Things that sound wrong when pronounced right.

@MontereyJack,

MontereyJack wrote:

David, I keep telling you that it's not "payso", which is /peiso/ phonetically. . .

Then, you and David are arguing the same thing.

Quote:

. . .and /e/ phonetically is like a sound that in English is written "a".

More precisely, /e/ is like a sound that in English is the first sound of the dipthong written "a".

I can see how Spanish "e" can be rendered as /e/ or /ɛ /, because they sound very similar, and their use wouldn't change the meaning of the word in which they occur, but niether of them are dipthongs, or even close to being dipthongs. They are individual vowel sounds.

Wikipedia renders the Spanish "e" as /e/ with a diacritic underneath to indicate that it is a mid front unrounded vowel.

1 Reply

@Joe Nation,

Joe Nation wrote:

Mame: You make prefect sense.
@David: You should (shud?) know (gno?) better (beddah?)
I can introduce you to six people from my neighborhood, all speakers of Spanish, but since one is from the DR, one is from Puerto Rico, one from Ecuador, another from Peru, one born and raised by Puerto Rican parents here in USA and one from Arragon, Spain----ALL of them have dialectical differences, even on the most basic of words.
The woman from Arragon's speech is nearly musical to my poor-tuned ear, but ALL of the others insist that THEIRS is the correct inflection.
<sigh>
Joe(reason #1 why Spanish is not the common language English is)Nation

I agree that there r some differences in pronunciation
in the many Spanish speaking countries, but the fact remains
that Spanish is an ALMOST perfectly fonetic
language ( a lot more fonetic than English is )
and in NONE of those countries that u mentioned is an E twisted into A.
Thay are all innocent of doing that.
(That woud be very unSpanish; maybe revive the Inquisition.)
That is an error of English accent, from Americans.
(I will not venture to guess whether the English
themselves err that way also.)
Speakers of Spanish r very good foneticists; almost perfect. Thay deserve credit.

David

0 Replies

@Joe Nation,

Joe Nation wrote:

Mame: You make perfect sense.
@David: You should (shud?) know (gno?) better (beddah?)
I can introduce you to six people from my neighborhood, all speakers of Spanish, but since one is from the DR, one is from Puerto Rico, one from Ecuador, another from Peru, one born and raised by Puerto Rican parents here in USA and one from Arragon, Spain----ALL of them have dialectical differences, even on the most basic of words.
The woman from Arragon's speech is nearly musical to my poor-tuned ear, but ALL of the others insist that THEIRS is the correct inflection.
<sigh>
Joe(reason #1 why Spanish is not the common language English is)Nation

True enough, the dialects of Spanish are probably more varied that those of English, however, these peoples' pronunciation of the Spanish "e" would never be like English long "a". Their "e" is closer to English short "e".

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It would be nice if people could pronounce foreign words correctly. Takes a bit of an effort but it sounds better.

4 Replies

@InfraBlue,

thanks, iblue.

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Yeah, I know. Now, ask all of the Spanish speakers you know to say "Perez"
pae'reez
Per'REZ
PER////

Joe (what the hell, you know what they are saying_)Nation

1 Reply

@noinipo,

noinipo, some of us try. Chances of my speaking spanish or italian in even the outskirts of being ok - are small.

Takes a bit of effort? I took seven quarter classes, including literature, in italian.. I was snap on grammar but was always the avid fool re talking.. I suppose I have a slow mind. Or grammar vocal cords disconnection.

I ended up a pal of the teacher, or vice versa - I might have been the one she could get, from my attempts at essays, and I was there at some point when she had a crazy husband - newspaper type. I hope she is well.

Communication varies, can happen even with messed up words.

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@noinipo,

Noinipo, I'm not sure I'm talking to the person I know.

Give me a clue.

1 Reply

@Joe Nation,

Infrablue and David are right.
As I wrote before, there are NO differences in how native Spanish speakers pronounce the vowels.
This doesn't mean there are no national or local inflections, slang or even grammatical tidbits.

A Spaniard would say "Buenass nochess".
A Mexican would say "Buens nochs"
A Cuban would say "Buena' noche'"
An Argentinian would say "Bueenah noocheh" (long "e", not "ee"; long "o", not "oo").

But they would ALL pronounce the U, the E, the A and the O exactly the same.

0 Replies

How about the English word "either" - some pronounce it "ither" others say
"eether" - same for "neither" .

2 Replies

@CalamityJane,

CalamityJane wrote:

How about the English word "either" - some pronounce it "ither" others say
"eether" - same for "neither" .

"You say tomayto, I say tomahto,
You say potayto, I say potahto
Tomayto, tomahto, potayto, potahto...
Let's call the whole thing off"

0 Replies

@ossobuco,

My son is architect working in Toronto. I am an innocent bystander.
I love French and am trying hard not to lose it. Living among Anglos
one loses the other language slowly. To my great surprise, my
German is still perfect, I guess growing up with it makes it solid
forever.

1 Reply

@CalamityJane,

einstein figured it out

0 Replies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dialects_and_varieties

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Spanish

0 Replies

@noinipo,

You passed the test, it is you talking. I'm so glad to see you back (almost weeps).

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Oy does not rhyme with boy. Oy is a much shorter sound.

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@noinipo,

noinipo wrote:

It would be nice if people could pronounce foreign words correctly. Takes a bit of an effort but it sounds better.

Oh yeah . . . it's a real pain in the ass when non-native speakers of English butcher the language . . .

1 Reply

@Setanta,

We are saying the same thing. Sorry about your pain.

0 Replies

@noinipo,

Quote:

It would be nice if people could pronounce foreign words correctly. Takes a bit of an effort but it sounds better.

This is a spurious notion, Noinipo, a common one but spurious nevertheless. When a language takes a word from another language, it only takes the word. It doesn't take the pronunciation because speakers of one language don't know the sound system of other languages.

It also doesn't absorb the rules for plurals or any other rules from the original language, again, because we can't possible know those rules and English has its own rules for all those issues.

1 Reply

@Joe Nation,

Quote:

Joe(reason #1 why Spanish is not the common language English is)Nation

Certainly not #1, Joe. What number that might be, I can't begin to imagine.

0 Replies

Things that sound wrong when pronounced right.

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