Beginner Spanish Lessons

Beginner Spanish lessons have become very popular all over the world as Spanish grows in popularity. There are some 500 million Spanish speakers worldwide with around 14 million learning the language at any one time. In terms of influence and convenience, Spanish is the second most useful language in the world after English.

Yes, you are probably thinking that there are more Chinese speakers than any other language in the world. This is true, but outside of China the language has little influence. English leads therefore with spread of speakers, influence of language and convenience. It has become the de facto language of the Internet and more people are learning English than any other language.

Beginner Spanish lessons are on the increase though. With some 40 million people living in the USA who have Spanish as their first language, many native English speakers there are realizing the usefulness of being able to communicate with them.

Those who do take the trouble to start beginner Spanish lessons are usually pleasantly surprised to discover that Spanish has many words that are surprisingly similar to their English equivalents. This is simply because the two languages share a common Latin root.

A common phrase to say in English when dismissing something as not being a difficulty is, "no problem." The equivalent in Spanish is, "no hay problema." This is encouragingly similar to the English and easy to remember. Usually, the words that share a common Latin root and are similarly spelt have different endings. These endings are usually regular and therefore easy to remember.

For example (which is "por ejemplo" in Spanish), English words ending in "ty" often have their endings changed to "dad" to make them Spanish: in English, "university" and in Spanish, "universidad," por ejemplo. You could say there is a similaridad (similarity) between the words that you can easily recognize!

A nice group of words that make up the Spanish-English cognates, or similarly sounding words with the same meaning in both languages, are the words in English that end in "ic." Take "plastic" for example. It becomes "plastico" in Spanish. Easy, isn't it! This is the kind of thing that will make you beginner Spanish lesson so very simple!

Of course, there are many more of the "ic" ending words in English that become "ico" endings in Spanish. Here are a few: Atlántico (Atlantic); patriótico (patriotic); romántico (romantic); and democrático (democratic). You will notice that all of these words have accents on some of the vowels. This is how the words are pronounced and it shows where the emphasis goes.

Take the last one, for example. Spelling "democratico" without any accented letter would be pronounced according to Spanish pronunciation rules as, "democratEEco". An English speaker would naturally put the accent on the "a" as "democrAtico," but a Spanish speaker would not, hence the need for the accent, which forces the accent to be put on the "a" to make it "democrAtico."

There are many shortcuts you can employ with your beginner Spanish lessons. When you discover that "equivalent" is "equivalente" in Spanish, "attention" is "atención," "artist" is "artista," "argument" is "argumento," "important" is "importante," "anniversary" is "aniversario," you'll realize that you beginner Spanish lessons can be fun!

One final little bit. Think of the word, "program," as in computer program. What would that become in Spanish? Well, go back to the beginning of this article and recall that "problem" became "problema." Go on, you can work it out!