12 frequent mistakes in Spanish, with explanations

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

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

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How is the Spanish language?

Spanish is a language derived 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 the 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 mistakes in Spanish

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

1. omission error

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 complete articles, or prepositions, perhaps with the intention of simplifying a text or adapting to a socially accepted form of communication, but incorrect.

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 to go out at night anywhere."

3. gender mismatch

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, which would be to say "the water is cold", but some people won't notice the difference. Among other cases, such as "the pajamas" instead of saying "the pajamas".

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4. Temporal mismatch

When the error is of temporary concordance, what happens is that the person interweaves several tenses together in the same sentence.

Let's see some examples of this situation: "Yesterday I went to the supermarket and I have not seen milk".

5. substitution error

What happens in this case is that the speaker exchanges one word for another that is similar to it and gives it the same meaning although this is totally wrong, in any context. For example, it is common to exchange "aptitudes" for "attitudes", even though both mean different things.

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6. Errors in expressions and colloquial terms

These errors occur when a colloquial phrase is modified, substituting some of the words that compose it. Colloquial phrases do not admit changes, since its meaning is not literal.

This occurs, for example, with the phrase "no cala de nada", when the word cala is replaced by empala, even though both words are synonymous, it is not correct to substitute it in the sentence.

7. noun error

This type of error is presented when referring to a collective that 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 singular or plural.

Clear examples of this error would be the following, "the employees of this store are very nice" "the people This job is very friendly”, among other similar cases that often occurs in Spanish.

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8. Linguistic interference error

It is the phenomenon that occurs when we interpret the sound of some 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 being the song "sweet dreams" by British lavender Eurythmics, which says in the chorus "Sweet dreams are made of this" (sweet dreams are made of this), and in Spanish that sound could be understood as "Blue jeans al noon".

9. capitalization errors

In Spanish, it is often seen 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 found within the text.

Doing so is a mistake, so 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 standardization that this custom is receiving, it is still incorrect, just like the ones mentioned above.

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10. Change from b to 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, use "valón" when you mean "ball".

11. Word splicing error

This type of error in Spanish occurs when two words that should be independent of each other are joined 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 so frequent mistake in Spanish is the B side of the previous one. In this case, two syllables of a word are separated, giving rise to two words. Occurs when writing "why" instead of "why" or, for example, "if not" instead of "if not".