When we begin to learn a foreign language for the first time, we discover so many differences that it’s easy to forget one essential thing: languages exist to help us communicate our feelings, thoughts and ideas to others. What we need to communicate is the same regardless of the language we use.

In this post I want to show you exactly how all languages are similar.

Let’s dive straight to it, okay?

Sounds

All languages provide us with a set of sounds which carry meaning. Sometimes, they are so different from those of our native language that we feel lost or overwhelmed. Nonetheless, they are a system of articulated sounds that convey meaning.

Tenses

Most languages have a way to link our words to the past, the present or the future. This is the whole point of tenses, you know? Then, of course, you can get yourself a cup of tea and look into Spanish with more detail and try to understand why there is such a wide variety of tenses. But for starters, keep this in mind.

Formality and Informality

Most languages have different words that are more appropriate in informal and formal contexts. You don’t use the same words and expressions to talk to people you know and people you don’t.

Loanwords

Most languages loan words from other languages. Spanish borrows quite a few words from the other Romance languages (French, Portuguese, Italian), as well as from English

Gender

In some languages, like Spanish, nouns are considered either feminine or masculine. In Spanish, nouns have to agree with adjectives and articles, so that may make it look more scary than languages which don’t mess things up with gender.

Syntax

The relationship between words in a sentence is not arbitrary. You can’t just combine words in any order you like. You need to stick to word order. Spanish is not particularly strict with this, but there are things you just can’t do. Patterns in general, and syntax patterns in particular are incredibly helpful for your overall progress.

Affirmation and Negation

It’s not all about affimative statements, sometimes we need to say “no”. Spanish is quite simple, as you can turn an affirmative into negative sentence in virtually all tenses by just placing NO before the conjugated verb.

Certainty or Likelihood

In all languages there’s some device that will enable speakers to show if they are certain (how certain they are) or not.

Morphemes

You can make a verb from a noun by attaching the right suffix. You can turn an adjective into its opposite by words from smaller units called morphemes. Take a look at THIS POST to learn a great way to boost your vocabulary..

I was chatting to CHAT GPT the other day, discussing some of my ideas for this post (seriously), and I asked which languages stray off the rules, and I learned that:

• Some languages, such as Chinese and Vietnamese, do not have a system of tenses. Instead, they rely on other means of expressing time, such as adverbs or context, to indicate when an event is occurring.
• Some languages, such as Korean and Japanese, do not have a concept of gender. Instead, they use other means of indicating the gender of a person, such as suffixes or honorifics.
• Some languages, such as Hawaiian and some Native American languages, do not have a system of singular and plural nouns. Instead, they rely on context or other means to indicate the number of objects being referred to.
• Some languages, such as Chinese, Thai and some African languages, have a tonal system, in which the pitch of a syllable can change the meaning of a word. This is not a feature that is present in many other languages.

Until next time,

Thanks for reading,

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