polenta

Spanish has only 5 vowels. Standard American English has at least eleven or more.
The vowels in Spanish are : A, E, I,O and U

A is always pronounced like the a in car or bar

E is always pronounced like the first e in benefit

I is always pronounced like the ee of feel or the ea in beat

O is always pronounced like the o in before

U is always pronounced like the oo it boots

In English when you have a word like LESSON, you pronounce the e very precisely because it's stressed but the o in lesson is only an obscure sound and some people can even omit its pronunciation saying something like LESSN. This will NEVER happen in Spanish. All the vowels MUST be pronounced whether they are stressed or not.

One thing that will make things clearer about the phonetic difference of the two languages is that in English, the rhythm given to poems is given by how many stressed vowels it has. In Spanish you count the syllables, whether the vowels are stressed or not.
In short, ALL THE VOWELS YOU SEE WRITTEN MUST BE PRONOUNCED.

matthew

EYE EYE EYE... Not a dipthong in sight...

I am a Yankees baseball fan... I love Jorge Posada... Jorge is pronounced Whore-Hey... But My kids find it funny because I always jokingly call him George...

So in spanish... J's & G's sound like english H's... So how are H's pronounced? if they sound like H too... then you have way too many H sounds...

polenta

Everyone must understand I adore phonetics and phonemics by now. LOL

For example the English word EYE would be spelled AI in Spanish if you just consider the sound of the English word EYE

G and J are consonants.
Spanish J is always pronounced the same.
Spanish G is pronounced in three ways:
1) before A, O and U it's pronounced like the G in the English word guest.
2) before E and I it's pronounced similar to the English H in the word
host. (I'll explain dialectal differences later)
3) GUE and GUI are pronounced like guest or give in English

polenta

The pronunciation of J and the G in case number 2 above is the same. It could be similar to the H in the English words host or hospital. The problem is that different dialects pronounce it softer or harder. In Spain itself the "best" Castilian Spanish pronounces it very hard but in Andalucia(Seville, etc ) it's almost exactly like the H in English word hospital.
In Mexico as in Argentina, Uruguay we pronounce it the hard way but not as hard as in Castilian Spanish. Let me remind you that Spain had a lot of Arabic influence until Muslims were forced to leave in 1492. Well, this sound J comes from Arabic influence. If you know German it sounds even harder than the ch in the German word Ich.

polenta

Jorge would be like HORE-HE (forget the y) for Cubans, Venezuelans, Andalusians, etc.
In Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay etc, we would pronounce the H but much harder (like in Arabic maybe)
Oh, my God, who cares about all these things? Only me!!!!!

polenta

I forgot one thing Matthew the H in Spanish is ALWAYS mute. It's not pronounced.

matthew

So Matthew would be pronounced Matt-ew??? LOL... Dear God... Don't tell Baldur that...

Baldur

matthew, I will give you the 'h' back out of our mutual respect.
how does matt-ewh? sound?

solosater

I love this polenta!

Thank you!

I mentioned before (somewhere) that my stepfather is Polish. In that language the tongue never passes the teeth, so teeth would be teet and his middle name Theodore (which we would pronounce Theadore), is Teodore with the 1st E and both Os pronounced long.

He was just a baby when his family came to America but being raised by strictly Polish speaking parents, he learned to pronounce his Ts in that way. It's kinda cute;-)

I guess my point is that I may never be fluent in Spanish but these rules certainly will help me not sound like an idiot gringa, just a regular gringa.

solosater

I also said I'd picked up a little Spanish going to Mexico but I think learning by ear is one thing and learning to read is something else.

When I'm speaking Spanish I can think about it and come up with the right sound but when I read it I get confused, the rule I know don't fit the sound I know. I know the rule for english (though I certainly couldn't write them out for you); they don't fit the Spanish language at all.

Thanks again polenta, if you think of any more I need to know, please let me in on it.

I love it!!!

polenta

hi matew
lol

polenta

matiu, dount interfiar in mai converseishon.

Let's see if Matthew can translate this into normal English. Haha!!!!!

Baldur

that looks pretty much like mattewh's language, minus the sexual innuendo.

Login

polenta, it sounds like a posh 'affected' English accent ... heard among the rich, landed gentry, including royalty. Moust of us dount speak laik thait.

Dragon

solo, I don't think the rule of english apply to any other language, we have one of the most bizarre set of rules and exceptions out there.

polenta

What rules are there in English spelling? There must be 20 rules and 200,000 exceptions!! LOL

Login
iu ar rait, meibi it is a litl afected but it saunds gud, dazent it?

Hooray! I invented a new language!!!!

marius

Here's a saying about where the letters e and I go (when they are next to each other in a word):

"I comes before E ... except after C and when it sounds like an A, as in "neighbor" and "weigh"

Examples: believe, relieve; or receive, deceive, sleigh, feign

Dragon

However there are words that don't fit like :weird

matthew

& Keith... Not to "interfiar"

solosater

I had a thought today! I know, mark it on your calendars - solo had a thought!

How in the world do they add diacritics to text in textbooks and such? I can, on some computers, add umlauts to Finnish words, but that's it! Spanish has those funny little ~s over the Ns in some words and French has those tiny `s in some of it's words and I’m guessing if I looked I could find directions to add these to text in those languages but to do actual diacritics for a whole word is not in my knowledge banks.

And now I’m thinking on it, as it’s been stated the rules for one language just don’t work for other languages, do diacritics stay the same in every language?

Anyone have a clue?