?
¿De dónde eres? /de ˈdonde ˈeɾes/ - Where are you
from?
Soy de ___ /ˈsoi de/ - I am from ___
This concludes Part 1. New parts are made available on
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This lesson was written by Margot Marousez

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