The vowels' sound

gatoazul said:

Spanish vowel's pronunciation differs from english basically in that the vowel sound is a simple sound and it changes a little or nothing while in a word.

Here are the aproximate sounds:

"a" is pronounced a english "a" in "bath"
"e" is pronounced as english "e" in "bed"
"i" is pronounced as english "i" in "fit"
"o" is pronounced as english "o" in "fog"
"u" is pronounced as english "oo" in "good"

The sounds of the vowels remain the same no matter its position in the word. So, in the words "cara", "garganta", "paz" the "a" will sound equal always.

There are a few exceptions, but I prefer to focus here on the generals.

So, when you here a word in spanish you may spell it more easily knowing it. It has worked for many friends and I thought it would be useful for more people.


Good luck!!

Click to expand...

"i" is pronounced as english "e" as in "feet"

"a" is pronounced as "a" in "father"
"e" is pronounced as "e" in "hey"
"i" is pronounced as "ee" in "feet"
"o" is pronounced as "o" in "over"
"u" is pronounced as "oo" in "ooo la la"

mkohn

That's more like it!

mkohn said:

"a" is pronounced as "a" in "father"
"e" is pronounced as "e" in "hey"
"i" is pronounced as "ee" in "feet"
"o" is pronounced as "o" in "over"
"u" is pronounced as "oo" in "ooo la la"

mkohn

Click to expand...

In looking at the original list posted, I had to do a double and triple take. Using the correct American English pronunciations, none of the English words corresponded with the Spanish vowels. I suppose if you are a Brit, you may take a Baaaahth, which would be Spanish "a". gatoazul, I'm guessing you are a Spanish speaker. Learning our convoluted English rules has to be maddening when you are accustomed to the beautiful simplicity of a language where vowels are pretty much always pronounced the same.

mkohn said:

"a" is pronounced as "a" in "father"
"e" is pronounced as "e" in "hey"
"i" is pronounced as "ee" in "feet"
"o" is pronounced as "o" in "over"
"u" is pronounced as "oo" in "ooo la la"

Click to expand...

Except when the "e" is followed by 2 consonants, as in restaurant, then the first post about "e" as in bed is correct.

gatoazul, you can also understand why Spanish speakers learning English make the pronounciation errors they do. They don't realize that in English there are no rules, it is all memorization.

The good thing about Spanish is that you don't need to have seen a word before in order to know how to write it or spell it. You just go by the sound. The orthographical errors in Spanish are mostly due to consonants. For example, the h is silent, but some words do have an h. Unless you know that, you may write such a word without it, just based on the sound. Similarly, ce and se are pronounced the same in most of the Spanish speaking world. So, if a person only has an elementary school education, he may spell cerrar as serrar. Y and LL have the same sound in most of the Spanish speaking world, so someone may write yueve instead of llueve. In most of Spain there is a difference in the pronunciation of LL and Y. The c and the s also have different sounds. Cerrar is pronounced therrar. C over there sounds like Z("th" sound) when followed by e and i, so they may put Z where a C is indicated. Zapato is pronounced thapato over there. Over here it is pronounced sapato. So people may miss spell it. In addition, because v and b are pronounced the same most of the time, people may put a v where a b should go instead.

Aside from that, there is no confusion in Spanish when it comes to vowel sound.