Fun facts about the Spanish language – and a guide for learners

IF YOU'RE planning on relocating to Spain, or buying a holiday home and spending a considerable chunk of your life there, you can't avoid learning the language. Even if you're going to be based in a very cosmopolitan or touristy area where multi-lingual shop and bar staff are frequently found, it can be costly having to pay a translator whenever you have a medical issue, or need to resolve complicated issues with utility boards, authorities or other service providers.

And even if you're quite happy to hand over your cash to someone else to do the less-simple stuff, it can be isolating living somewhere where you can't even swap small talk with retail workers, bartenders, or total strangers at a bus stop. Especially in Spain, where striking up conversations or even just engaging in brief exchanges with total strangers is completely normal and everyday.

It takes many years before you can chat easily in another language in the way you would in your own, but classes in your area – sometimes free ones run by town halls or expat social groups – will guide you through it, so you only need to focus on practising what they tell you to practise, not on figuring out how to even begin. And if the pace of the class is too fast, speak out – it could be everyone there thinks so and is embarrassed to say so. There's no shame in having to go back and repeat the same exercises again and again, even if everyone else has grasped them; many foreign residents in Spain who now speak like natives were in exactly the same position themselves at one time. 

Mistakes are to be welcomed, and you will definitely make plenty. Making a mistake and being corrected means it's more likely to stick in your mind – especially if it's what you think of as a 'silly' one. If you make errors, the 'sillier' the better, as you'll remember more clearly what not to do in future. Plus, you're building up amusing anecdotes for future conversation-starters – that person next to you at the dinner table who talks as though they were born in Spain will have plenty of their own to regale you with. 

Luckily, though, Spanish is widely considered to be one of the easiest languages for foreigners, especially Europeans, to learn. French, Italian and Portuguese speakers, or anyone who did Latin at school, will adapt to it easily, and even if the only tongue you've ever spoken in your life is English and you left school with no qualifications, you'll still find the grammatical structure is actually quite straightforward, and some of the vocabulary instantly recognisable.

Pronunciation is easier than in English, even if you've never heard a word spoken.

Here, we'll guide you through some of the key features of how to speak out loud – and you may be intrigued to learn some curious facts about the language along the way.

If you're already that person at the dinner table we mentioned who speaks as though they're born in Spain, you might still be surprised by some of the quirky facts we've unearthed about the language, so keep reading.

The most- and least-used letters – and how to handle Bs and Vs

As in many languages of Latin origin or influence, the 'E' is the most-used letter in Castilian Spanish – not, as many beginners would believe, the 'O'. 

The 'O' is, however, the third-most used letter after 'E' and 'A', and the fourth- and fifth-most utilised are the 'L' and the 'S'.

Likewise, the least-used letter – practically never, in fact – is the 'W'. Only 'imported' words, such as walkman or whisky – the latter sometimes spelled phonetically in Spanish as güisqui – use the W; no word originally of Spanish origin does.

When a 'W' – a letter called the uve-doble, or 'double V' in Spanish, given that it was written as 'vv' in Latin – is indeed found, it is normally pronounced as a soft 'B'.

This is the case with the only town in Spain whose name begins with a 'W' – Wamba, which is pronounced as 'Bamba'.

Some confusion arises among new learners of Spanish about how to pronounce the 'B' and the 'V' – many are taught from the beginning that both are a 'B' sound.

In reality, it's roughly halfway between the two – a softer 'B' merged with a harder 'V'.

But this also depends upon where in the word the letter is.

Whether it's Valencia or Barcelona, the first letter sounds the same.

If a 'V' or 'B' comes after a pause, or at the beginning of a sentence, it's pronounced as a hard 'B', as in 'bottle'.

If it comes in the middle of a word – or at the beginning but in the middle of a sentence – then the 'soft-B-cum-hard-V' comes into play. 

Until you hear it in real life, a good way to practice is to switch Bs and Vs round in words in your own language, say them out loud, but attempt to do so in such a way that someone listening to you wouldn't notice the change. For example, say 'vegetables' as 'begetables', and 'bedroom' as 'vedroom', whilst trying to disguise, in your voice, the altered first letter. If people you're talking to don't pick up on the deliberate alteration, you've probably achieved correct 'B' and 'V' pronunciation in Spanish.

Mañana, when you're in España...the 'ñ', the most Spanish letter ever

The Spanish language has 27 letters – five vowels and 22 consonants – making it the same as the English-language alphabet, but with one extra.

Other than in galego – as the Galician regional language is known in its own tongue – the 'ñ' is not known to exist in any other. 

It's almost considered a symbol of Spain as a country, and of the language worldwide – the Spanish National Basketball Association, its answer to the United States' NBA, is referred to as the 'ÑBA' to differentiate it and put the stamp of Spain on its name.

This, the 'eñe', gives a 'ny' sound – España, the name of the country in Spanish, is pronounced 'Espanya'.

To this end, on keyboards where it is not possible to create an 'ñ', such as on an older mobile phone, a Spanish-speaker would typically use the letters 'ny' to replace the 'ñ': Mañana, meaning 'morning', or 'tomorrow', would be written as 'manyana', never as 'manana'.

Otherwise, if they also speak Portuguese, they might use an 'nh', which makes the same consonant sound – in the language of Spain's western neighbour, they write the larger Iberian country's name as Espanha.

Where did the 'eñe' come from, given that the same sound exists in many other languages – including Portuguese – but the letter does not?

Well, it originates from Latin, where the 'ñ' sound is created by writing 'nn' (annus, or 'year'), 'mn' (damnu, or 'damage', which is pronounced the same in Spanish, as daño), or 'ng' (ringere, 'to scold', which in Spanish became reñir), and, as in modern Italian, as 'gn' (pugnus, meaning 'fist' in Latin, becomes puño in Spanish; bolognese in Italian is boloñesa in Spanish).

And Mediaeval monks, to aid spelling in the standard written language of the time – so they did not have to remember which combination was correct – and to save time, by not having to write a second letter, created an 'ñ' to symbolise all four pronunciations in Latin.

Double letters that used to be single letters (and how to pronounce 'paella')

The Spanish language used to have 29 letters, of which 24 were consonants. The 'ch' and the 'll' were considered letters in their own right, but the Royal Spanish Academy (Real Academia Española, or RAE), the 'standardisers' of the language and authors of the dictionary, decided to eliminate both these in 1994.

They are known known as a dígrafo, or two letters combined which make up their own specific phoneme, or sound.

This is why you might sometimes see proper nouns, such as place names or people's names, written with a double capital at the beginning: Catalunya's only inland province, that of Lleida, is sometimes seen written as LLeida, but for the past 28 years, this is no longer correct.

The 'll' sound is the same as that of the 'y' in the English language – never, unlike in Italian and English, as a long 'L'. This means 'paella' is pronounced 'pah-EH-ya', Fallas as 'FAH-yas', and millón as 'mee-YON'.

Some second-language speakers of Spanish can be heard pronouncing the 'll' as the 'lli' in 'million' – you might here them talking of eating 'pah-EL-ya' at the 'FAL-yas'. This is incorrect, but is more likely in those who have lived close to a Portuguese-speaking country, or to Galicia in Spain's far north-west; in galego, an 'll' is indeed pronounced as in 'million', and in Portuguese, the combination 'lh' (as in trabalho, or 'work') creates the 'lli' from 'million'.

Another curious fact about double letters in Spanish – the only time you'll find two identical consonants together will be the 'll' for the 'y' sound; a 'rr' – which is a 'rolling R', unlike a single 'R' which is much softer than in English – a 'cc', where each 'C' is pronounced separately (acceso, accento, both of which sound a bit more like an 'x'), or in the word innovación or innovar ('innovation' or 'innovate') a double-N. 

Otherwise, repeated consonants – like in the English 'aggravate', 'better', or 'happy' – are never used in Spanish.

Vowel sounds: Simple things, really, even multiple ones

English-language speakers learning Spanish from the beginning often over-complicate things for themselves – whilst English is far from phonetic, meaning written words do not always sound the same when spoken and two words with exactly the same letters might have a different pronunciation (such as in 'north wind' and 'winding up'), in Spanish, what you see is what you say. 

That's because the language only has five vowel sounds – A, E, I, O, U, as in 'cat', 'deck', 'sheet', 'dog', and 'hook'. 

Whilst 'calculate' has two different 'A' sounds, and 'alternate' does also but includes a third, this is never the case in Spanish. All three 'A' sounds, to a Spanish-speaker who does not speak English, would be pronounced the same – as in 'cat'.

Also, all letters in a Spanish word are pronounced, except the 'H', which is always silent other than in a 'CH' sound. Common spelling mistakes among native Spanish-speakers include hecho ('done' or 'made', and also 'fact') being written for echo ('I throw', and also idiomatically, in echo de menos, 'I miss', as in 'longing' or 'yearning'). The 'H' being silent means both are pronounced the same.

'Pronouncing every word' means a non-English-speaking Spaniard would say 'cal-coo-LA-teh' and 'Al-tair-NA-teh', with the 'A' as in 'cat', if they were reading aloud.

Other vowel sounds beyond these basic five are created by putting two together: In reina, or 'queen', the 'E' is as in 'deck' and the 'I' is as in 'sheet', giving an 'eh-ee', which, when said quickly, comes out like the 'ay' in 'hay'.

The same is the case in faena (a colloquial word for 'jobs' or 'work', or an old-fashioned word for commercial fishing), in boina ('beret', but more colloquially used to describe a cap of smog above a city), poema ('poem'), huevos ('eggs'), which almost gives a 'w' sound – 'weh-vos'), hielo ('ice'), huida ('flight', as in 'to flee', which comes out as 'weeder'), or in the name of the Egyptian capital of Cairo, which is pronounced in Spanish exactly as in English.

Also in recaudar ('to collect', as in funds or taxes), which sounds like the 'ow' in 'how'; feudo (a place or society under feudal law); viuda ('widow'), ciudad ('city'), and cuidado ('care', which sounds like the 'quee' in 'queen').

It's extremely rare to see an 'ou' in the Spanish language, which would be an 'oh-oo'; it is fairly prevalent in catalán and its 'parent' languages in the Balearics (ibicuenco, mallorquín and menorquín) and in the Comunidad Valenciana (valenciano or, as it is called in this language itself, valencià).

In these, though, the same rule follows about pronouncing the two vowels separately, but quickly so that they merge: Bou, meaning 'bull', sounds like the 'ow' in 'snow'.

Why accents are important: You can't avoid stress

Accents on Spanish words serve a purpose, and should not be omitted by English-language speakers purely because of the lack of these in their own language; failure to include an accent completely changes the pronunciation, or even the meaning, of a word.

If unaccented, the stress in a Spanish word always falls on the penultimate syllable – trabajo, or 'work', is 'tra-BA-jo', for example.

Remember that the 'j' is pronounced as a 'throaty H', rather like a 'loch' in Scotland – indeed, native Scottish people learning Spanish are said to pick up the 'j' sound very quickly.

The exceptions are where a word ends in a 'Z' – matiz, being 'shade' or 'tone', or matriz, being 'womb', have the accent on the '-iz' ending; also, anything ending in a vowel plus an 'R', as is the case with verbs – llamar (to call), venir (to come) or hacer (to do or to make), where the stress falls on the '-ar', '-ir', or '-er'.

Where an accent appears, the stress lands there – accents are only ever on vowels and only ever one-directional – Cádiz, réplica, químico ('chemical'), Cómpeta, and Úbeda.

The 'ia' or 'io' in any word, if it does not have an accent, is considered to be a single sound – to an English-language speaker, 'Valencia' has four syllables, but in Spanish it is considered as having three, which is why the stress falls on the 'en', as in 'Va-LEN-cia'.

An impetuous orchid, a follower in the dressing room: Spanish makes good use of its vowels

Words using all five vowels – some more than once – are far more frequent in Spanish than even many Spanish-speakers would have you believe. A fluent speaker would be able to pull out 20 or so without thinking, if they had a pen and paper, and anyone who went through the dictionary from Aa to Zz would compile considerably more.

Starting from 'A', going through the alphabet, you can find arquetipo (archetype), blanquecino ('whitish'), centrifugado ('spin cycle', or 'spun' as in a washing machine), droguería (not a drugstore, but a shop selling everything from cosmetics to cleaning products and even house paint), ecuación ('equation'), gubernativo ('governing', as an adjective), impetuosa ('impetuous', in the female form), jerárquico ('hierarchic'), lloriquear ('crying', but in a whining or infantile manner), menstruación ('menstruation'), neumonía ('pneumonia'), orquídea ('orchid'), porquería ('mess', or 'filth'), quebradizo ('brittle' or 'easily broken'), reconquista ('reconquest', referring to the post-Inquisition Christian domination and expulsion of the Moors), seguidora ('follower', in the feminine), tertuliano (if a tertulia is a tutorial or TED Talk, tertuliano is the adjective involved – 'a TED-Talk day' would be a día tertuliano), ulceración ('ulceration'), and vestuario ('dressing room' or 'changing rooms').

But only one word in the Spanish dictionary uses all five vowels twice: Guineoecuatorial, or 'Equatorial Guinean', being from Spain's only former sub-Saharan African colony.

Of 100,000 words, these are the 10 you'll use the most

The Spanish language has around 100,000 words, but naturally, you don't need to learn them all to be able to converse easily and correctly in almost any situation. A person is typically considered fluent in the language when they know and can use – without mistakes – around 50,000. 

Reaching fluency takes years, and does not require any special skills or talent – it's merely a case of constant use, exposure and practice, lots and lots of repetition, however boring, until it becomes habit-forming. 

After all, if you time-travelled and met yourself 30 years ago, you'd realise just how much new language you've learned in that time without realising it. Try talking to someone in 1992 about downloading, uploading, smartphones, bluetooth, fibreoptic Wi-Fi, de-friending, following, hashtags, internet hotspot, streaming, USB sticks, or even what is now considered 'retro' – BlackBerry, MSN Messenger, burning CDs. You may as well be speaking to them in a minority language from another continent they've never visited. And how did you learn all this vocabulary yourself, to be able to employ it without thinking in your everyday life? Through repetition of it, and ongoing use of it, and hearing it all around you. 

Turning your Spanish from a new learners' level to near-native fluency by absorbing what you study in your classes or books is no more scientific than that. 

Incidentally, though, if you want to cement some of the most useful words into your memory before you worry about the remaining nearly 100,000, the 10 most commonly-used in Spanish are: Cuando ('when', but written as cúando when it's a question or hypothetical future situation); también ('also', or 'too' as in 'me, too'); había ('there was'); años ('years' – remember, it's pronounced as 'AN-yos' because of the 'ñ'); porque ('because'; similar, but different, is ¿Por qué?, which is 'why?'); puede ('could', 'can', 'might'); todos ('all', 'everyone', 'everything'); bien ('fine' or 'good', as in, 'are you well?' or ¿Estás bien?); tiempo ('time', or 'weather'); and ahora ('now').

Spanish-learning by numbers

It helps to know how to pronounce numbers – living in Spain, or spending a lot of time here, means regularly having to give your telephone number and your NIE, or foreigners' national identification number. For this reason, it's also helpful to know how to pronounce the letters of the alphabet – at least to be able to spell your name out to someone if it's not phonetic, or your email address.

But it's rare that, in everyday life, you'll need to worry too much about writing down numbers as words. The same rule in Spanish applies as in English: Single-digit numbers are written as words, and numbers with two or more digits are written as numbers – seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, and so on.

If you would rather leave space in your memory bank and learning-based brain capacity for more useful, everyday information when studying Spanish, though, nobody would question your writing down 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 instead of uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco.

That said, you might be intrigued to know that only three numbers in the Spanish language, when written as words, have fewer than four letters.

One, two and a thousand have just three letters – uno, dos and mil – and none have just one or two letters.

Another curious fact is that, until 1994, it was widely considered that the number eight – ocho – was a three-letter word. This was because of the 'CH' being listed in the dictionary as a single letter, which is now no longer the case.