Common Spanish Verbs You Need to Learn
Spanish is actually very generic, as Spain has actually five languages spoken within it. These are, namely, Castilian, Galician, Basque and Catalan. Castilian is the official language of Spain, spoken mostly in the Castile region of Spain.
In terms of phonology and grammar, Spanish languages are similar to Italian and Portuguese. However, differences in pronunciation make Portuguese less intelligible to Hispanic-speaking peoples. Italians, on the other hand, can be mutually understood by Hispanics to a certain degree. Because of this, one can infer that learning Spanish can lead to a partial literacy in the Italian tongue and even fluency, which is easy to achieve if one already has a firm foundation in Spanish.
Spanish is one of the most commonly spoken languages in the world today. Twenty-one countries utilize the language as its official tongue. It is also an official language of the United Nations, along with English, French, Russian, and Arabic. In the United States, it comes close second to English as the primary medium of communication among citizens. Among English-speaking nations of the world, Spanish ranks among the languages that are popular among linguists of the area. In the cyberworld, Spanish ranks third most commonly used language by netizens.
If one learns Spanish, a person would be able to communicate with virtually a huge part of the world’s population. According to Wikipedia, total population of Spanish-speaking people including non-native speakers is about 500 million. In terms of speaker population, Spanish ranks fourth among other languages.
Characteristics of the Spanish Language
Spanish is a blend of influences, including Vulgar Latin, Arabic, Basque, Celtiberian, and some Germanic languages like the Visigoth tongue. As a result, Spanish has some words adapted from these languages and differed slightly.
Most words, however, are from the Latin language. These words are only pronounced differently in the Spanish tongue. For example, the word petra, which means stone, is turned into piedra in Spanish, as well as moritur (to die) in Latin and muere in Spanish.
Verbs
Generally called actions words, verbs are one of the most important aspects that one should pay attention to, aside from nouns. Verbs usually describe a sense of action, or a state of being.
In any language that is being studied by someone, there are verbs that are most important to learn because they are frequently used in conversations. In Spanish, these verbs include the following:
- Ser, estar – to be
- Haber, tener – to have
- Hacer – to do, to make
- Poder – to be able to
- Decir – to tell, say
- Ver – to see
- Ir – to go
- Saber – to know (a fact), find out
- Querer – to want, love
- Llegar – to arrive
- Pasar – to pass (time), to spend time
Please take note that these words are in their base forms. You may be confused that these words make look different when you see translations of Spanish languages. This is a result of conjugation, which means altering verbs depending on the tense and voice of the sentence.
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