Spanish

Spanish is the native language of over 470 million people around the globe. Another 70 million speak Spanish as a second language. The largest Spanish speaking countries are Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, and Spain. Most of South America and Central America are also given the name Latin America due to the strong presence of languages that are descendents of Latin, i.e. Spanish, Portuguese, and French. The overwhelming majority speak Spanish, and there are even over 40 million native Spanish speakers in the United States. Due to the importance of Spanish in the New World and the growing Hispanic population in the US, the most commonly taught second language in the US is Spanish.

Map of Hispanophone World from Wikipedia

So, many of you may have had more than one experience with the Spanish language, and maybe you have an aversion to the language. Despite what one may think, Spanish is not a direct descendent of Latin in its classical form. Spanish, with the other Romance languages, was born out of Vulgar Latin, a group of non-standard dialects of Latin spoken during and after the classical period of the Roman Empire. English itself has been greatly influenced by Latin and its descendents due to strong influences from French and the church. Therefore, by speaking English, you probably can already speak and read a lot of Spanish after learning the typical phonetic and written transformations of certain words, e.g. civilización in place of civilization. We will try to best use what English speakers already know to more effectively guide your Spanish learning.

Probably the most difficult grammatical features of the Spanish language are the verbal conjugation system and the existence of grammatical language. English at one point had a more complex conjugation as well as three genders. With time, grammatical gender in English eroded except in the subject, object, and possessive pronouns (i.e. he, him, his, she, her, hers). Actually, there is at least one case in which English speakers require gender that doesn't require gender in Spanish (the possessive pronoun su).

Personal Pronouns in English and Spanish
		Subject Pronoun		Object Pronoun		Posessive Adjective		Posessive Pronoun
First Person Singular		I	yo	me	mí	my	mi	mine	mío/mía
Second Person Singular	informal	you	tú*	you	ti	your	tu	yours	tuyo/a
Second Person Singular	formal	you	usted	you	lo/la/le	your	su	yours	suyo/a
Third Person Singular	♂	he	él	him	lo/le	his		his
	♀	she	ella	her	la/le	her		hers
	neutral	it	ello	it	lo/la	its		its
First Person Plural		we	nosotros/as	us	nos	our	nuestro/a	ours	nuestro/a
Second Person Plural	informal**	you	vosotros/as	you	os	your	vuestro/a	yours	vuestro/a
Second Person Plural	formal	you	ustedes	you	los/las/les	your	su	yours	suyo/a
Third Person Plural		they	ellos/as	them	los/las/les	their	su	theirs	suyo/a
In Argentina and a few other countries in Latin America, vos* is the second person singular (informal) subject pronoun. All of its other forms are the same as those for tú, i.e. ti, tu, tuyo.
In Latin America, informal second person plural pronouns (vosotros/vosotras) are replaced with formal ones (ustedes). Still, ustedes may be used in both formal and informal contexts and depending on the country, the distinction in formality between informal tú and formal usted** can exist in the second person singuar pronouns.

Personal Pronouns in English and Spanish
		Subject Pronoun		Object Pronoun
First Person Singular		I	yo	me	mí
Second Person Singular	informal	you	tú*	you	ti
Second Person Singular	formal	you	usted	you	lo/la/le
Third Person Singular	♂	he	él	him	lo/le
	♀	she	ella	her	la/le
	neutral	it	ello	it	lo/la
First Person Plural		we	nosotros/as	us	nos
Second Person Plural	informal**	you	vosotros/as	you	os
Second Person Plural	formal	you	ustedes	you	los/las/les
Third Person Plural		they	ellos/as	them	los/las/les
		Posessive Adjective		Posessive Pronoun
First Person Singular		my	mi	mine	mío/mía
Second Person Singular	informal	your	tu	yours	tuyo/a
Second Person Singular	formal	your	su	yours	suyo/a
Third Person Singular	♂	his		his
	♀	her		hers
	neutral	its		its
First Person Plural		our	nuestro/a	ours	nuestro/a
Second Person Plural	informal**	your	vuestro/a	yours	vuestro/a
Second Person Plural	formal	your	su	yours	suyo/a
Third Person Plural		their	su	theirs	suyo/a
In Argentina and a few other communities in Latin America, vos* is the singular subject (informal) pronoun. All of its other forms are the same as those for tú, i.e. ti, tu, tuyo.
In Latin America, informal second person plural pronouns are replaced with formal ones. However, the distinction between informal tú and formal usted** exists in the second person singuar pronouns.

The chart above helps point out the role that gender plays in Spanish and in English. As you may have noticed, there is overlap in different categories. Spanish makes a distinction between indirect and direct object pronouns where English makes only distinctions between number and gender. The chart also begins to show that different Spanish dialects have different usages of personal pronouns. A new language learner may try to memorize such a chart, but this would not be an effective use of his or her time (su tiempo -- no need for the doubling in Spanish)! As with learning anything, we must work to break down the content into "edible" portions and integrate the concepts into our daily regimen. Don't worry! Despite what those "polyglot" YouTubers tell you, languages cannot be mastered in one month. Try one year, two years, or ten years! It depends on what your definition of "mastery" is!

That's all for now. We hope that you enjoyed our introduction to the Spanish language. We will do our best to create a curriculum that breaks down the Spanish language into all of its many intricacies. Stay tuned!