Spoken in Spain, Central America (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama), South America (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela), Mexico, the Caribbean (Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba), and many parts of the United States.

The written language

• Close correspondence between pronunciation and spelling, unlike English. 58.
• Quotation marks are not used. 49.

Sentence structure and word order

• Freer word order than in English: *Last night arrived early her father. (Last night her father arrived early.) 37c, 62b.
• Indirect object occurs with a preposition: *He gave to me some flowers. (He gave me some flowers.) 62c.
• Uses that clauses and subjunctive after certain verbs: *I want that they leave now. (I want them to leave now.) 61c.
• It and there can be omitted as filler subjects: *Is a tree on the corner. (There is a tree on the corner.) 30b, 64f.

Nouns and pronouns

• Nouns have gender. This may cause problems with pronoun reference: *They saw a sign and peered at her closely. (They saw a sign and peered at it closely.) 44a.
• Pronouns do not differentiate subject and object forms: *I told they. (I told them.) 44a.
• No distinction of human and nonhuman relative pronouns: *The student which sat next to me . . . (The student who sat next to me…) 46a.
• Pronoun subject often omitted: * . . . because was raining. (…because it was raining.) *Caused a lot of trouble. (She caused a lot of trouble.) 38d, 62a.
• Some uncountable nouns in English are countable and plural in Spanish: *furnitures, luggages. (furniture, luggage) 60b.

Verbs and verbals

• No auxiliaries in questions: *What they found? (What did they find?) Or overcompensation: *Who did find it? (Who found it?) 41c.
• No modal verbs: *Does he should go? (Should he go?) *I will can help you. (I could help you.) 41c, 61b.
• Endings corresponding to -ing and -ed do not have active and passive meaning: *She is interesting in stamps. (She is interested in stamps.) 61f.
• No -ing nouns (gerunds): *I enjoy to play tennis. (I enjoy playing tennis.) 61d, 63e.

Adjectives and adverbs

• Equivalent of not is no: *They no argue. (They don't argue.) 64a.
• Double negative is routinely used: * He doesn’t know nothing. (He doesn't know anything.) 45g.
• Adjectives show number: *helpfuls friends. (helpful friends) 45
• All comparatives and superlatives are formed with the equivalents of more and most: *the most rich man. (the richest man) 45h.

Articles

• Definite article (equivalent of the) used with plural noun to state a generalization: *The books are more expensive than the disks. (Books are more expensive than disks.) 60.