Here are a few differences between Spanish and English: Here are some other examples of possible interference from Spanish: These differences also affect students' spelling. Both phonemes are pronounced differently from the Spanish sí ( yes), which is pronounced somewhere between those two English phonemes. This is the reason Spanish speakers have difficulty differentiating between vowel phonemes in words like seat and sit. Perhaps the greatest difference between English and Spanish is that Spanish has only five vowel sounds while English has more than 14, depending on regional dialects. There are also some differences between the two languages that may interfere with English pronunciation (phonemic differences) and with decoding or spelling (phonological differences).
Phonemic and phonological differences between Spanish and English When teachers and students know these basic similarities between the two languages, it saves time and guess work as students transfer their knowledge of Spanish literacy into English literacy. Thirdly, except for a couple of word order exceptions (adjective before noun in English and noun before adjective in Spanish), sentences in both languages have the same basic structures (as compared to English and Chinese or other non-Latin derived languages).Īnd fourth, learning to read and write uses the same basic processes (phonemic awareness, decoding, fluency, comprehension, writing mechanics). With similar sound, appearance, and meaning, these cognates help students transfer that word knowledge into their second language. Secondly, 30% to 40% of all words in English have a related word in Spanish. That knowledge helps build a phonemic and phonological foundation. Fortunately for Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELLs), there are many similarities between English and Spanish.įirst of all, both languages use the Roman alphabet.