The many ways Spaniards refer to your face if you’re being cheeky

by time news

It turns out English speakers don’t have a monopoly on mangling their language. Spanish speakers pepper their speech and writing with errors too.

A book published by Spain’s Cervantes Institute – The 500 most frequent doubts in Spanish – tackles the 500 thorniest issues faced by native speakers of Spanish.

From spellings, kiosk or kiosk? (you’ll see both) – to accents – why or why? (the second is a noun meaning ‘reason’ or ‘motive’) – this article will help you clear up your doubts about the language.

But it just is (or should that be only?) with all the small talk. Let’s get on with it.

Do I hear you wrong or do I hear you wrong?

I’m listening to you badly (‘i hear you wrong‘) may sound horribly wrong in English but in Spanish, it’s become so widely used most Spaniards won’t even pick up on this bizarre mistake. The right answer is ‘i hear you wrong‘ (I can’t hear you).

I hear you wrong Photo: Robin Higgins / Pixabay

There, is there or is there?

Ouch! Wasn’t Spanish meant to be an easy language phonetically speaking? These three words are almost pronounced the same but may cause some Spaniards a headache when putting pen to paper. Hay (there is/are), ‘there‘ (over there) and ‘is‘ is what flamenco ‘singers‘ (singers) scream or what you shout out if you’re in pain.

Ay, I’m being bitten by ants. Photo: Hans / Pixabay

Did I walk or did I walk?

The past simple form of the verb ‘to walk’ (to walk) in Spanish trips up many native speakers who assume it to be regular. Right answer is I walked, you walked, walked, We walked, you walked, they walked.

What is the past simple form of the verb ‘to walk’ (andar)? Photo: ???? Mabel Amber, who will one day / Pixabay

Have I fried or have I fried?

Brain frazzled yet? Well, not to worry because Spaniards often mix up the past participle of to fry (‘freído’) with the adjective fried (‘frito’). Food for thought.

Freído or Frito? Photo: Andrew Ridley / Unsplash

Go up, go in, go out

In English, this would equate with ‘go up up’, ‘to go inside inside’ and ‘to go out’. It seems redundant, it’s grammatically wrong but the vast majority of Spaniards have used these forms more than once.

Climb to the top? Photo: Bruno Nascimento / Unsplash

The water, the weapon, the hunger

Sometimes the gender (‘el’ or ‘la’) of nouns in Spanish is a bitch, pardon our French. It’s hard enough already for English speakers to label everything as either masculine or feminine, so when you get nouns that end with an ‘a’ but have a masculine pronoun it all gets very confusing. Still, many Spanish mistakenly say ‘this water‘ or ‘this gun‘ when they should use ‘is‘.

The water instead of The water. Photo: Rony Michaud / Pixabay

Alone or alone?

If you haven’t got your head around Spanish accents, rest assured many Spaniards aren’t clear on the rules either. Even the Royal Spanish Academy (the world’s chief body on the Spanish language) can’t make its mind up on whether to include an accent on ‘only‘ (only) or just leave it like solo (alone). Feel like you need a ‘just coffee‘ (black coffee) now?

Do you need an accent with your café solo? Photo: David Schwarzenberg / Pixabay

Adding an unnecessary ‘s’ to second person past simple forms (‘fuistes’, ‘hicistes’, ‘llamastes’ and so on)

The letter ‘s’ at the end of words may be a relatively unheard sound in southern Spain, but in the rest of the Iberian peninsula, they’re rather fond of it. So much so that many Spaniards add it to verbs where it doesn’t even exist. By the way, it should be ‘fuiste’, ‘hiciste’ and ‘llamaste’.

Some Spanish people an extra ‘s’ onto words. Photo: Muhammad Haseeb Muhammad Suleman / Pixabay

Did I drive or did I drive? Did I translate or did I translate?

Common verbs like ‘to drive’ and ‘to translate’ manage to catch out many Spaniards because of their unexpected irregular form in the past simple. The correct form for both verbs ends in -is, -sure, -jo, – Jims, -jisteis and – Jeron.

Do you know how to say ‘I drove’ in Spanish? Photo: Pexels / Pixabay

have only

“What on earth is that choice of picture about?” you may ask. Well, this slide is only about one word- Han, alone. Terrible jokes aside, ‘there have been’ is not ‘he there have been‘ in Spanish. The correct form is always ‘has been‘ but many Spaniards join the dark side.

Han Solo. Photo: JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP

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