Curious Facts about the Spanish Language

Learning Spanish by playing

Play is one of the most universal forms of learning. Young animals engage in play to perfect the survival skills they’ll need to possess as adults. As children play, they develop behavior that will later help define their abilities and become a part of who they are. Playing with language is a fundamental part of the classes we give, and it allows us to inspire curiosity and smiles in our students. Spanish offers a wide range of unique features that Spanish teachers can consider when planning learning activities.  

Spanish Language - a few interesting facts

> The vowels in Spanish in order of frequency are E, A, O, I, and U.

> Words that make use of only one vowel include: acanalada, decentemente, odontólogo, chirimiri y sucusumucu (all of which appear in the Spanish Royal Academy’s dictionary).

> The most frequently used consonants in Spanish are: S, R, N, D, L and C. Using just these letters, you can talk about “calderones que descansan en los salones”.

> The least frequently used consonants are: Z, J, Ñ, X, W and K. Unsurprisingly, a less common vision would be that of a “ñu que come kiwis junto a un juez”.

> When explaining to students the importance of accent marks, you can use the following example to illustrate your point: para que usted pueda ser partícipe y participe en la acción en la que yo participé necesitará un cronómetro con el que cronometro lo que usted cronometró.

> The importance of double consonants are also interesting, and there are a number of examples of words that are spelled with two or more: portarrollos, chascarrillo, guerrilla, parrillada and corrección.

> In Spanish it’s also common to find words that alternate vowels and consonants, like in Japanese: anatomopatologo, monopolizador, parasicológico, verificabilidad, verosimilitud.

> Palindromes are also always a big hit with students. Along with entire sentences such as dábale arroz a la zorra el abad, there are also many examples of single words that can be read the same either from left or right: apocopa, solos, sopapos, reconocer. There are also other words that can be read in either direction but with different meanings:  arenabas/sabanera, saldadnos/sondadlas…

> As practically all of our students work with computers, here’s an example of a word that can be typed entirely with the left hand: extraterrestre, and another with the right hand: monopolio.

> There is an incredible amount of combinations in Spanish, which can be seen in the following anagrams:  aparte, aparté, aptare, áptera, aptaré, atrape, atrapé, epatar, párate, partea, patear, patera, pátera, petara, petará, tapare, taparé, trapera, trapea… That’s 19 different words written with the same letters!

> A few years ago, a controversial writer said in an interview that the only Spanish word that contains all 5 vowels was murciélago. Minutes after the statement was published, observers responded with hundreds more examples, including: desdibujado, culteranismo, luteranismo, anticuerpo…

> Spanish also has some elements (somewhere I’ve heard them called firuletes) that decorate words: the dot on the i and the j, the accent mark, the squiggly line on the ñ, and the two dot accent used occasionally over the u ¨. Here’s a word that features all four: pedigüeñería.

> When you want to remind students that German isn’t the only language with long words, you can give them a couple of examples of the names of occupations: electroencefalografista or otorrinolaringólogo.

> To wrap up this presentation of curious Spanish words, take a look at a few words that can be written with a calculator! Type in the number 7085138 and turn the device 180º and read the word béisbol, and by typing in 0607018, you get biólogo.

All of the intriguing words that appear in this article are recognized in the Royal Spanish Academy’s dictionary.

Well I’m going to stop writing now, I need a little time to keep playing… See you next week.