Well here it goes . . .

Let’s compare the Spanish verb “hablar” with the English word with the same meaning (to speak).

In English, I can only come up with 5 forms of the word “speak”:

1. speak
2. speaks
3. spoke
4. spoken
5. speaking

But in Spanish, this is what I come up with:

Present

1. hablo
2. hablas
3. habla
4. hablamos
5. habláis
6. hablan

Imperfect

7. hablaba
8. hablabas
9. hablabámos
10. hablabias
11. hablaban

Future

12. hablaré
13. hablará
14. hablarás
15. hablaremos
16. hablaréis
17. hablaran

Presente Subjunctive

18. hable
19. hables
20. hablemos
21. habléis
22. hablen

Imperfect Subjunctive

23. hablara
24. hablaras
25. hablarámos
26. hablarias
27. hablaran

Preterit

28. hablé
29. hablaste
30. habló
31. hablasteis
32. hablaron

Conditional

33. hablaría
34. hablarías
35. hablaríamos
36. hablariais
37. hablarian

Imperfect Subjunctive

38. hablase
39. hablases
40. hablase
41. hablásemos
42. hablaseis
43. hablasen

And the “vosotros” Command

44. hablad

And, of course, two more:

45. hablando
46. hablado

And let’s not forget the verb itself:

47. hablar

I purposely left out any duplicates to get an accurate count. For example, for the present subjunctive both the “yo” form and “usted” form of the verb is “hable.

”

So I only included “hable” once.

So to use the verb “to speak,” you only need to know 5 different words in English.

But to use the verb “hablar” in Spanish, you need to know 47 different words.

I know I included the “vosotros” forms but that is still a huge difference in the amount of words that you need to know in Spanish in order to use the verb “hablar” compared to the handful of words which you need to know in English in order to use the verb “to speak.”

Another interesting observation that I made is that most of the 47 words from my “hablar” list were not found in any Spanish dictionary. For the most part, only the verb itself (“hablar”) was included. In my Spanish dictionary, I did not find words such as hablaste, hablamos, hablaron, hable, etc.

You would have to use a verb conjugation book to find all the different forms of the verb “hablar.” However, my English dictionary included words such as spoke, spoken and speaking.

That helps to explain why there are a lot more words in English dictionaries than Spanish dictionaries.

And that’s also why I STILL insist that Spanish has more commonly used words than the English language.