Fun Facts About Spanish

Here are some interesting facts about Spanish. They vary from the rates of use of verb tenses to "false friends" (or words that kind of look the same in Spanish and English, but mean different things.) I will periodically update this page as I find more. Feel free to make suggestions!

Random Tidbits:
 - El esposo = husband, la esposa = wife, las esposas = wives, los esposas = handcuffs
 - Trabajar (to work) comes from the Latin word tripalium, which was a form of torture
 - Most verbs in English have 2 conjugations** (excluding compound forms), most verbs in Spanish have 53 conjugations (excluding compound forms)
 - English has about 200,000 words, Spanish has about 100,000 words
 - On average, a text in Spanish is 15% longer than its equivalent in English.

False Friends:
 - Embarazada means "pregnant", not "embarrassed".
 - Carpeta means "folder", not "carpet".
 - Emocionado means "excited", not "emotional".
 - Molestar means "to bother", not "to molest".
 - Éxito means "success", not "exit".
 - Bombero means "firefighter", not "bomber".
 - Constipación means "a cold", not "constipated".
 - Gracioso means "funny", not "gracious".
 - Grocería means "rudeness", not "grocery store".
 - Mama means "breast", not "mom".
 - Papa means "potato", not "dad".
 - Bebe means "he/she/you/it drinks", not "baby".
 - Preservativo means "condom", not "preservative".
 - Revolver means "to turn over", not "revolver".
 - Sobre means "over, on, above", not "sober".
 - Sopa means "soup", not "soap".
 - Trampa means "trap, cheat", not "tramp".

Tense usage (Bull (1947) found the following tense frequencies across several genres of written Spanish):
 - 34.496% Present indicative (hablo)
 - 19.623% Infinitive (hablar)
 - 14.310% Preterite indicative (hablé)
 - 11.303% Imperfect indicative (hablaba)
 - 4.110% Gerund (hablado)
 - 3.554% Present subjunctive (hable)
 - 2.606% Present perfect indicative (he hablado)
 - 2.268% Future indicative (hablaré)
 - 2.220% Imperative (¡hable!)
 - 1.965% Past subjunctive (hablara/hablase)
 - 1.600% Conditional perfect (habría hablado)
 - 1.535% Conditional (hablaría)
 - 1.091% Past perfect indicative (había hablado)
 - 0.406% Past perfect subjunctive (hubiera hablado)
 - 0.284% Perfect infinitive (haber hablado)
 - 0.154% Present perfect subjunctive (haya hablado)
 - 0.098% Future perfect indicative (habré hablado)
 - 0.005% Preterite perfect (hube hablado)
 - 0.003% Future subjunctive (hablare)
* So, if you know the present indicative, infinitive, preterit and imperfect tenses, you will be able to understand approximately 79.732% of the verb conjugations you encounter.
** See Bauer and Nation 1993.