Spanish-American Contrastive Analysis

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SPANISH-AMERICAN CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS

by Don L. F. Nilsenand Alleen Pace Nilsen

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SPAIN, FRANCE, ITALY AND PORTUGAL

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SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

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Don Quixote’s Mind:Rocinante, Dulcinea, Sancho Panza,

Lance & Windmills

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CODE SWITCHING• L. Dabène said that in the case of the

first generation, Code Switching is often used as a remedial strategy to incompetence.

• However in the second generation, code switching can fulfill different functions:

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• It can enable the speaker to claim a personal identity.

• It can express a kind of complicity with the others or, on the other hand, it can reveal a strategy of divergence from the environment.

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• Code Switching can enable the speaker to comment about the language (metalinguistic use)

• Code Switching can also be used to comment on what has just been said (metadiscursive use).

• Or, finally, Code Switching can be used to change the type of interaction, to select other interlocutors or to switch from a dialogue to a collective exchange (metacommunicative use).

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SPANGLISH• “Spanglish” is a new kind of slang finding its

way not only into conversations but also into short stories, novels, popular music, comedy acts, and television sitcoms.

• Sprinkled through English sentences are such insertions as “Que no?,” “Tambien,” and “Yo se.”

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• Sometimes English words are combined with Spanish words, so that “barber shop” and “peluqueria” becomes “barberia.”

• Similarly, “chilling out” becomes “chileando,” and “to park” becomes “parkear.”

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HISPANIC NAMES• In Spain and Latin America, if a girl

were named Ana Maria López Garcia, she has two surnames. The first one is her father’s (López), and the second one is her mother’s (Garcia).

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• If Ana Maria López Garcia married Gregoria Díaz Rodriguez, then she would write her name as Ana Maria López de Díaz.

• In Mexico, Ana Maria López de Díaz would go

by her maiden name daily (Maria López Garcia), but on formal documentation she would identify herself with her married name (Ana Maria López de Díaz).

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If she were to have a child, Alicia, Alicia’s full name would be Alicia López Díaz, keeping both her father’s and her mother’s surnames.

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SPANGLISH TEST 1• bacuncliner

– vacuum cleaner• biper

– beeper or pager• boyla

– boiler• chileando

– chilling out• choping

– shopping• fafu

– fast food• jangear

– hanging out• joldoperos

– muggers, holdup artists

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SPANGLISH TEST 2• liqueo

– to leak• maicrogüey

– microwave oven• pulover

– T-shirt• roofo

– roof• sangüiche

– sandwich• tensén

– ten-cent store like K-Mart or Woolworths

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Phonological Differences 1• English has 13 vowels; Spanish has

only 5 vowels

• Spanish is a syllable-timed language; English is a stress-timed language

• Spanish /d/ and /ð/ are alaphonic as in “duda” 

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Phonological Differences 2• English has a retroflex /r/; Spanish has a

flapped /r/ and a trilled /r/ written as <r> and <rr>

• English has no velar fricative <x> or <j>

• Spanish doesn’t distinguish between /č/ and /š/, or between /s/ and /z/

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Orthographic Differences 1• Spanish <ll> is pronounced /y/; Spanish <l> is pronounced /l/

• Spanish <j> is a velar fricative

• Spanish <b> and <v> are both the same (bilabial fricatives)

• Spanish has <ñ> for the /ny/ sound

• Spanish <h> is not pronounced

• Spanish has a <q> but no <k> or <c>

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Orthographic Differences 2• Spanish begins questions with <¿> and

exclamations with <i>

• Spanish uses a period for thousands, and a comma for a decimal; English does the reverse

• Spanish uses «…» for quotation marks, not “…”

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Morphological Differences • Spanish verbs are more highly inflected than

are English verbs

• Spanish adjectives agree with the nouns they modify in number and gender

• Spanish has grammatical gender; English has natural gender

• Spanish uses the definite article differently as in “el señor Jones”

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Syntactic Differences• English adjectives come before nouns;

Spanish adjectives come after nouns.

• Spanish has “pro-drop” which means that a subject pronoun can be dropped; English does not.

• Spanish has double negatives (“No tiene nada”); English does not.

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Semantic Differences 1• Some English-Spanish cognates don’t have

the same meaning.

• Consider the following Spanish words: “actual,” “libraria,” “grocería,” “molestar,” “embarazada” and “principio.”

• In English, these words mean “present,”

“bookstore,” “vulgarity,” “to bother,” “pregnant” and “beginning,” respectively.

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Semantic Differences 2

• A single Spanish word can have more than one English meaning:

• Spanish “hacer” means either “make” or “do”

• Spanish “su” means either “his,” “her,” or “its”

• Spanish “en” means either “on,” “in,” “into,” or “at”

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Semantic Differences 3

• Or, a single English word can have more than one Spanish meaning:

• English “time” in Spanish can be “tiempo,” “vez,” or “hora”

• English “hot” in Spanish can be “picante,” or “caliente”

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In conclusion, consider these riddles:

• Spanish “plata” means “silver,” Spanish “oro” means “gold,” and Spanish “platano” means “banana”

• Qué es come oro, pero plata no es?

• Platano es.

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• Spanish “se parecen” means “similarity”Spanish “manzano” means “apple”Spanish “tren” means “train”Spanish “pera” means “pear”Spanish “espera” means “to wait”

• En qué se parecen una manzano y un tren?

• No es pera. = No espera.

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• Spanish “estrellas” means “stars” Spanish “hay” means “are there” Spanish “cielos” means “heavens” Spanish “cinquenta” means “fifty” Spanish “sin cuenta” means “countless

• Cuantas estrellas hay en los cielos?

• Cinquenta. = Sin cuenta

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• Spanish “perezoso” means “lazy” Spanish “mundo” means “world” Spanish “nada” means both “nothing” and “it swims”

• Cual animal es el mas perezoso del mundo?

• El pez.• Qué hace el pez?• Nada.