Learning a language, even your first, is a process where making mistakes is inevitable. Some language scientists analyze the utterances of very young native speakers in the hope of acquiring information on the cues and methods children use to learn their mother tongue. In this article we'll examine five examples of errors made by young, native Spanish children and discuss some of the findings of scientists in language acquisition.
el llave
'Llave' means 'key' in Spanish and is a feminine noun. For this reason, it needs a 'la' article - 'el' is masculine. Young Spanish speakers sometimes confuse gender, and this is a common problem for many non-native learners as well. The word 'llave' ends in an '-e' and therefore gives no cues as to its gender. Nouns ending in 'e' can be either 'el' or 'la'. Most Spanish nouns, especially those ending in 'o' (mostly masculine) and 'a' (mostly feminine) are easy to attribute the correct article to.
la pez
'Pez' means 'fish' and is a masculine noun - it needs to be 'el pez'. Nouns ending in 'z' are relatively rare in Spanish, and they can also be either masculine or feminine. Many young Spanish children tend to use 'el' as their predominant article during their earliest years, and then begin to use 'la' more and more, often overcompensating and making errors.
tierra azula
This would translate as 'blue earth' (I am unaware of the surrounding context for this sentence!) 'Tierra' is, like most nouns ending in 'a', a feminine - la - noun. In Spanish, adjectives agree with the nouns they describe. Very often this means that adjectives describing feminine nouns will need to end in 'a' in order to agree with the noun. However, some adjectives - those ending in a consonant - do not ever change form. Correct would be: '(la) tierra azul' as would be '(el) cielo azul'.
mota rota
This is more of an unusual error. The Spanish for motorcycle is '(la) moto'. It is an exception to the general pattern of nouns ending in 'o' having 'el' as their article. Spanish children will learn word combinations such as 'moto rota' (broken motorcycle) and, therefore, observe that 'moto' - unusually - requires adjectives to reflect a feminine noun gender. As most Spanish feminine nouns end in 'a' and with an adjective end in two a's (chica bonita), we can see how the above error probably arises.
uno gorro
'Gorro' is a masculine noun, meaning 'bonnet'. The masculine word for 'a' in Spanish is 'un' (the feminine is una). Feminine article + noun often forms an intuitive pattern - 'una chica' - where masculine nouns do not: 'un chico'. It seems that children learn by the application of pattern rather than rules. Where the patterns do not apply, errors occur and the exceptions have to be learned separately. The fact that, for the most part applying pattern works just fine in the rapid acquisition of confident, fluent Spanish, tells us that pattern is certainly a natural, valid and successful language learning approach.
