Spanish and its Latin Roots (A Paper from my University days...what a treat!)

By now you’ve noticed that we determine what tense a verb is in Spanish by its suffix. This is due to Spanish being Latin-based.

The Roman Empire stretched across the Mediterranean region, as far west as the Iberian Peninsula. A strategic geographic location even in ancient times, the Iberian Peninsula was somewhat of a crossroads of cultures, as it had previously been occupied by the Phoenicians as well as the Carthaginians. The Romans called this province Hispania, which was later replaced by the phonetically accurate España.

The Latin language itself was a very unwieldy language indeed; it contained several different suffixes, each with different declensions and genders of their own! It was highly- inflected, with three distinct genders, seven noun cases, four verb conjugations, six tenses, six persons, three moods, two voices, two aspects and two numbers. It became a very difficult language to be universally accepted, but its method of placing separate, unique suffixes on different persons of the verb became more streamlined, and thus, easier to learn, speak, and understand. To this day, languages like Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, and French share the same grammatical structures and vocabulary since the time of the Romans.

In order to become an effective Spanish-speaker, it is critical to learn and understand the differences between each person (first, second, or third person) as well as the tense (is the action in the present, past, or future tense? Is the action in the indicative mood, or is it subjunctive?)

These are the kinds of questions you will need to ask yourself as you proceed learning the language. After awhile, you will have memorized each grammar rule, and with enough practice, you will be able to fluently converse in all tenses with ease as you already do in English.