Things that sound wrong when pronounced right.

@Mame,

Berlitz has it wrong. "No se," "hable" and "mesa" are pronounced with a short "e", more like "no seh," "ableh" and "mehsa". It is not a dipthong. It's possible that Berlitz is trying to approximate the pronunciation of Spanish "e" for Anglophones, which as I had pointed out earlier, tend to dipthongize the vowel as "ay" using English orthography or "ei" using the Latin when it occurs at the end of syllables.

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@Mame,

Mame wrote:

you're right, of course. I was concentrating on the e to a sound, in which David is wrong. Sad to say. Must be all his crazy fonetics!!

There is NO "e to a sound" in Spanish.
If u go to Spain and do that u will sound like a hick.
Thay r CONSERVATIVE with their vowels; i.e. there is NO distortion and NO variation.
That is and long has been an American error.

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@InfraBlue,

InfraBlue wrote:

Berlitz has it wrong. "No se," "hable" and "mesa" are pronounced with a short "e", more like "no seh," "ableh" and "mehsa". It is not a dipthong. It's possible that Berlitz is trying to approximate the pronunciation of Spanish "e" for Anglophones, which as I had pointed out earlier, tend to dipthongize the vowel as "ay" using English orthography or "ei" using the Latin when it occurs at the end of syllables.

That 's right. Geeezzzzzzzzzz. I 'm glad SOMEone got it right.

David

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@djjd62,

Me too. I think I got that pronunciation from "Young Guns"

Suppliant - I hear sup-PLI-ant (long I) and it's supposed to be sup-PLEE-ent.

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@Intrepid,

I always call Target "Tar-JAY" Smile

for the same reason.

You can't fix Walmart.

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Infrablue is right. Berlitz is ridiculously wrong.

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@fbaezer,

fbaezer wrote:

Infrablue is right. Berlitz is ridiculously wrong.

SO STIPULATED!

David

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@mismi,

mismi wrote:

Me too. I think I got that pronunciation from "Young Guns"

Suppliant - I hear sup-PLI-ant (long I) and it's supposed to be sup-PLEE-ent.

That is supposed to be: sup-PLEE-ant (not ent).

Maybe that was just a typo.

David

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@OmSigDAVID,

OmSigDAVID wrote:

fbaezer wrote:
Infrablue is right. Berlitz is ridiculously wrong.
SO STIPULATED!

David

What David said.

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There are these loud noises -

just tell me the right way to say something, more or less.
I wish to try.

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@fbaezer,

That has not been my experience and that's all I'm going to say about that.

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I have heard native Spanish speakers,
whose first language was Spanish (some born in Spain and some born in South America)
and to whom English was a 2nd language (and by whom I was taught to speak Spanish)
among themselves, in private, make fun of Americans and privately laff at Americans,
shaking their heads negatively, whose pronunciation was the way that Jack indicated.
To them, it was a very foolish, embarrassing mistake that I was counseled to take care to avoid.
I have adopted their advice.

David

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The Spanish vowels are pretty close to the IPA standard, which is often glossed in English as something like ah, ai (like bait), ee, oh, ooh or oo (like woo). We diphthong them more than Spanish so those aren't exact equivalents. But Spanish E is not pronounced like English E, so Cesar is not See-zahr (giving it a sort of English gloss)which is what David seems to be saying, if I read him correctly, but more like Say-sahr.

For a video:
http://www.oneminuteu.com/default.taf?id=821&page=content

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And from my conversations with Spanish speakers, while overall the various countries' versions are probably more similar to each other than English regional dialects are, nonetheless they make rather merciless fun of the versions of the language from different countries or, like in Mexico, the versions from different states or different ethnic groups, often influenced by the native language, or what used to be the native language, of the state before they were Hispanicized.

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@MontereyJack,

MontereyJack wrote:

The Spanish vowels are pretty close to the IPA standard, which is often glossed in English as something like ah, ai (like bait), ee, oh, ooh or oo (like woo). We diphthong them more than Spanish so those aren't exact equivalents. But Spanish E is not pronounced like English E, so Cesar is not See-zahr (giving it a sort of English gloss)
which is what David seems to be saying,
if I read him correctly, but more like Say-sahr.

That is not correct, and that is not what I said.
I re-iterate:
A Spaniard will pronounce the e
in Cesar as a short e, as in: get, bed or bet.
There is absolutely not the slightest trace of an A in the Spanish pronunciation of an E.
A and E are like oil and water in Spanish.

If u wanna speak Spanish like a natural born Spaniard,
and not sound like an American hill billy,
then hold that concept closely to your heart (and to your mouth)
and deviate not therefrom.

David

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Watch the video I cited, David. It's a minute long. I know that strains your attention span

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@Setanta,

You're just trying to show off your French, Set. It doesn't matter a smattering of an iota what the French say or where the word came from, it's now an English word and how it's pronounced is up to English speakers.

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@boomerang,

diphthong

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@MontereyJack,

MontereyJack wrote:

Watch the video I cited, David. It's a minute long.
I know that strains your attention span

I can 't do it now; the speaker on my computer is not functioning.
I 've gotta get it fixed. Thanx for the insult.

WHAT does it say ?

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it says /e/

Always happy to reciprocate.

1 Reply

Things that sound wrong when pronounced right.

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