Why are Spanish surnames so long
Spanish surnames are often impressively long. That is because a child is given the surnames of both parents at birth. The first surname is that of the father, the second of the mother. In principle, then, children never have exactly the same surnames as their parents.
In Spain, your surname never changes as it can do in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands when you get married. However, if a Spanish girl marries somebody from the United Kingdom or the Netherlands, then she can take on her husband’s name, too.
Related topics
Vocabulary Family relations
If Spanish surnames seem complicated, the exact opposite is true for the Spanish vocabulary for members of the family.
El problema and la solución, a masculine/feminine problem
When someone says in Dutch ‘het fiets’ (the bicycle) or ‘de vliegtuig’ (the aeroplane), it can come across as irritating because it should be ‘de fiets’ and ‘het vliegtuig’. When you’re learning a foreign language, it is important to avoid making mistakes in the use of the definite articles.
About the b for vaca
One of the first things to learn in Spanish is the pronunciation of the alphabet, not for the sake of pronunciation but to be able to understand what is being said. Spanish doesn’t hold many mysteries for Dutch speakers but there is one exception that goes against the grain for the Dutch. That is the pronunciation of the letter ‘v’.
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