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Ask-A-Linguist - Message details
Subject: British English & Spanish Spanish vs. American English & Mexican Spanish
Question:
Hello,

I am very curious about a language construct I observed when studying Spanish in Spain. I noticed similarities between the grammatical constructs of British English and Spanish Spanish and similarities between American English and Mexican Spanish. I am an American with a British father, and I lived near the Mexican border for quite some time before going to Spain, so I have experience listening to both kinds of English and Spanish.

Here is an example of the similarities I've noticed. In England and in Spain, if you are talking about something in the recent past, the form used is as follows:

I've gone to the park today.
He ido al parque hoy.

In Mexican Spanish and American English we would generally say:

I went to the park today
Fui al parque hoy.

Any knowledge about why these grammatical similarities exist across shared geography but different languages? I find it fascinating.

Thanks!

Reply:
I can't speak about the Spanish data, but I'm not entirely happy with the English data.

English (all kinds) and Spanish (all kinds), along with many other Indo-European languages have both a perfective form and a preterite (or past tense). In Spanish (and some other languages, including French and German) the auxiliary of the perfective is HAVE for some verbs and BE for others. This used to be the case in English but now the auxiliary of the perfective in English is just HAVE (more or less). The auxiliary is followed by the past participle.

So we have:

She has eaten. (present perfective)
She had eaten. (past perfective)
She ate. (past tense).

The differences between the Standard English of the US and of the UK (and of anywhere else in the world) are very small, and both have both perfective and past tense.

If you look at large data samples you do find that BrE has a slightly higher proportion of perfective use than US English does. This is accounted for mostly because there are one or two contexts where BrE can have either past tense or perfective, but where AmE strongly prefers past tense. This is related to what Professor Foster called the 'already' context.

I can't do it with your example with 'I', but I will put the context into a story. Your daughter's friend comes to the house looking for your daughter. But you daughter is no longer in the house. You say:

She went to the park (already). (UK and US)
She's gone to the park (already). (Common in UK but rare in US).

It seems unlikely to me that such a tiny difference could have anything to do with a similar difference in Spanish. What is more likely is that in ALL languages there us some overlap of function in different choices of verb to use in some meanings, and that there is choice and variation in those areas.

Anthea

Reply From: Anthea Fraser Gupta    click here to access email
Date: Aug-15-2009
Other Replies:
  1. Re: British English & Spanish Spanish vs. American English & Mexican Spanish Joseph F Foster    (Aug-14-2009)
  2. Re: British English & Spanish Spanish vs. American English & Mexican Spanish Elizabeth J Pyatt    (Aug-14-2009)
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Page Updated: 26-Nov-2009

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