Vocabulary
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Learn a little about how to write
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Hi! |
Welcome to Introduction to Spanish. |
My name is Alisha and I'm joined by... |
Hi everyone! I'm Lia. |
In this lesson you'll learn the basics of Spanish writing. |
The Spanish Alphabet |
Just like English, Spanish uses Roman letters in its writing. |
Unlike English, the Spanish alphabet has one additional letter called eñe, which appears after the letter N and before the letter O. |
Latin Alphabet + ñ |
This letter, looks like a regular n but with a tilde on top. It sounds like a combination between an N and a Y sound, like in the word “canyon.” |
español (“Spanish”) |
niño (“boy”) |
mañana (“tomorrow/morning”) |
Other than this one extra letter, the Spanish alphabet is essentially written the same as the English alphabet. |
Punctuation Marks |
For the most part, punctuation in Spanish is similar to English. A period marks the end of a sentence, and a comma indicates a pause. Exclamation and question marks, however, are a different story. |
Hello! |
Hello? |
In English, we place an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence to denote that it is exclamatory. |
We do the same thing for question marks to denote that the sentence is a question. |
In Spanish, however, exclamation marks and question marks must be placed at the end AND at the beginning of the exclamatory phrase or question. |
¡Hola! |
¿Hola? |
The inverted marks must be placed whenever a new exclamatory or question phrase is formed, even if it's within the same sentence. |
¡Hola! y ¡Buenas noches! (“Hello! And goodnight!”) |
Notice how this only applies to the phrase and not to the entire sentence itself. |
Juan, ¿adónde vas? (“Juan, where are you going?”) |
On the other hand, the ending marks still go at the end of the sentence regardless of whether the words are part of the question or not. |
¿Adónde vas, Juan? (“Where are you going, Juan?”) |
To indicate a sentence that is both a question and an exclamation, use both marks. Ensure that you're being consistent with which marks go on the inside and which go on the outside. |
¿¡Y tú quién te crees que eres!? (“Who do you think you are!?”) |
¡¿Y tú quién te crees que eres?! (“Who do you think you are?!”) |
Capitalization |
Compared to English, Spanish doesn't capitalize as many words as English does. |
Let's go over a few cases where English capitalizes words when Spanish does not. |
The days of the week and the months of the year are not capitalized in Spanish. For example... |
Hoy es jueves, 23 de octubre. (“Today is Thursday, October 23.”) |
Seasons of the year, are also not capitalized. |
El invierno se acerca. (“Winter is coming.”) |
Personal titles are not capitalized unless they are abbreviations. |
señor - Sr. |
señorita - Srta. |
doctor - Dr. |
Titles, such as those of a movie or book, capitalize the first word only. Every other word in the title is written in lowercase. |
Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal (“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's stone”) |
Names of countries and cities are capitalized, but names of languages are not. |
Reino Unido (“UK”) |
EEUU (“USA”) |
Hablo inglés. (“I speak English.”) |
Spanish Accent Mark |
Finally we come to the Spanish accent mark. Spanish uses a mark called the “acute” accent. It looks like a diagonal line which starts from the bottom left and rises towards the upper right. |
This accent mark appears above the letter. More specifically, accents will only appear over the five vowels in Spanish. |
á é í ó ú |
The Spanish accent is used to indicate that the syllable which has the accent must be stressed. So always stress the syllable which has the accent. |
médico (“physician”) |
compró (“bought”) |
Some words are spelled the same and sound the same, but have different meanings in Spanish. |
el (“the”) |
él (“he”) |
In these situations, the accent is used to differentiate the two words, so it's clear exactly which word we're referring to. |
mas (“but”) |
más (“more”) |
OK. So we've covered the main accent mark in Spanish, but what about these ones? |
ñ ü |
Don't be fooled by the first example. Even though it might look like an accent, it's just the letter eñe in Spanish. |
The second example is an accent marker, and it's used to indicate that the U should be pronounced. This is because the letter U is usually silent when it comes after the letter G. Consider the following examples. |
guerra |
guerrilla |
vergüenza |
pingüino |
Notice how the U is silent in the first two examples... |
guerra |
guerilla |
...but pronounced in the last two. |
vergüenza |
pingüino |
Keep in mind though, that this accent only occurs in a few words that have the letters G and U together. |
In this lesson, you learned that Spanish uses roman letters like English, with one additional letter. |
Exclamation and question marks appear inverted at the beginning of the phrase, and upright at the end of the sentence. |
Days, months, and seasons aren't capitalized in Spanish. |
And the acute accent is used in Spanish mainly to indicate stress. |
In the next lesson, you'll be entering Spanish boot camp, where you'll learn useful beginner phrases to get you speaking Spanish right away! |
See you in the next lesson. Bye! |
Bye~! |
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