Learn a little about how to write
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| Hi! |
| Welcome to Introduction to Spanish. |
| My name is Alisha and I'm joined by... |
| Hi everyone! I'm Lia. |
| In this lesson you'll learn the basics of Spanish writing. |
| The Spanish Alphabet |
| Just like English, Spanish uses Roman letters in its writing. |
| Unlike English, the Spanish alphabet has one additional letter called eñe, which appears after the letter N and before the letter O. |
| Latin Alphabet + ñ |
| This letter, looks like a regular n but with a tilde on top. It sounds like a combination between an N and a Y sound, like in the word “canyon.” |
| español (“Spanish”) |
| niño (“boy”) |
| mañana (“tomorrow/morning”) |
| Other than this one extra letter, the Spanish alphabet is essentially written the same as the English alphabet. |
| Punctuation Marks |
| For the most part, punctuation in Spanish is similar to English. A period marks the end of a sentence, and a comma indicates a pause. Exclamation and question marks, however, are a different story. |
| Hello! |
| Hello? |
| In English, we place an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence to denote that it is exclamatory. |
| We do the same thing for question marks to denote that the sentence is a question. |
| In Spanish, however, exclamation marks and question marks must be placed at the end AND at the beginning of the exclamatory phrase or question. |
| ¡Hola! |
| ¿Hola? |
| The inverted marks must be placed whenever a new exclamatory or question phrase is formed, even if it's within the same sentence. |
| ¡Hola! y ¡Buenas noches! (“Hello! And goodnight!”) |
| Notice how this only applies to the phrase and not to the entire sentence itself. |
| Juan, ¿adónde vas? (“Juan, where are you going?”) |
| On the other hand, the ending marks still go at the end of the sentence regardless of whether the words are part of the question or not. |
| ¿Adónde vas, Juan? (“Where are you going, Juan?”) |
| To indicate a sentence that is both a question and an exclamation, use both marks. Ensure that you're being consistent with which marks go on the inside and which go on the outside. |
| ¿¡Y tú quién te crees que eres!? (“Who do you think you are!?”) |
| ¡¿Y tú quién te crees que eres?! (“Who do you think you are?!”) |
| Capitalization |
| Compared to English, Spanish doesn't capitalize as many words as English does. |
| Let's go over a few cases where English capitalizes words when Spanish does not. |
| The days of the week and the months of the year are not capitalized in Spanish. For example... |
| Hoy es jueves, 23 de octubre. (“Today is Thursday, October 23.”) |
| Seasons of the year, are also not capitalized. |
| El invierno se acerca. (“Winter is coming.”) |
| Personal titles are not capitalized unless they are abbreviations. |
| señor - Sr. |
| señorita - Srta. |
| doctor - Dr. |
| Titles, such as those of a movie or book, capitalize the first word only. Every other word in the title is written in lowercase. |
| Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal (“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's stone”) |
| Names of countries and cities are capitalized, but names of languages are not. |
| Reino Unido (“UK”) |
| EEUU (“USA”) |
| Hablo inglés. (“I speak English.”) |
| Spanish Accent Mark |
| Finally we come to the Spanish accent mark. Spanish uses a mark called the “acute” accent. It looks like a diagonal line which starts from the bottom left and rises towards the upper right. |
| This accent mark appears above the letter. More specifically, accents will only appear over the five vowels in Spanish. |
| á é í ó ú |
| The Spanish accent is used to indicate that the syllable which has the accent must be stressed. So always stress the syllable which has the accent. |
| médico (“physician”) |
| compró (“bought”) |
| Some words are spelled the same and sound the same, but have different meanings in Spanish. |
| el (“the”) |
| él (“he”) |
| In these situations, the accent is used to differentiate the two words, so it's clear exactly which word we're referring to. |
| mas (“but”) |
| más (“more”) |
| OK. So we've covered the main accent mark in Spanish, but what about these ones? |
| ñ ü |
| Don't be fooled by the first example. Even though it might look like an accent, it's just the letter eñe in Spanish. |
| The second example is an accent marker, and it's used to indicate that the U should be pronounced. This is because the letter U is usually silent when it comes after the letter G. Consider the following examples. |
| guerra |
| guerrilla |
| vergüenza |
| pingüino |
| Notice how the U is silent in the first two examples... |
| guerra |
| guerilla |
| ...but pronounced in the last two. |
| vergüenza |
| pingüino |
| Keep in mind though, that this accent only occurs in a few words that have the letters G and U together. |
| In this lesson, you learned that Spanish uses roman letters like English, with one additional letter. |
| Exclamation and question marks appear inverted at the beginning of the phrase, and upright at the end of the sentence. |
| Days, months, and seasons aren't capitalized in Spanish. |
| And the acute accent is used in Spanish mainly to indicate stress. |
| In the next lesson, you'll be entering Spanish boot camp, where you'll learn useful beginner phrases to get you speaking Spanish right away! |
| See you in the next lesson. Bye! |
| Bye~! |
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