Difference between alumno y estudiante?

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AnnaC

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I came a new word in Spanish class

"alumno"

estudiante is easier to remember but I wondered what the difference was.

according to my dictionary

alumno is someone studying in a collage or university and estudiante is a student/pupil of?

Any thoughts on this?
 
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stewart

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Anna Coniglio said:
I came a new word in Spanish class

"alumnio"

estudiante is easier to remember but I wondered what the difference was.

according to my dictionary

alumnio is someone studying in a collage or university and estudiante is a student/pupil of?

Any thoughts on this?

Do you mean "alumno"?
It is used in the same context as alumnus. It can be used interchangeably with estudiante.
 
Nov 5, 2004
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Anna Coniglio said:
I came a new word in Spanish class

"alumno"

estudiante is easier to remember but I wondered what the difference was.

according to my dictionary

alumno is someone studying in a collage or university and estudiante is a student/pupil of?

Any thoughts on this?

When I took my 3 Spanish classes we learned the word alumno for student as well.

I don't know for sure...but I assume they are basically interchangable..like student and pupil...or something like that...

Taking a bit of an "educated" guess there....;)
 
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Ricardo900 said:
I thought an alumnus is a person who graduated from an institution of higher learning

I believe that word is something like "allumni" in English.

But my teach taught us in my Spanish lesson "alumno" for student...
 

Ricardo900

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Jul 12, 2004
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I am correct

PeachezNcream84 said:
I believe that word is something like "allumni" in English.

But my teach taught us in my Spanish lesson "alumno" for student...

Alumnus: a person who has received a degree from a school (high school or college or university)

Alumni: A male graduate or former student of a school, college, or university.

Please note: Alumnus and alumna both come from Latin and preserve Latin plurals. Alumnus is a masculine noun whose plural is alumni, and alumna is a feminine noun whose plural is alumnae. Coeducational institutions usually use alumni for graduates of both sexes. But those who object to masculine forms in such cases may prefer the phrase alumni and alumnae or the form alumnae/i, which is the choice of many women's colleges that have begun to admit men.
 

mkohn

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I've heard them both used for student.
I think alumno was a little more sophisticated.
mkohn
 

juancarlos

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In Spanish both alumno and estudiante are used. They mean the same in Spanish: students. Language and meaning evolve and a word can have more than one meaning. In today's Spanish, alumno is used interchangeably with estudiante: A teacher may refer to his/her students as mis alumnos.

alumno, na
m. y f. Disc?pulo respecto de su maestro, de la materia que est? aprendiendo o de la escuela, clase, colegio o universidad donde estudia: tiene muchos alumnos; alumno de f?sica; alumno universitario.
 

Pib

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juancarlos said:
In Spanish both alumno and estudiante are used. They mean the same in Spanish: students. Language and meaning evolve and a word can have more than one meaning. In today's Spanish, alumno is used interchangeably with estudiante: A teacher may refer to his/her students as mis alumnos.

alumno, na
m. y f. Disc?pulo respecto de su maestro, de la materia que est? aprendiendo o de la escuela, clase, colegio o universidad donde estudia: tiene muchos alumnos; alumno de f?sica; alumno universitario.
What he said. Plus remember that to use alumno(a) you must tie the student to his academic institution or teacher, you can not be just an alumno, you have to be an alumno of somebody or some institution. Estudiante carries no such burden. For example you can say that your occupation is estudiante (it still says so in my cedula by the way), but not alumno, since that word can only be used in the context I mentioned above.
 

juancarlos

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That's right. For example: Los alumnos de la profesora Rodriguez, or

Los alumnos de la escuela Jose Marti.
 

project9

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Alumno is the one who takes classes in a classroom (aula) and student is the one who studies no matter where. I remember a math teacher i had in highschool who always stressed the difference between the two, he was always saying that we should be students, not just alumnos.
 

Bugsey34

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I agree with Pib & others from what I have learned. But keep in mind this is not the way it is everywhere, in Spain these two words are used differently than what people are describing here.

But I guess you could say that "alumno" is used when in English you would say a "student of" like I am a student of literature, student of Prof. Pib, student at Middlebury College, etc. Whereas estudiante is more general, without those modifiers.
 
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