Spanish is a fairly extensive and rich language in terms of its expressions. This is partly why people frequently make certain mistakes when using Spanish.
In this article we are going to see what they are several of the most frequent errors in Spanish which usually occur during everyday life, and sometimes can go unnoticed by anyone.
Spanish is a language from Latin, and therefore a romance language It comes exactly from Castilla, a region belonging to the Iberian Peninsula. The regions where Spanish is spoken as a mother tongue are Spain, Latin America, and Equatorial Guinea.
Before seeing the frequent errors in Spanish, it is necessary to know that the term Castilian is used as a synonym for “Spanish” and “Spanish language”, especially to make a distinction with the other languages spoken in other areas of the territory. Spanish.
The most frequent errors in Spanish
In the next lines we will see a selection of the most common errors in the Spanish language.
1. Error of omission
This mistake is quite common nowadays, and even has become normalized by a large number of people through the use of the Internet to communicate via chat, or through text messages through a telephone company.
The error consists of voluntarily or involuntarily omitting letters, words, or even the omission of entire articles, or prepositions, perhaps with the intention of simplifying a text or adapting to a socially accepted, but incorrect, form of communication.
2. Generalization error
In this error, also quite common in the Spanish language, what happens is that the subject applies the same rules to all things, globally , without stopping to discriminate in the details. For example, “I don’t like going out at night anywhere.”
3. Gender mismatch error
In these cases what happens is that what precedes the word does not agree with its gender This is one of the most frequent and least detected errors in Spanish among those that we will see in this list.
For example, you could say “the water is cold” instead of the correct thing to say, “the water is cold,” but some people won’t notice the difference. Among other cases, like “the pajamas” instead of saying “the pajamas.”
4. Temporal mismatch error
When the error is temporal agreement, what happens is that the person interweaves several tenses together in the same sentence
Let’s look at some examples of this situation: “Yesterday I went to the supermarket and I didn’t see milk.”
5. Substitution error
What happens in this case is that the speaker exchanges a word for another that is similar and gives it the same meaning although this is totally wrong, in any context. For example, it is common to exchange “aptitudes” for “attitudes”, although both mean different things.
These errors occur when a colloquial phrase is modified, substituting some of the words that make it up. Colloquial phrases do not allow changes given that its meaning is not literal.
This occurs, for example, with the phrase “no se cala de nada”, when the word cala is replaced by impala, although both words are synonyms, it is not correct to replace it in the sentence.
7. Noun error
This type of error is presented when reference is made to a collective that is plural or singular and then the verb is changed. What is accepted is that when a reference is made in the singular or plural, the verb remains in the same way in singular or plural
Clear examples of this error would be the following, “the employees at this store are very nice” “the people at this job are very friendly”, among other similar cases that often occur in Spanish.
8. Linguistic interference error
It is the phenomenon that occurs when we interpret the sound of a language foreign to us as some sound of our mother tongue and we give it the same meaning.
This happens a lot with English song lyrics, a good example is the song “sweet dreams” by British lavender Eurythmics, which says in the chorus “Sweet dreams are made of this”, and in Spanish that sound could be understood as “Blue jeans at noon.”
9. Errors in the use of capital letters
In Spanish you often see how people write the initial letter of the days of the week or the months of the year with a capital letter, regardless of where the word is located within the text.
Doing so is a mistake, therefore, The correct way is to write them in lower case , unless they are after a period or at the beginning of a text. Despite the normalization that this custom is receiving, it is still incorrect, like those previously mentioned.
10. Change of b for v and vice versa
In Spanish, the pronunciation of v and b have become almost indistinguishable, so it is a very common mistake to interchange both letters with each other. For example, using “Walloon” when you mean “ball.”
11. Word union error
This type of error in Spanish occurs when two words that should be independent of each other are joined together as if they were part of one. For example, it occurs with “above all”, turning it into “above all” or with “because” when it should be “why”.
12. Hyphenation error
This very common error in Spanish is side B of the previous one. In this case, two syllables of a word are separated, giving rise to two words It occurs when writing “why” instead of “why” or, for example, “else” instead of “else.”
