Spanish Learners of English

Introduction

Learn more about Spanish learners of English in the United States.

Spanish is a language belonging to the family of Indo-European languages. It was first introduced into America as Spanish explorers began to establish colonies in the early 1500’s. As colonization increased, the Spanish language began to be more prevalent in the United States. Immigration of people from different countries then added to the prevalence of the language. In 2020, there was a population of over 62 million Hispanics residing in the United States. Statistics show that in 2021, forty-one percent of immigrants to the United States were from North & South America with a majority (424,791 individuals) reporting Mexico as their country of origin. After Mexico, the United States has the largest population of Spanish speakers of any country.

Spanish speakers reside in virtually every state. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, an estimated 15.62 million Hispanics resided in California as of 2022, making it the state with the largest population of Hispanics. After California, Texas, New Mexico, and Florida are the states with the highest percentages of Spanish speakers.

As people from different countries have continued to immigrate to the United States, the language has continued to increase in its diversity and variation. Native Spanish speakers make up 12.5 percent of the population with almost 15 million people speaking Spanish as an L2. There is influence from many different Spanish-speaking countries in the variety of the Spanish language we now speak in the United States. More information regarding dialects of Spanish in the United States can be found in a study done by Daniel Cardenas. With so much variety of the language and such a high percentage of immigrants in the United States, it is no surprise that there are also high percentages of English Language Learners in the country. The U.S Department of Education describes English Language Learners (ELLs) as “national-origin-minority student[s] who [are] limited-English-proficient.” In 2020, 4.9 million English Language Learners made up 10% of the overall K-12 enrollment in the U.S.

Part I: Some Useful Definitions

Age of Acquisition

Age of Acquisition is the age at which a language learner begins learning a language other than their L1. With this in mind, researchers have observed that, if a language learner begins learning their target language before the onset of puberty, they are much more likely to achieve a native-like acquisition of it. However, if a learner starts later on, after puberty, it becomes much more difficult to reach that same level of proficiency.

Comprehensibility

Cross-language Similarity or Transfer

According to Derwing and Munro, comprehensibility is defined as how much effort a listener must put in in order to understand a speaker. For example, if a listener must strain and put in a lot of mental effort to make out what a speaker is saying, we consider the speaker to have a low comprehensibility.

Cross-language transfer is how a speaker’s L1 either positively or negatively affects their ability to learn and/or produce the L2. With this in mind, languages that are rather similar, or share a lot in common, may promote a high level of positive language transfer, where a student’s previous language ability and understanding aid them in learning another language. However, if a student’s first language and target language are quite different, then the opposite, or negative transfer, will occur. For some more brief discussion on this and further suggested readings, please reference Benson. That being said, it should be kept in mind that several other factors beyond L1 Transfer will affect how a given language learner speaks.

Development Sequences

Developmental sequences refer to the stages of language use that learners go through when acquiring a second language. Oftentimes, these stages are similar from learner to learner and from an L2 and L1 speaker of a given language, but not necessarily. To illustrate this, consider some possible developmental sequences of using negation in English. Here, in Stage 1, an English learner may only be able to negate by putting “no” before a verb or noun. However, at Stage 2, they can use words “don’t” followed by the acquisition of auxiliary verbs such as “are,” “is,”or “can” and the particle “not” (Stage 3). Finally, in Stage 4, the speaker can freely use these features of negation as well as construct them in such a way that they agree with tense, person, and number. For more information and discussion regarding developmental sequences, please reference Vanpatten and Benati.

Fossilization

Fossilization is when mistakes in non-native language become stuck and don't improve despite learning. Second language learners persist in some errors even if they’ve been taught hundreds of times, the errors stick and they can’t get away from it. “Fossilization is a concept that refers to the end-state of SLA, specifically to an end-state that is not native-like. By end-state, we mean that point at which the learner’s mental representation of language, developing system, or interlanguage (all are related constructs) ceases to develop.

Intelligibility

In Derwing and Munro's 1995 paper, they contrast intelligibility from comprehensibility in that intelligibility defines how much accurate meaning a listener takes away from a person’s speech. Thus, if a listener understands exactly what a speaker meant, even if it took some mental effort to make it out, then we would consider that speaker to have a high level of intelligibility.

Learner Language

Also known as interlanguage, learner language is “what learners produce when they are trying to communicate using a second (or non-primary) language.” Learners of a second language have a linguistic knowledge that differs from that of a native speaker. This is typically evident in their output. These differences reflect an internal, cognitive system that is systematically produced by the learner. One example of this is when attempting to produce the question "How old are you?," a Spanish speaker might say "How many years you have?," directly translating from Spanish the phrase "Cuantos años tienes?". They may use the word "have" instead of the second person singular of the form "to be" and “How many” instead of “How old”.

L2 Phonology

Of all the aspects of foreign language learning, research suggests that phonology (i.e., pronunciation) is one of the most difficult for students to achieve a native-like level, and it may become increasingly so as the students age. As such, rather than aiming for perfectly native pronunciation, many foreign-language research now suggests that teachers aim to improve their students’ comprehensibility and intelligibility. That is, the goal is often not to get rid of a foreign accent, but make it so that, when speaking, a student is able to effectively use those features of English pronunciation that impact meaning the most.

With this in mind, though individual phonemes (i.e.,vowels and consonants), also known as segmental features, often come to mind when considering pronunciation, one must also acknowledge suprasegmental features such as word/sentence stress and intonation. This is because, according to studies done by Derwing et al., Hahn, Nair, and Trofimovich and Isaacs, suprasegmental features may actually have a much larger impact on one’s overall comprehensibility than segmental ones. Thus, it may be best to focus remedial English pronunciation efforts on them.

Regardless, because both segmental and suprasegmental features are important in some way, here, we will discuss where native Mandarin Chinese speakers may struggle in both areas of English pronunciation.

Part II: Pronunciation

Vowels

Consonants

Spanish vowel pronunciation consists of five pure vowels and 5 diphthongs which affects their pronunciation of English vowels. The following are the list of diphthongs that English shares with Spanish: [aʊ] [eɪ] [aɪ] and [ɔɪ].

The vowels can be categorized as followed:

caught vs. cot vs. coat ([ɔ] vs. [ɑ] vs. [o])
- Some American English dialects have a distinction between caught and cot which is oftentimes found in the Eastern part of the United States. Other English speakers have what’s called a “caught-cot” merger and these vowels are both pronounced as the vowel in cot [ɑ]. Spanish contains neither of these sounds ([ɔ] and [ɑ]) so the vowel is pronounced as the vowel in coat that is more of an [o] when producing words with these vowels.

sheep vs. ship ([ɪ] vs. [i])
- Spanish speakers may struggle with distinguishing and producing the English sounds [ɪ] as in ship and [i] as in sheep because these distinctions don't exist in standard Spanish. Spanish speakers learning English are more likely to produce the sound [i] in sheep when encountering words with these vowel sounds.

book vs. boot ([u] vs. [ʊ])
- Spanish speakers do not differentiate between the vowels that are produced in the words book and boot while English speakers do differentiate between these two sounds. Spanish speakers will produce both of these sounds as the vowel in boot [u].

cat vs. cut vs. [a] ([æ] vs. [ʌ] vs. [a])
- While English has the vowel sounds that are produced in the words cat and cut Spanish doesn’t contain these two sounds. Spanish speakers will then produce words with these vowel sounds in it with a [a] rather than [æ] and [ʌ].

Diphthongs: The four similar English diphthongs /aʊ/ /eɪ/ /aɪ/ /ɔɪ/ aren’t difficult for Spanish speakers:
- Spanish already contains similar diphthongs or vowel combinations to those found in English (/aʊ/, /eɪ/, /aɪ/, /ɔɪ/), so Spanish speakers may find them easier to pronounce compared to other English vowel sounds that do not exist in Spanish.

Pronunciation

There are many shared consonants within English and Spanish which can be perceived and articulated without serious difficulty. The following are a list of shared consonants between English and Spanish.

[p] [b] [f] [θ] [t] [d] [s] [ʧ] [k] [g] [m] [n] [ŋ] [l] [r] [j] [w]

Consonant Sound Substitutions
- Word Final Consonant
  - /m/ Tends to Change to /n/ or /ŋ/:
    - Spanish speakers may unintentionally substitute /m/ with /n/ or /ŋ/, especially in word-final positions. For example, they might pronounce dream as ‘drean’ or ‘dreang’.

Aspiration
- In English, words that start with /p/, /t/, and /k/ are all pronounced with aspiration, meaning that this is a burst of air that comes after the sound is produced. In Spanish there is no aspiration so these sounds are often sound like /b/, /d/, and /g/ when produced by Spanish speakers.

Using /s/ Instead of /z/:
- In Spanish the sound /z/ doesn’t exist so speakers may replace /z/ with /s/ for English words. For instance, they might pronounce zoo as "soo" or zebra as "sebra."

Using [β] for [v]
- In most dialects of Spanish, there is no distinct sounds for the /v/ sound, leading Spanish speakers to substitute English words with /v/ with /β/. For example, they might say very as ‘βerry’ or video as ‘βideo’.

Consonant Clusters
- Consonant clusters are less frequent in Spanish which makes them difficult to pronounce in English. The following are consonant clusters that are present in both English and Spanish: [pl], [pr], [bl], [br], [tr], [dr], [cl], [cr], [gl], [gr], [fl], [fr]. Here are some example words in Spanish using these consonant clusters. Plato, problema, blanco, bruja, trabajo, drama, clavo, cristo, iglesia, grabar, flauta, fresca.

- Spanish speakers may find it challenging to pronounce consonant clusters only found in English accurately, leading to potential simplifications or omissions in spoken English. For example, they might struggle with words like express or instant and may simplify them into ‘espres’ and ‘instan’.

- Spanish speakers learning English may encounter challenges with pronouncing consonant clusters like "sp," "st," and "sk". In Spanish, these clusters are less common especially at the beginning of words. Learners may struggle to articulate them smoothly so they often insert a vowel sound before the consonant such as [ɛ]. This also includes changing the syllable structure of the word. So instead of pronouncing words such as spell, stop, and skill these sounds would be produced as es.pell, es.top, and es.kill.

Part III: Grammar

SVO and VSO variation

In Spanish, the word orders [Subject + Verb + Object] and [Verb + Subject + Object] do not correlate to question and statement respectively. The variation comes by a shift of focus in the sentence. The topic could be either the subject noun or the essence of the action verb. For example, *“You saw the lawyers?” vs. *“Saw you the lawyers?” Or, “You hear the dolphins.” vs *“Hear you the dolphins.”

Double Negatives

Double negatives are so common in Spanish that the English clauses that contain one negative aspect are very difficult for English speakers with a Spanish linguistic heritage. Double negatives utilize two negative forms such as never and nobody. In Spanish, this practice is appropriate because it provides a different aspect to affirmative sentences. For example, *“I no see nobody at the plaza.” or *“I told nobody nothing at the plaza.” In the first example, a standard English speaker would normally say, “I don’t see anybody at the plaza.”

Auxiliary Verbs and Negative Aspect

Since auxiliary verbs are not used in Spanish, the negative aspect will always precede the verb phrase. For example, *I not understand. or *He no speak Spanish. Mentioned in the previous section, double negatives also utilize a second negative form that assumes the role of either indirect or direct object. For example, *He no understand nothing.

Direct and Indirect Pronouns

In terms of syntactic distribution, the direct and indirect pronouns are positioned before the verb in the form of [Subj. + indirect obj. + direct obj. + verb phrase]. For example, instead of “I told her the secret”, it would be *”I her told the secret.” Or, for “I did not give her the portfolio.”, it becomes *“I her not gave the portfolio.”

Actions discussed that are happening in the moment

For an action that is currently happening, the simple present tense is utilized. For example, instead of “It is snowing outside,” it is produced as *”It snows outside.”

Confusion with Nominalized verbs and the use of the Infinitive

Nominalizations that end with the inflection “-ing” are confusing for Spanish heritage speakers. L1 Speakers would instead use the infinitive in compensation for this lack of linguistic knowledge. For example, the nominalized verb “cleaning” in the sentence “Cleaning the blinds is helpful” would be replaced with *“Clean the blinds is helpful.”

Verb Inflection for Number

The auxiliary verbs are mistakenly inflected for number. For example, instead of “You can clean the dishes”, it becomes *“you cans clean the dishes.”

Part IV: Lexicon

Contractions

Verbs in Spanish do not have contracted forms for they have difficulty hearing and understanding will or would contractions.

When first learning English speakers are more hesitant to use contractions.
- Ex: “I’ll go to the store.” or “They’d come to the party.”
After Speakers get more comfortable with English they often overgeneralize and will overuse contractions during their language development.
- Ex: “Are you Spanish?” “Yes, *I’m”

Gender and Number

In Spanish, every noun has a gender (masculine or feminine), which affects the articles, adjectives, and possessives used with it, so Spanish speakers may use gendered pronouns in places native English speakers wouldn’t.
- Ex: "The table is dirty. Clean her*, please.”
Plurality in Spanish is marked by adding "-s" to articles, adjectives, and possessives, instead of just nouns. So they may add extra -s suffixes on these types of words.
- Ex: “Yellows flowers”

Subject Personal Pronouns

Personal pronouns are not used in Spanish because it is clear from the grammatical endings on the word what the pronoun is. So when speaking English speakers may omit the pronoun in a sentence with the subject present.

Ex: Spanish speakers may say “Maria isn’t Spanish, is Italian” instead of “Maria isn’t Spanish, she is Italian.”

Vocabulary

Spanish is a Latin based language, so many Spanish words have roots that come from Latin. English also has some influences from Latin so when these correlate and are used by Spanish speakers they may sound more formal.
- Ex: "Elevate" comes from the Latin word "elevare," which means "to lift up." In Spanish, "elevar" means the same thing. So, a Spanish speaker might use "elevate" instead of “raise” or “lift up” when speaking English.
In Spanish it is common to use the masculine plural form to refer to mixed gender pairs or groups which isn’t done in English.
- Ex: “Reyes” can refer to kings and queens in Spanish so native Spanish speakers may use the word “kings” to refer to a king and queen.
- Ex: “Hermanos” can mean brothers or siblings in Spanish so speakers may say “brothers” referring to brothers and sisters.
In English numbers are not marked in the plural like they are in Spanish.
- Ex: Spanish speakers may say “five hundreds” instead of “five hundred”
Spanish avoid ordinals, an ordinal is a number defining a thing's position in a series, such as “first,” “second,” or “third.”
- Ex: Spanish speakers may say “five of June” instead of “June fifth”
In Spanish the number zero, “cero” can be used in most contexts. In English however we have many words that can replace zero in other contexts. Spanish speakers may struggle understanding or recognizing these differences.
- Ex: Words like “nought”, “nil”, or using the letter “O” as a number in telephone numbers could be difficult for them.

All languages have many one to one vocabulary differences. Most struggles come when one item in the L1 is expressed in various ways in the L2.
- Ex: “Conocer” mean “to know” and “to meet”
- Ex: “Receta” means “recipe” and “prescription”
Cognates: There are also false cognates between Spanish and English. These false cognates are words that sound similar between the languages, but aren’t synonymous.
- Ex: “Asistir” means “to attend” not “to assist”
- “Beneficio” means “profit” not “benefit”
- “Exito” means “success” not “exit”
- “Embarazada means “pregnant” not “embarrassed”
- “Reunion” means “meeting” not “reunion”

More false cognates can be found here:

Spanish Lexicon (8:45-9:01)

False Cognates

References

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16. Munro, M. J., & Derwing, T. M. (1995). pp. 73–97.

17. Bill VanPatten, & Alessandro G. Benati. (2010). pp. 9-57.

18. What is learner language?. CARLA. (n.d.). https://carla.umn.edu/learnerlanguage/intro.html

19. Bill VanPatten, & Alessandro G. Benati. (2010). pp. 9-57.

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22. Munro, M. J., & Derwing, T. M. (1995). pp. 73–97.

23. Derwing, T. M., Munro, M. J., & Wiebe, G. (1998). Evidence in favor of a broad framework for pronunciation instruction. Language Learning, 48(3), 393–410. https://doi.org/10.1111/0023-8333.00047

24. Hahn, L. D. (2004). Primary stress and intelligibility: Research to motivate the teaching of suprasegmentals. TESOL Quarterly, 38(2), 201–223. https://doi.org/10.2307/3588378

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26. Trofimovich, P., & Isaacs, T. (2012). Disentangling accent from comprehensibility. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728912000168

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29. Spanish grammar articles and lessons. SpanishDictionary.com. (n.d.). https://www.spanishdict.com/guide/false-cognates

Videos

Additional Resources

30. Spanishland School. (2017, July 20). Spanish Speakers Speaking English (You are not the only one struggling) PART 1 [video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBzj8yLVUhU

31. Instant English. (2024, January 3). Can Argentinians speak English? 🇦🇷. YouTube. https://youtu.be/A0WvrYV4J3E?si=F8aHE5f-N2ishApb

Mora, L. (2023, September 20). Latinos’ views of and experiences with the Spanish language. Pew Research Center Race & Ethnicity. https://www.pewresearch.org/race-ethnicity/2023/09/20/latinos-views-of-and-experiences-with-the-spanish-language/

This resource provides helpful statistics regarding the Spanish language in the United States. It provides insights into the views held by Hispanics living in the United States and their experiences with both the Spanish and English languages.

Speech therapy materials and free resources - bilinguistics. Bilinguistics. (2024, April 12). https://bilinguistics.com/speech-therapy-materials/ This page contains a comprehensive list of free resources that can be used in speech therapy. These materials were created based on research found in a variety of academic journals and are easy to use.

State language data - CA. migrationpolicy.org. (2024, January 1). https://www.migrationpolicy.org/data/state-profiles/state/language/CA The state of California has one of the largest Hispanic populations in the United States. This source provides information to better understand the structure of these demographics by providing statistics regarding language proficiency among different age groups.

Swan, M., & Smith, B. (2001). Speakers of Spanish and Catalan. In Learner English (Second, pp. 90–109). essay, Cambridge University Press.