What are characteristics of Spanish that are unique or different from English and/or other languages?
The verbs in English are a lot simpler than they are in Spanish. There are many conjugations, irregularities, and exceptions. American students of Spanish complain about this, and about not being able to find a general, easy rule to select the appropriate tense. The subjunctive tense has very little use in English, but this tense is widely used in Spanish. In English, the present tense has the same form as the infinitive in all the persons (that I go, that she go . . .) The passive voice in English (we are forced to . . ., he was killed . . .) is formed exactly as in Spanish. However, it is used much more often in English. Some translators wrongly translate this tense literally into Spanish. It does not look good. It is well known that, most of the time, it takes quite a few more words to express the same thought in Spanish compared to English. One can expect the English text to expand at least 25 or 30 percent in Spanish. Likewise, in recent decades one can observe that American Engli
