The Spanish Numerical System

By Dinah Leabeau

The Spanish language is a truly powerful language and is considered to be the Romance language. Anywhere, you see and hear newscasts, television shows, movies and books written in Spanish. Among the most popular Spanish works are those books written by Paulo Coelho and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Spanish Number Boo boos

There are people, however, who unwittingly desecrate this powerful language. Any Spanish number is now fair prey to men who have no business displaying erroneous interpretations of the said numbers. Spanish as a language warrants better treatment!

Chad Johnson, from the National Football League, is one of the people who is guilty of number blunders. His jersey, with the number 85, spells out "ocho cinco." If he knows his numbers, he'll realize that the Spanish for 85 is "ochenta y cinco". It's of the opinion that he changes the number or he changes his name.

Another usual error is in writing the dates in Spanish-language letters. Just to give you an idea, US dates are expressed in month/date/year while Spanish dates are written in date/month/year - this is applicable if the dates are expressed only in numbers. If written as a combination of months and numbers, Spanish dates are printed as, for example, 14 de augusto 2008; remember that the months of the year do not begin with a capital letter in Spanish.

How to Avoid These Blunders

There is no better way in avoiding these blunders than in exercising your knowledge on the Spanish number system. If you do manage to learn by rote these numbers, you would have no problem calling them out in their proper order.

Advantages of Knowing

If you work in large corporations, you will encounter shipping documents that contain both English and Spanish information. You might also be confronted with communication lapses when you have to make or take orders using the phone or email. Thus, it's to your advantage if you know the correct numbers as Spanish has an almost completely dissimilar number system from English.

If you are into Mexican food, there's more reason for you to learn Spanish numbers. Many restaurants catering to Mexican food speak very little or no English at all. To avoid misunderstandings, raised voices and paying for more than what you've prepared for, might as well learn the basics in Spanish numbers.

If you live in a large city with a Hispanic community, like Miami and Los Angeles, you will inevitably come across Spanish-speaking individuals who possess little knowledge of the English language. Or, if they happen to speak English, they would still prefer to use their mother tongue. At least, if you speak Spanish, you can wander around town easily sans the fear of communication breakdowns brought by misunderstandings about the fare and distance, si?

And the greatest benefit of knowing your numbers in Spanish is that you will be able to learn the language more swiftly. As you will later learn, Spanish numbers can also be used as pronouns. This is applicable to both cardinal numbers and ordinal numbers, but only when these stand for the number and a noun that's either omitted or understood. At the outset, this concept seems perplexing but as you go further with your Spanish lessons, you'll find out that this makes perfect sense.

Así pues, ahora comience sus lecciones españolas y aumente su número de amigos y de negocio. The Spanish number can do a number on you when you least expect it. Learn your numbers in Spanish lessons, being the most effective. Learn faster at LearnSpanishReviews.com and get the Free 3 eBooks MiniCourse to Learn Spanish. In no time at all, numbers Spanish is as easy as uno, dos, tres.