1. Spanish gender and number agreement are easy to learn
One of the first things you will learn about the Spanish language is that nouns, adjectives, and verbs have to agree in gender and number – another particularity of Romance languages. For those of us who studied Latin, think back to declension. They weren’t very fun to study back then, but today they’re super helpful for learning other Latin-based languages! Knowing another Romance language will come in handy since English does not have noun genders. Most words keep the same gender, whether in Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, etc. since they come from the same Latin roots.
2. Spanish is a phonetic language
The one thing that makes Spanish easy to learn is that Spanish is a “no surprises” language, phonetically. All consonants and vowels are pronounced just as you think they would be. There are no silent letters (except the letter “h”, which is hardly ever pronounced!), no changes in pronunciation, no surprises—Spanish sounds just like it is written, and vice versa. If you are learning English and you know the word “cow” or “now,” you might be tempted to pronounce “window” incorrectly. English, not so easy. Spanish, easy!
3. Similar roots
As you begin learning Spanish, you will notice that many words are similar to their English translation. There are some words known as “false friends,” but many terms are indeed “true” friends, or cognates. For example, Familia and family, région and region, abandonar and abandon. And the list goes on. There are somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 Spanish-English cognates. There are many vocabulary words with Latin roots, just like Spanish. Even when the words aren’t spelled or pronounced in exactly the same way, you can often use simple reasoning to understand the English translation of a Spanish word.