Common English Mistakes Spanish Speakers Make (and How to Fix Them)

Fluent, but tripped up by your first language

Most Spanish speakers writing English are already fluent enough to be understood. The trouble is the small, systematic mistakes you do not notice — the ones that come straight from Spanish grammar and quietly mark your writing as non-native. They are predictable, which means they are fixable.

The common English mistakes Spanish speakers make cluster around a few structural differences: gendered nouns, articles used for general ideas, adjectives placed after the noun, double negatives, and a long list of false friends. Below are the ten that matter most, each with the Spanish habit behind it and a quick fix you can apply while you edit.

1. Using "the" before general nouns

Spanish puts a definite article before nouns used in a general sense: "La vida es bella", "Me gusta el café". English drops the article for general or abstract ideas.

Off: "The life is hard, but I love the nature."
Native: "Life is hard, but I love nature."

Off: "The people don't like the politics."
Native: "People don't like politics."

Rule of thumb: if you mean something in general rather than one specific thing, drop "the".

2. False friends

Spanish and English share Latin roots, which creates dozens of words that look the same but mean something different. These are dangerous because spell-check never flags them.

Off: "Actually I live in Madrid and I want to assist the conference."
Native: "Currently I live in Madrid and I want to attend the conference."

The full list is in section 8. Learn the high-frequency ones first — they appear constantly in real writing.

3. Uncountable nouns and group agreement

Spanish treats some mass nouns as countable, and words like "gente" take a singular verb. English flips both.

Off: "I need more informations and good advices."
Native: "I need more information and good advice."

Off: "The people is waiting and the news are bad."
Native: "The people are waiting and the news is bad."

Keep information, advice, and news as they are. Do not add -s, and remember that "people" is plural while "news" is singular.

4. Preposition mismatches

One Spanish preposition often covers several English ones, and many verbs take a different preposition than their Spanish equivalent.

Off: "It depends of the weather. She is married with a doctor."
Native: "It depends on the weather. She is married to a doctor."

Off: "I always think in my family."
Native: "I always think about my family."

Learn the verb and its preposition as one unit: depend on, married to, think about, good at.

5. Dropping the subject (especially "it")

Spanish lets the verb carry the subject, so the pronoun disappears. English needs an explicit subject in almost every sentence, including the dummy "it".

Off: "Is raining today. Is a good idea."
Native: "It is raining today. It is a good idea."

If a sentence has no obvious subject, it almost always needs "It".

6. Adjective and noun order

Spanish usually places a descriptive adjective after the noun: "una casa grande". English puts it before.

Off: "I bought a car red and a house big."
Native: "I bought a red car and a big house."

When you stack adjectives, they still go before the noun: "a big, beautiful house".

7. Double negatives

In Spanish, double negatives are standard: "No quiero nada". In English, two negatives are not allowed in the same clause.

Off: "I don't want nothing and she doesn't know nobody."
Native: "I don't want anything and she doesn't know anybody."

After a negative verb, switch nothing, nobody, and never to anything, anybody, and ever.

8. The false-friends table to keep nearby

These are the cognates that cause the most trouble. The left column is what Spanish speakers often write; the right column is what they actually meant.

9. Gerund versus infinitive

After a preposition, English uses the -ing form. Spanish uses the infinitive, so the wrong form transfers across.

Off: "Thank you for help me. I'm interested in learn English."
Native: "Thank you for helping me. I'm interested in learning English."

After a preposition — for, in, before, at — the next verb takes -ing.

10. Capitalization and spelling

Spanish lowercases days, months, languages, and nationalities. It also has near-phonetic spelling, which leaks into English words.

Off: "He is spanish and studies english on monday."
Native: "He is Spanish and studies English on Monday."

Capitalize languages, nationalities, days, and months. And watch the Spanish-driven spellings: it is "student", not "estudent", and "special", not "especial".

A quick self-check before you publish

How Diglot helps Spanish speakers

Diglot is built for writers who think in Spanish and write in English. That gap is exactly where article overuse, false friends, and adjective order come from. Rather than only flagging an error, it shows the natural version and the reason, so the pattern sticks.

• Rewrite Spanish-influenced sentences into natural English. The paraphrasing tool for Spanish speakers turns word-for-word translations into fluent English while keeping your meaning.
• Catch the slips a generic checker misses. The grammar checker for Spanish speakers is tuned for the article, preposition, and agreement errors above.
• Smooth the phrasing, not just the grammar. See the patterns behind clunky lines in how to fix awkward English phrasing, and why translated text reads off in why your English sounds translated.
• One workspace for the whole task. Explore the full ESL writing tool built for non-native writers.

Your English already works. Closing this short list of gaps is what makes it read as native. Drop the extra "the", check the false friend, flip the adjective, and your writing stops sounding translated and starts sounding like you.

Try the paraphrasing tool for Spanish speakers