preview

Spanish And English Language Development

Decent Essays

Angela Cisneros Linguistics 1 Professor Schuh 14 March 2015 Term Paper (Introduction) I grew up in a Hispanic household and was taught Spanish at a very young age. I spoke only Spanish until I began kindergarten. My school only permitted English, thus I was placed in an English Language Development course that helped me learn English. My parents spoke English and Spanish, so I was able to practice my English with them as well. I was in the E.L.D course from first to fourth grade. Slowly but surely I was able to communicate effectively, I still struggle with the English grammar. Due to the drastic change from Spanish to English, my ability to speak Spanish began to deteriorate and slowly began to turn into Spanglish. The only time …show more content…

For example, “school” becomes eschool or “shape” becomes esshape. Whereas, English native speakers who learn Spanish at a later age struggle with understanding that some letters are not pronounced in particular words. For example, hombre which means man, is pronounced as “ohmbre”, and the letter J actually sounds like the H in the spanish alphabet for instance, san juan. I feel though that the English language is a much more difficult language compared to Spanish because it has so many rules that one needs to follow. For instance, Spanish just has those 5 vowels if you learn them and learn how to pronounce them you are set. (Comparison of Grammar) I will be comparing the gender agreement in Spanish and English. In Spanish all nouns are either feminine or masculine (La y El ) and the adjectives have to agree with the noun that is being described. So if the noun is masculine, the adjective must be masculine and if the same noun is as well plural, the adjective will be masculine and plural. For instance, “El libro”-masculine and plural, whereas “Los libros” is all parts masculine and plural as well. Looking at the English language one can see that it

Get Access