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LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Ten things Spaniards hate about the English language

The spelling is ridiculous, the accents are impossible and then there are all those irregular plurals. Is it any wonder Spanish students learning English sometimes just want to give up?

Published: 24 September 2013 17:52 CEST
Updated: 15 September 2021 18:10 CEST
Ten things Spaniards hate about the English language
For many Spaniards learning English can be a form of torture. Photo: Josh Janssen

While English may seem easy at first glance, there are so many exceptions to the rules that sometimes the language seems designed to make life difficult for students. 

It’s enough to make you want to tear your hair out!

As translator and English teacher Tara Lowe puts it: “Spaniards, we English speakers understand your pain.

“Patience, determination and above all, native English speaker friends, partners and work colleagues are vital to your success in learning this beautiful language.”

Pronunciation

Spanish is a phonetic language, so what you see is what you get. English is another story. Common mistakes by Spaniards include adding an ‘e’ in front of words beginning with ‘s’ plus consonants, like e-snow or even e-Spain. Tara Lowe also points out how difficult the final ‘s’ is – especially for people from the south of Spain. 

Photo: Bitshaker/Flickr

Plurals

Spanish plurals are fairly straightforward, but in English, it’s a completely different ball game. Spanish students often get in a muddle over plurals that stay the same as in the singular (like sheep) or with nouns that change drastically in the plural, as in the case of mouse/mice or foot/feet. 

Plurals can be difficult to master in English. Photo: David Mark / Pixabay

Spelling

Is it any wonder Spaniards get wound up about English spelling? Tara Lowe says: Where is the “gh” in “though”? Why do I say “alive” like “five” but “live” like “with”? And how come “wood” (noun) is pronounced the same as “would” (conditional)? 

Photo: Venita Oberholster / Pixabay

Irregular verbs

English is full of horrible irregular verbs like drink, drank, drunk, as an example. What’s wrong with just sticking an -ed on the end of everything? But that would just be too easy, wouldn’t it?

Photo: PublicDomainPictures / Pixabay

Accents

Congratulations, you’ve studied your verb tables, been to all those classes and mastered the English language! Now it’s time to pack up and visit an English-speaking country… and discover you can’t understand a single word anyone is saying. 

A Scottish accent can be difficult for Spanish people to understand. Photo: PublicDomainArchive / Pixabay

Homophones

Jim and Jen couldn’t bear to bare all in front of their pet bear. Yes, a bizarre example of how English words can have completely different spellings and meanings, but sound exactly the same. 

Is it a bear or a bare? Photo: Pexels / Pixabay

Do, does, did

There is no equivalent to this tongue-twisting auxiliary, or helping, verb in Spanish. That’s why frustrated Spaniards sometimes come up with questions like ‘I go?’ and negatives like ‘I not go’.

Photo: Robin Higgins / Pixabay

Future

Let’s face it. When it comes to talking about the future, English is a mess. You can use ‘going to (Next week, I’m going to visit my cousins) or ‘will’ (What will you do when you grow up?) or even just the present (I leave on Monday). Sure there are rules, but couldn’t English just simplify the whole business?

There are many ways to express the future tense in English. Photo: Steve Buissinne / Pixabay

False friends

With so many Spanish and English words looking almost identical, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking they mean the same thing. But watch out: you don’t want to get your preservatives (conservantes) mixed with your preservatives (condoms). 

Photo: Michal Jarmoluk / Pixabay

Welcome to phrasal verbs

This pesky pairing of verbs and prepositions which are the pet hate of students of English worldwide. A word of advice: don’t try learning long lists (take in, take out, take on…). Instead, try learning them in context. So if you are talking romantic dinners, you’ll need examples like ask out, dine out, stand up or fall for. 

Photo: StockSnap / Pixabay

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LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Le Havre rules: How to talk about French towns beginning with Le, La or Les

If you're into car racing, French politics or visits to seaside resorts you are likely at some point to need to talk about French towns with a 'Le' in the title. But how you talk about these places involves a slightly unexpected French grammar rule. Here's how it works.

Published: 30 November 2021 13:04 CET
Updated: 4 December 2021 17:47 CET
An old WW2 photo taken in the French port town of Le Havre.
An old WW2 photo taken in the French port town of Le Havre. It can be difficult to know what prepositions to use for places like this - so we have explained it for you. (Photo by AFP)

If you’re listening to French chat about any of those topics, at some point you’re likely to hear the names of Mans, Havre and Touquet bandied about.

And this is because French towns that have a ‘Le’ ‘La’ or ‘Les’ in the title lose them when you begin constructing sentences. 

As a general rule, French town, commune and city names do not carry a gender. 

So if you wanted to describe Paris as beautiful, you could write: Paris est belle or Paris est beau. It doesn’t matter what adjectival agreement you use. 

For most towns and cities, you would use à to evoke movement to the place or explain that you are already there, and de to explain that you come from/are coming from that location:

Je vais à Marseille – I am going to Marseille

Je suis à Marseille – I am in Marseille 

Je viens de Marseille – I come from Marseille 

But a select few settlements in France do carry a ‘Le’, a ‘La’ or a ‘Les’ as part of their name. 

In this case the preposition disappears when you begin formulating most sentences, and you structure the sentence as you would any other phrase with a ‘le’, ‘la’ or ‘les’ in it.

Masculine

Le is the most common preposition for two names (probably something to do with the patriarchy) with Le Havre, La Mans, Le Touquet and the town of Le Tampon on the French overseas territory of La Réunion (more on that later)

A good example of this is Le Havre, a city in northern France where former Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, who is tipped to one day run for the French presidency, serves as mayor. 

Edouard Philippe’s twitter profile describes him as the ‘Maire du Havre’, using a masculine preposition

Here we can see that his location is Le Havre, and his Twitter handle is Philippe_LH (for Le Havre) but when he comes to describe his job the Le disappears.

Because Le Havre is masculine, he describes himself as the Maire du Havre rather than the Maire de Havre (Anne Hidalgo, for example would describe herself as the Maire de Paris). 

For place names with ‘Le’ in front of them, you should use prepositions like this:

Ja vais au Touquet – I am going to Le Touquet

Je suis au Touquet – I am in Le Touquet 

Je viens du Touquet – I am from Le Touquet 

Je parle du Touquet – I am talking about Le Touquet

Le Traité du Touquet – the Le Touquet Treaty

Feminine

Some towns carry ‘La’ as part of their name. La Rochelle, the scenic town on the west coast of France known for its great seafood and rugby team, is one such example.

In French ‘à la‘ or ‘de la‘ is allowed, while ‘à le‘ becomes au and ‘de le’ becomes du. So for ‘feminine’ towns such as this, you should use the following prepositions:

Je vais à La Rochelle – I am going to La Rochelle

Je viens de La Rochelle – I am coming from La Rochelle 

Plural

And some places have ‘Les’ in front of their name, like Les Lilas, a commune in the suburbs of Paris. The name of this commune literally translates as ‘The Lilacs’ and was made famous by Serge Gainsbourg’s song Le Poinçonneur des Lilas, about a ticket puncher at the Metro station there. 

When talking about a place with ‘Les’ as part of the name, you must use a plural preposition like so:

Je suis le poinçonneur des Lilas – I am the ticket puncher of Lilas 

Je vais aux Lilas – I am going to Les Lilas

Il est né aux Lilas – He was born in Les Lilas  

Islands 

Islands follow more complicated rules. 

If you are talking about going to one island in particular, you would use à or en. This has nothing to do with gender and is entirely randomised. For example:

Je vais à La Réunion – I am going to La Réunion 

Je vais en Corse – I am going to Corsica 

Generally speaking, when talking about one of the en islands, you would use the following structure to suggest movement from the place: 

Je viens de Corse – I am coming from Corsica 

For the à Islands, you would say:

Je viens de La Réunion – I am coming from La Réunion 

When talking about territories composed of multiple islands, you should use aux.

Je vais aux Maldives – I am going to the Maldives. 

No preposition needed 

There are some phrases in French which don’t require any a preposition at all. This doesn’t change when dealing with ‘Le’ places, such as Le Mans – which is famous for its car-racing track and Motorcycle Grand Prix. Phrases that don’t need a preposition include: 

Je visite Le Mans – I am visiting Le Mans

J’aime Le Mans – I like Le Mans

But for a preposition phrase, the town becomes simply Mans, as in Je vais au Mans.

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