MexConnect.com Forums: Specific Focus: Learning Spanish: Do you "¿Mande?": Page 2

Forums > Specific Focus > Learning Spanish

1 2 View All

mazbook1

May 5, 2010, 4:19 PM

Post #26 of 32 (3134 views)

Shortcut

Re: [Maesonna] Do you "¿Mande?"

Can't Post | Private Reply

Maesonna,

Yes, and I can well imagine an English speaker (even ones who speak Spanish) not being able to differenciate between the vowel in "Monday" and that in "mande".

Many expats I know can't "hear" the difference between "peine" and "pene" properly pronounced by a native Spanish speaker, and that's a VERY important difference!

La Isla

May 5, 2010, 5:25 PM

Post #27 of 32 (3120 views)

Shortcut

Re: [Maesonna] Do you "¿Mande?"

Can't Post | Private Reply

In Reply To

English has over a dozen different vowel sounds; Spanish only five. Spanish speakers learning English find it hard to master the subtle differences between various English vowel sounds. I can well imagine a Spanish speaker not being able to differentiate between the vowel in “Monday” and “mande.”

That makes a lot of sense especially taking into consideration that the sound of the "o" in "Monday" is one of those many vowel sounds that do not exist in Spanish. Getting my students to perfect their English vowels is one of my more difficult tasks!

esperanza

May 5, 2010, 6:04 PM

Post #28 of 32 (3109 views)

Shortcut

Re: [mazbook1] Do you "¿Mande?"

Can't Post | Private Reply

In Reply To

Maesonna,

Many expats I know can't "hear" the difference between "peine" and "pene" properly pronounced by a native Spanish speaker, and that's a VERY important difference!

That's a way better mistake than the typical año/ano mistake. Gente decente will bite their tongues bloody rather than let loose with the carcajadas, but...LOL...

http://www.mexicocooks.typepad.com

jerezano

May 5, 2010, 6:36 PM

Post #29 of 32 (3107 views)

Shortcut

Re: [Maesonna] Do you "¿Mande?"

Can't Post | Private Reply

Hello all,

Quote:>>English has over a dozen different vowel sounds; Spanish only five.<<<

Wait a minute. That is theory only. What about the e? Take the word élite for example: EH lee tay. Or EH li teh. Aren't there two different vowel sounds for the e. Take the word enseñar ehn sen YAHR. Or the word pene (penis) PEH nay which is a lot different in sound from peine (comb) which is PAY nay. So we have at least six vowel sounds since the e has two pronunciations. I could probably find other vowel sounds if I really looked for them. I usually hear two different pronunciations for the i (eee) as well. In words where it is not accented it sounds much more like the i in our word in or it rather than the pure eee. If we count the i then there are at least 7 pronunciations of vowel sounds in Spanish. Am I hearing incorrectly? Could be.

And yes when I hear ¿mande? here in Zacatecas and also in the Tamaulipas area of the border it is always without fail ¿MAHN day? Even from those Spanish speakers who speak Spanglish as their normal communication. If there is ever a variation it is in the shortening of the last e from day to deh.

But Rex is right. Who cares so long as you are understood? If people have objections they will usually let you know.

Hasta luego, jerezano

Maesonna

May 5, 2010, 7:17 PM

Post #30 of 32 (3102 views)

Shortcut

Re: [jerezano] Do you "¿Mande?"

Can't Post | Private Reply

Quote

Quote:>>English has over a dozen different vowel sounds; Spanish only five.<<<

Wait a minute. That is theory only. What about the e? Take the word élite for example: EH lee tay. Or EH li teh. Aren't there two different vowel sounds for the e. Take the word enseñar ehn sen YAHR. Or the word pene (penis) PEH nay which is a lot different in sound from peine (comb) which is PAY nay. So we have at least six vowel sounds since the e has two pronunciations. I could probably find other vowel sounds if I really looked for them. I usually hear two different pronunciations for the i (eee) as well. In words where it is not accented it sounds much more like the i in our word in or it rather than the pure eee. If we count the i then there are at least 7 pronunciations of vowel sounds in Spanish. Am I hearing incorrectly? Could be.

Yes, I simplified, but your example doesn't illustrate it. The first and last "e" of "élite" might be subtly different, but in essence, both are "e". Your examples of EH lee tay and EH li teh are mixing together English and Spanish phonetics, but both point to essentially the same pronunciation.

The vowel in the first syllable of "pene" is "e" and the corresponding vowel in "peine" is a dipthong "ei", made up of the sounds of "e" and "i".

If you count dipthongs, you can find more vowel sounds in Spanish; "ou" for example, but they are all made up of combinations of the 5 vowels a, e, i, o and u.

In contrast, here is a chart showing the vowel sounds of American English:
http://faculty.washington.edu/...ources/newstart.html, and here is one for Canadian English: http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/.../138/sec1/vowels.htm
The precise number of different vowels in English depends on which regional English you consider. Other regional Englishes will not have exactly the same sets of vowels.

Papirex

May 5, 2010, 8:46 PM

Post #31 of 32 (3098 views)

Shortcut

Re: [Maesonna] Do you "¿Mande?"

Can't Post | Private Reply

I was lucky enough to be in one of the last special classes in a California State grammar school where we learned to spell using the phonic method. Some lame brain in the California State educational system had decided that the easiest way to teach kids to spell was to simply teach them how to spell every single syllable in the English language, then all they had to do was put those several hundred, or thousand, syllables in order, and Presto! Everybody could spell anything correctly. It was a great idea, and was, and still is, a colossal failure.

We were taught how to pronounce every letter, and combination of letters in the English alphabet, and that there are only 10 pronunciations for the 5 vowels, long and short.

Many people that have not been lucky enough to have been taught spelling using the phonic method ignorantly confuse it with phonetics. Phonics is a science and method of teaching correct spelling, Phonetics is a description of spelling or pronouncing a word or words by the way they are spelled, or spoken.

Anyone, probably nearly everyone, that is in any doubt about the true meaning of those two words should get a good unabridged dictionary, (not a paperback), and look them both up.

I will match my spelling skills against any American English speaker anytime. If any word is pronounced correctly, I can spell it correctly using United States English. That is the reason that at all spelling bees, there is a person called “the pronouncer”. Typos are a different matter. A key mis strike may get past the best spellchecker. I used to use Microsoft Word 2000 for my word processor. It had a grammar checker in it, it caught most, but not all grammatical errors.

Rex
"The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved" - Victor Hugo

mazbook1

May 6, 2010, 3:00 PM

Post #32 of 32 (3073 views)

Shortcut

Re: [Maesonna] Do you "¿Mande?"

Can't Post | Private Reply

Maesonna,

Absolutely correct—jerezano is just "hearing" the Spanish vowel sounds wrong, something a large majority of native English speakers do.

"pene", phonetically translitered for MOST folks from the west-of-the-Mississippi U.S. and MOST west-coast Canandians is best represented by PAY nay for beginners learning to speak Spanish and by PEH neh for those a bit more advanced.

"peine", phonetically translitered for the same group is PAY-EE nay for beginners and PEH-EE neh for the more advanced.

These phonetic transliterations DON'T represent reality, as the Spanish vowel sounds only occupy approx. 1/2 of the TIME that the English vowel sounds use (and the "i" or the "u" in diphthongs even less), therefore anyone using these transliterations will still have a pronounced gringo accent, BUT will absolutely be understood correctly. Of course, this "clipped" pronunciation is even harder for the average English speaker to hear and mimic properly.

Another thing that makes "hearing" Spanish properly difficult is the way the Spanish diphthongs are pronounced. In English, the two vowel sounds are combined and emerge as a new phoneme, i.e., sound. In Spanish, the two vowels are both pronounced, but run together with either the "i" or the "u" of the diphthong being only slightly pronounced. I represent this in my transliterations the way you see in the above example of "peine" – PAY-EE nay or PEH-EE neh.

Also, ALL vowel pairs are not diphthongs in Spanish. The ones without either an "i" or a "u" have both vowels pronounced equally, but still run together. And any (even those with an "i" or a "u") that have an accent mark over one of the vowels are completely "split", and not run together except in rare instances. Here are a couple of common examples of regular versus split diphthongs in Spanish:

"farmacia" – fahr MAH cee-ah — normal Spanish diphthong.

"tortillería" – tohr tee yeh REE ah — normal Spanish "split" diphthong.

Hope this makes sense and helps others.

(This post was edited by mazbook1 on May 6, 2010, 3:14 PM)

1 2 View All