10 Spanish calques that give you away in English

6 July 2026

You can have great vocabulary, solid grammar and years of experience, and still get spotted as a Spanish speaker in one sentence. What gives you away is rarely a hard word — it's a calque: a phrase translated word-for-word from Spanish that happens to be wrong in English.

Calques are sneaky because they feel right. Your brain built the sentence perfectly — in the wrong language. Here are the ten we see most often, and the logic behind each one.

1. "I am agree" → I agree

The classic. In Spanish you are in agreement ("estoy de acuerdo"), so the am sneaks in. In English, agree is already the verb — it needs no helper. I agree. She agrees. Do you agree?

2. "I have 30 years" → I'm 30

Spanish has age ("tengo 30 años"); English is an age. Same trap with hunger, cold and fear: I'm hungry, I'm cold, I'm scared — not "I have hunger".

3. "It depends of the client" → it depends on the client

"Depende de" pulls you towards of, but depend takes on. Prepositions rarely translate one-to-one; learn the verb + preposition as a single block: depend on, dream of, consist of.

4. "I'll assist to the meeting" → I'll attend the meeting

A double false friend. Asistir means to attend; English assist means to help. Tell your boss you'll "assist the meeting" and you've volunteered to serve coffee.

5. "Actually, I work in Madrid" (meaning nowadays) → currently

Actually does not mean actualmente. It means "in fact", and it often introduces a correction. If you mean right now, say currently or at the moment. If you say "Actually, I'm the manager", people hear "You're wrong — I'm the manager."

6. "Can I make you a question?" → ask you a question

Spanish makes questions ("hacer una pregunta"); English asks them. The same make/do/have minefield hides "make a decision" (yes), "do a mistake" (no — make a mistake) and "make homework" (no — do homework).

7. "I want to win more money" → earn more money

Ganar covers both winning and earning, English splits them: you win a match or the lottery, you earn a salary. Telling a recruiter you want to "win more money" sounds like you're planning a casino trip.

8. "People is very friendly" → people are

La gente es is singular in Spanish, but people is plural in English. Always people are, people were, people have. (Meanwhile everyone flips the other way: everyone is.)

9. "The meeting was so boring, I was boring too" → I was bored

The -ing/-ed trap. Boring is what something is; bored is what it makes you feel. "I'm boring" tells people you put others to sleep. Same pair: interesting/interested, confusing/confused, exciting/excited.

10. "Please explain me the problem" → explain the problem to me

Explícame packs the person into the verb; English explain refuses a person right after it. It's explain something to someone. Same with suggest and recommend: "suggest me a restaurant" → suggest a restaurant (to me).

Why they keep coming back

Knowing a calque is wrong doesn't delete it — it lives in the muscle memory that assembles your sentences at speed, under pressure, in real emails. That's why reading a list like this feels useful but changes little on its own.

What works is the boring, powerful loop: catch the mistake in your real writing, understand why, and drill it until the correct version becomes the automatic one. Each of these calques takes surprisingly few targeted repetitions to beat — once something is actually watching for them.