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Learning new languages can be a valuable life skill. It opens up new opportunities and is a very attractive feature to an employer. It can even open up a larger range of jobs as many ask that you can speak another language. For many, Spanish is a great second language.
Spanish is spoken by approximately 350 million people in the world and is recognised as the fourth most spoken language, after Chinese, English and Hindi.
The following countries are officially Spanish speaking countries
Argentina
Bolivia
Chile
Colombia
Costa Rica
Cuba
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea
Guatemala
Honduras
Mexico
Nicaragua
Panama
Paraguay
Peru
Puerto Rico
Spain
Uruguay
Venezuela
If you are looking to visit or even live and work in one of these countries, learning Spanish could be the most valuable thing you do before going.
Portuguese is very similar to Spanish, and their grammar are also similar. This is due to the common history of Arabic influence; so knowing Portuguese before learning Spanish should be a big help.
Spanish uses the Latin alphabet, similarly to English, but they have the addition of “eñe”, shown by the character ñ.
Now we shall look at a few of the most important Spanish phrases.
See you soon – Hasta la vista (as heard in the terminator films!)
Good morning – Buenos dias
Good evening – Buenas noches
Good afternoon – Buenas tardes
Note the change between Buenos and Buenas. This is due to dias being masculine and noches and tardes being feminine, so the adjective must be adapted to fit the noun.
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