2 Pronunciation and spelling

Vowels

The vowels in Spanish are only five: A, E, I, O, U, but they are the most important thing ever. I guess you are worried about rolling the tongue, but that doesn’t matter as much as the vowels. Read them out loud whenever you see them. Because they are always the same.

• To pronounce A, open the mouth really wide and let the air flow. If resembles more the first O in “doctor” or the O in “dog” and “mock” en inglés de Estados Unidos.
• Para pronunciar E, open the mouth wide, but stretch the lips to the sides. It resembles E in “bed” or “ten” from inglés de Estados Unidos.
• Para pronunciar I, strecht the lips even more to the sides, and put them really close, as in “bee” or “teeth” from inglés.
• Para pronunciar O, you need to put the lips really round as if you were meditating saying “oooooommmmm”. It resembles O in “call” or “ball”.
• And to pronounce U, round even more the lips and make a smaller hole, as if you were drinking from a straw. It resembles “book” or “soon”. The letter U is silent in the following combinations: QUE /ke/, QUI /ki/, GUE /ge/, GUI /gi/. Remember the word “tequila” and “quesadilla”. You pronounce /tekeela/ and /kesadeeja/.
• Y at the end of a word is pronounced like English /ee/ real quick, mostly like the /y/ from “boy”. The Y alone means “and”.

Check the following video:

Learn how to say the vowels in Spanish – A E I O U uploaded by Butterfly Spanish.

We enjoy together such easiness that we decide to put vowels together a lot, so we make something called “diphthongs”. Check the following video on Spanish diphthongs:

Diptongos en español uploaded by Ana Diaz (the author).

Syllables

Good news!!! El español is never going to change the way you sound out the spelling. Just follow the next chart whenever you sound something out:

• ca ce ci co cu /ka se si ko ku/
• ga ge gi go gu /ga he hi go gu/
• que qui /ke ki/
• gue gui /ge gi/
• ja je ji jo ju /ha he hi ho hu/
• lla lle lli llo llu AND ya ye yi yo yu (pronounce like the English J)
• ha he hi ho ho (the H shouldn’t sound) /a e i o u/
• rra rre rri rro rru, here is where you roll the tongue. In the middle of the word written with a single R it’s way softer, a bit like a soft T from American English.
• ña ñe ñi ño ñu /nya, nye, nyi, nyo, nyu/ (like you’re congested or have runny nose)
• va ve vi vo vu AND ba be bi bo bu (both sound B) /ba be bi bob u/

The Spanish alphabet

The modern sound system en español is mostly from the 18th century. That century, a new family of kings take over, the Borbons from France. They introduce series of reforms to unify the el imperio español such the creation of la Real Academia de la Lengua Española (=Royal Academy of the Spanish Language). The Royal Academy defined the Spanish alphabet taken from Latin. In the past, digraphs such as CH, RR o LL counted each as a letter. Rescently thsose were eliminated as independent letters, but for learners de español they are useful.

Some names and nicknames for letters:

• B= beh, or “beh larga” (long B)
• V=ubeh, or “beh pequeña” (small B) or “beh chiquita” (tiny B)
• Y= “i griega”, “ye”
• i= “i Latina” (when in contrast with I griega)
• W=doble u, doble beh, ube doble, be doble

Some facts about the Spanish spelling:

• The name of Y is like the English /je/ and LL like in inglés /eje/. They always sound like the English /j/. En español caribeño is way softer like the inglés /y/ sometimes, y en español Argentino suena como /sh/.
• Y will sound like “ee” when there’s not vowel after it. Traditionally Y was called “I griega” (=Greek i), but the Real Academia eliminated that name, to keep only YE.
• J is /hota/ and will always sound as a the English H in Latin American Spanish.
• G /he/ sounds /h/ before E and I.
• C /se/ sounds /s/ before E and I.
• G sounds like /g/ in “gap” before A, O and U.
• C suena /k/ before A, O and U, just a bit softer than in English.

BUT WHY? Blame medievals. E and I are vowels that bring the pronunciation toward upper front in the palate. In early medieval Spanish, this letter brought the pronunciation of G and C upper in the palate, producing sounds that don’t exist today. These disappeared sounds turned into /he/ and /se/.

When you want to keep the /ge/ /gi/ /ke/ and /ki/, add a silent U: gue /ge/, gi /gi/, que /ke/ and qui /ki/. Remember tequila is /tekíla/ not /tekwíla/. You add a couple of dots on u to signal the few cases where you should pronounce it: güiro (Cuban instrument for salsa) or güepajé (chant to cheer cumbia dancing).

Why not using just “k” for everything? That’s some revolutionary proposal that has been discussed at times, but this is widely rejected by conservatives. In my opinion, however, it’s English that calls for a spelling reform.

Prepare to recite at the sound of Dominican merengue:

Alfabeto Español – Canciones Infantiles by Ricardo Calderón Herreño

A (ah) B (beh) C (seh) CH (cheh) D (deh) E (eh) F (efe)
G (heh), H (ache), I (ee) J (hota) K (ka) L (ele) LL (eje)

M (eme) N (ene) Ñ (enye) O (oh) P (peh) Q (koo)
R (ere) RR (erre) S (ese) T (te) U (oo) V (ube) W (ube doble)
X (ekis) Y (ye, i griega)  Z (seta)

But Caribbeans

Caribbeans usually turn S into a pronounced H at the end of a word, and sometimes in between a word before a consonant. Sometimes they just drop it:

• ME GUSTA (=I like): ME GUHTA or ME GUTA
• VAMOS (=Let’s go): VAMOH or VAMO
• ES ATREVIDA (=she’s daring): EH ATREVIDA or EATREVIDA

The D turns really weak in ADO or ADA:

• CANSADO (=tired, only male): CANSAO or CANSÁU
• CANSADA (=tired, only female): CANSÁA or CANSÁ
• NADA (=nothing): NAA or NÁ
• ATASCADO (=twisted, rough, stuck): ATASCAO or ATASCÁU

That’s why the salsa song by El gran combo de Puerto Rico is called “No hago má ná”=No hago más nada=I don’t do anything else.

As any Spanish speaker, they say PA instead of PARA (=for, in order to): ¿Y ESO PARA QUÉ? (=And that for what?), ¿Y ESO PA QUÉ?

And only Puerto Ricans change the R into L at the end of a word, or before a consonant, like Ozuna in the song “Criminal”: he says OBSELVAL instead of OBSERVAR (=to observe) or PENSAL instead of PENSAR (=to think). I wrote about this in my blog, if you want to read in Spanish:  Me dejo lleval

Stress and accent marks

Long words usually pick a part that has greater stress. That part involves at least a vowel, which attracts consonants to its beat. That greater force is called stress, and en español ACENTO. En español, ACENTO refers to the pronounced stress. Written accent is called tilde.

Examples of stress in English:

• They produce action movies and video games. / The market keeps local produce at the front.
• I object, your honor! / You treat me like an object.

In Spanish, most words have stress in the syllable before the last one, such as:

• casa=house
• borracho=drunk
• pataleta=tantrum
• propina=tip
• palabra=word

When words have stress on a different syllable, they most often contain an accent mark or tilde.

• rábano=radish (stress on third syllable before the last)
• canción=song (stress on last syllable)

If stress falls on the last syllable, words ending in consonants other than N or S usually don’t mark stress:

cantar=to sing

criminal=criminal

You’ll pronounce the stress in the syllable next to last if the word doesn’t have an accent mark, and it ends in a vowel, N or S.

Lea en español: Esta es la oscura historia de las tildes en la escritura

Sample conversation

Escribir el nombre

A: ¿Cuál es tu nombre? (=Which is your name?)

B: Mi nombre es __________ (add your name).

A: ¿Cómo se escribe? (=How it gets written?)

B: _____, ______, _____, _____, _____ (add names of letters in Spanish)

A: ¿De dónde eres? (=Where are you from?)

B: Yo soy de ______________ (add city you are from).

A: ¿Cómo se escribe? (=How it gets written?)

B: _____, ______, _____, _____, _____ (add names of letters in Spanish).

Palabras difíciles

A: ¿Cómo se escribe la palabra ___________?

B: Se escribe _____, ______, ______, _____, _____ (add names of as many letters).

A: ¿Qué significa?

B: Significa _______________ (add meaning in English).

Palabras: libélula (=dragon fly), hacha (=ax), contaduría (=accounting), retroceder (=to move back), malgeniado (=moody guy), navideño (=Christams-ish), onomatopeya (=onomatopeia), sinalefa (=vowel linking), carreta (=cart), acelerador (=accelerator)