Spanish is a fairly extensive language and rich in terms of its expressions. It is partly because of this that people often make certain mistakes when using Spanish.

In this article we are going to see which are several of the most frequent errors in Spanish , that usually occur during the daily life, and sometimes they can go unnoticed by anyone.

How is the Spanish language?

Spanish is a language derived from Latin, and therefore a Romance language . It comes exactly from Castile, 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 of “Spanish”, and of “Spanish language”, especially to make a distinction with the other languages spoken in other areas of Spanish territory.

The 9 most frequent errors in Spanish

In the following lines we will see a selection of the most common errors in the Spanish language.

1. Error of omission

This error is quite common today, and even has been standardized by a large number of people using the Internet to communicate via chat, or through text messages via a phone 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 for all things, globally , without stopping to discriminate in the details. For example, “I don’t like to go out at night anywhere”.

3. Gender-matching error

In these cases what happens is that what comes before the word does not match its gender . This is one of the most common and least detected Spanish errors we’ll see in this list.

For example, you could say – the water is cold” instead of the correct thing, which would be to say “the water is cold”, but some people will not notice the difference. For example, you could say “the water is cold” instead of the correct thing, which would be to say “the water is cold”, but some people will not notice the difference.

4. Time matching error

When the error is one of time agreement, what happens is that the person interweaves several verb tenses with each other in the same sentence .

Let’s look at some examples of this situation: “I went to the supermarket yesterday and I didn’t see any milk”.

5. Replacement error

What happens in this case is that the speaker exchanges one word for another that resembles it and gives it the same meaning even if this is completely wrong, in any context. For example, it is common for “skills” to be exchanged for “attitudes”, even though the two mean different things.

6. Colloquium errors

These errors occur when a colloquial phrase is modified by substituting some of the words that make it up. Colloquial phrases cannot be changed , as their meaning is not literal.

This happens, for example, with the phrase “no cala de nada”, when the word cala is substituted by cala, even though both words are synonyms, it is not correct to substitute it in the sentence.

7. Error in nouns

This type of error is presented when reference is made to a collective which is in the 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 the same in the singular or plural .

Clear examples of this error would be the following, “the employees of this store are very nice” “the people of 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 some foreign language as some sound of our mother tongue and give it the same meaning.

This happens a lot with English 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. Capitalization errors

In Spanish you often see people write the first letter of the days of the week or the months of the year in capital letters, regardless of where the word is found in the text.

Doing so is a mistake, because the correct way is to write them in lower case , unless they are after a point or at the beginning of a text. Despite the standardization that this custom is receiving, it is still incorrect, just like the ones mentioned above.

10. Changing from b to v and vice versa

In Spanish, the pronunciation of the v and the b have become almost indistinguishable, so it is a very frequent mistake to exchange both letters with each other. For example, use “walloon” when you want to say “ball”.

Bibliographic references:

  • Crow, J. A. (2005). Spain: the root and the flower. University of California Press.
  • Real Academia Española (2010) Orthography of the Spanish language, by the Real Academia Española.