Spanish is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, and also one of the most studied. The number of native speakers and those who have learned it or are in the process easily exceeds 500 million of people. It is also the language of exchange online and between people, both in daily life and at the official level (for example, Spanish is the official language of the UN, or is the state language in 21 countries).
In short, it is a language with thousands of words, and influenced by many other languages. Many of the words in Spanish come from Latin, Arabic, Greek or other languages such as French or English., especially if we refer to neologisms. And some of these words can be especially tricky. But why? And what can we say about the difficulty of words?
Why can a word be difficult?
What characteristics must a word have to be difficult? Shall we talk about the difficulty of pronunciation, meaning, spelling, use, technicalities...? Well, as we see, it depends a lot in which sense we speak. Generally, the difficulty of a word, for a person whose first language is Spanish, lies in its frequency of use. If that word is not supposed to be so common, and its meaning is a bit obscure, or it appears in different contexts, its use diminishes, and it can be used little and badly. But a term can also be difficult because of the effort involved in pronouncing or writing it. From there arise the vulgarisms that transform a voice into a small aberration. This is directly related to training or cultural level.
On average, a native speaker uses 16000 words.. Taking into account that the Spanish language has around 88000 voices (according to the RAE dictionary) it does not seem like much. Hence the linguistic heritage of the average speaker is quite limited. This depends on your profession, your training or your reading habit. Of course, we could all be capable of learning new words so as not to always use the same ones, or use them to better describe our reality, better understand what happens to us and communicate with others. But This implies an effort, care and interest in our language that few people have, except for the curious ones or those dedicated to the language.
Likewise, Are the difficult words the same for foreigners as for natives? Obviously not. Although surely some coincide at an advanced level of the language. Any word can be problematic for a student, because her mother tongue will always play a fundamental role. The pronunciation and imitation of sounds can be quite a challenge. Let them ask the Germans or the French when they try to say erre.
Selection of difficult words in Spanish
Words if they are not known, they are ignored, if they are not used, they are forgotten. They are not recognized. AND There is no better way to learn new words and broaden your own world than through books. There is nothing to replace them. It will improve spelling, critical thinking, the ability to expand one's own universe and the known world. One day you wake up and a word appears in your brain that you thought did not exist, but you know it, and you identify its meaning. Because? Thanks to the books what is not named does not exist. Here are some difficult words in Spanish.
- gastroenterostomy: in medicine, "surgical communication of the stomach with a region of the intestine". gastroenterologist is another complicated word.
- otorhinolaryngologist: «part of medicine that deals with diseases of the ear, nose and larynx». We continue with medicine.
- electroencephalographer: in medicine, «person specialized in electroencephalography». It is the longest word in the RAE dictionary.
- deoxyribonucleotide: in biochemistry, "nucleotide whose constituent sugar is deoxyribose." Surely the definition has left you in the same state of perplexity.
- Harpsichord: also know as clavecin, is a "musical instrument of strings and keyboard that is characterized by the way of wounding said strings from below by feather beaks that do the job of plectrums". Your desire to learn to play it will disappear.
- Croquette o meatball are the classics that top the list of most common vulgarisms: cocrete o meatball. And the second is collected in the dictionary as such.
- Program: how many times have we not heard program.
- Rastas they are "each of the braids that make up the characteristic hairstyle of the Rastafarians." I personally need two seconds before pronouncing this word.
- Elevator: the sound of /s/ before /c/ can be annoying at times.
- Scrub o to tight: They seem to be the simplest, but there are really many people who, due to a formative issue, do not conjugate these verbs correctly: «mop this and we'll go», «¡squeeze stronger!".
- Regarding foreign words and the formation of plurals, we found some problems with English words such as master o fan. Many times we fail to say master's degrees o tops, but the RAE recommends this form. Although it is true that there is also its equivalence in Spanish: master's degree y fan.
En general, compilations of difficult words are often made due to the accumulation of consonants that hinder pronunciation, like the technicalities we have already seen. It can even happen that the correct form is unknown and vulgarism gains frequency of use. Although there are many cultisms that can also be considered cumbersome words due to their ignorance, and many other words that the ordinary speaker does not know because he does not read.