comare and contrast essay- Spanish vs French
...tion and pronunciation. However, the accents for each language are different. In Spanish, one syllable is stressed in every word. When a person speaks in Spanish they stress on at least one syllable. Stress is an accent that a person puts on a syllable as he or she speaks. It is easy to detect a stressed vowel in Spanish because it has an accent mark. In Spanish the accent mark does not affect the way the word is pronounced, just which syllable is stressed. However in French, accent marks do affect the way the word is pronounced. For example, in French, the “cedilla” accent is found on top of the letter “C”, which changes the “K” sounding “C” to an “S” sound. In Spanish, one missed accent is not a big deal. However, missing an accent in French is like misspelling a word in English. Spanish and French also differentiate in verb tenses. A verb tense connects the kind of action or existence it has to the relationship of the time. French has fewer verb tenses than Spanish. French has a total of 15 verb tenses. Five of which are literary and ten of which are used in daily French. Spanish on the other hand, has 17 verb tenses and only one is literary. This leaves 16 for regular use in Spanish. French’s five literary verb tenses are as follows: Passe simple (the simple past); passé anterieur, (the compound past); imparfait de subjontif, (simple past subjunctive); plus-que-parfait du subjontif, (compound past subjunctive); and, 2eme formed du conditionnel passé, (conditional past). In Spanish, the literary verb tense is preterito anterior, which means past anterior. Thus, French has five literary verb tenses and Spanish has one. Spanish and French are different in word pronunciation, accentuation and verb tenses, however, they are similar in they way that they both have silent letters. In Spanish the letter “H” i...