Why Spaniards speak poor English
In
general, Spaniards are notoriously bad at speaking English and yet they use
many English words every day.
In spite
of having studied English for many years at school, most Spaniards admit not
being able to speak it. Some experts put this down to old fashioned teaching methods
at school, where people certainly get a lot of grammar and tests, but very
little practice on listening, pronunciation and speaking. In many cases, this
is because their teachers themselves cannot utter a word of English!
Another
factor that contributes to this, is that in Spain´s films, TV programs and news
broadcasts are dubbed into Spanish rather than subtitled. Even though Spanish
people watch TV news programs more regularly than other Europeans, they have
little idea of how Barack Obama´s or David Cameron´s voice really sound.
That
being said, a number of words such as “cool”, “vintage”, “fashion” (which by
the way in Spain means a person who dresses fashionably) or “trendy” are
creeping into Spanish. In football for example, the English words such as
“penalty” and “corner” are being used by many commentators while words such as
“sandwich”, “ticket”, “parking”, “software”, “email” and of course the
infectious and otherwise infamous “overbooking” - which although incorrectly
used in Spanish, accurately reflects the trend.
But does
the fastest growing language in the world, as confirmed by UNESCO, really need
to borrow from English? What do you think?
For mor information visit www.espanglish.net
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