[MUSIC PLAYING] Las Vocales. Vowels. The key to sounding as authentic as possible in Spanish is to keep your vowels short. Now my father has a very distinct southern drawl so he sounds like this in ordering a beer in a Mexican restaurant, [SPANISH]. We don't want that. We want [SPANISH] and the reason is that the vowels are very short. Therefore Spanish does sound faster than English and it is faster because each vowel is shorter. If you think about it, every word has vowels and every syllable within a word has a vowel.
So if your vowels are shorter and the vowel is the defining factor of the duration of a word then it makes sense that if you're condensing those vowels that you're going to have a language that sounds faster. Another reason that Spanish sounds faster than English is because until know more vocabulary you don't really hear a word, word, word, word, you hear a big long run on string of sounds where you have a difficult time determining where one word ends and the next one begins. [SPANISH] But right now I'm speaking to you in English at exactly the same rate but you understand me because you know the words.
So as you pick up more vocabulary you'll be able to understand the language more easily. But I will also be teaching you phrases like [SPANISH] which is slow down or [SPANISH] which is repeat or [SPANISH] again or [SPANISH], I just speak a little Spanish. You'll learn all kinds of phrases to help you communicate more smoothly and to help you understand more accurately. As I mentioned before, Spanish does not have silent vowels so each vowel is pronounced each and every time.
And here are the vowels. Remember there's just one way to pronounce each one and they are always pronounced they are never silent. Now this one way thing is fairly easy in theory but it's rather difficult in practice because we were so accustomed to having multiple pronunciations for our vowels in English. We have a longs and the shorts, the E is sometimes silent, you have the combination of say like an AE that has a different pronunciation altogether. So we really do have to focus on making sure that we are just pronouncing the A as A, never as E never as E but A.
OK so try this after me. Ah, ay, ee, oh, oo. OK notice how tight they are. So ah like ah, I see and ay, ee is extremely tight, your mouth is more closed on that one ee. Oh like, Oh I forgot my wallet and oo like a monkey would say, oo, oo. Just as in English the Y is sometimes considered a vowel, when it is it acts like the ay, so it's pronounced E. OK now let's try some sample words with each. Ah. Here's a word try this one. Maniana, maniana. Notice all the A's are the same. Now for ay we have mess. Ee, libro not liberal but libro. For oh we have dolor. notice how to pronounce the same, dolor. Then oo. Oo is very tight. Computadora. Computadora. And the Y is an example where it acts as a vowel muy, muy as in muy vien, very good.
If you ever see a Y all by itself in a sentence it's the word and. [SPANISH]. Notice that y can also be a consonant so you'll also see examples of that. In this chart, you'll see strong and weak, this lets you know how the vowels act when two of them come together. So first let's talk about what the strong versus weak means. If a vowel is strong it means your mouth is more open when you pronounce it.
So ah, ay and oh form open mouths for their pronunciation while ee and oo are very tight and your lips are closer together, so they're considered weak vowels. What that means is that if you have two vowels together and the two vowels are both strong. So for example, an ah and ay or ay and oh or ah and oh then you would have different syllables, they would separate into different syllables. So our example word M-U-S-E-O,a which is museum in Spanish is separated between that ah and the oh. They are two separate syllables so altogether that word has three syllables.
And a syllable is just a sound you can count within a word and you can count it out with claps, that's probably the easiest way to do that. So we have Mu-se-o. You hear the three syllables, Mu-se-o. Mu-se-o, so you hear the separation between the se- and the O. In other combination of vowels in other words, if you have two weaklings together or if you have a strong and a weak will combine into the same syllable, they merge into one. So if you have the word city which in Spanish is C-I-U-D-A-D.
Notice that there's two weaklings the I and U smashed together to become one syllable. That's what they call a diphthong, it's one syllable that has two sounds. So it's not ciudad, it's ciu dad, ciu dad and it's different than if it were just one of those vowels. If we're just the I it would be ciu dad. If it were just it'd be ciu dad but it's not, it's ciu dad. Ciu dad. They kind of slur. Same thing for a weakling with a strong man, so you have an iron and easy leather or in Spanish ee followed by ay. And the next word V-I-E-J-O which is old and is pronounced viejo, viejo not to vie-jo but viejo.
Here's an analogy you can use for remembering that rule. Say you have two heavyweight boxers. Say you have maybe Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson don't think in either one are actually fighting anymore but nonetheless, you have two guys are both big, both strong, I would not want to be in the middle of those two fighting. So when they come together they repel, they push each other apart so ay the oh are both strong, they're each fighting for their own territory repelling one another. So you have a pretty even match unless of course one bites the other one's ear.
So the other situation would be if you had, say, a strong guy versus a weakling. So say we keep Evander Holyfield in the ring but instead of Tyson, we bring in our own Niles from Frazier or Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory. Now we are not going to have a match that's quite so even so in that case, the little scrawny guy is going to be running and if he doesn't, he'll be smashed by his much larger, more capable competitor and you'll just barely hear him eking out a sound. So that would be the example of viejo. The ay is much stronger in ay is crushing the ee, so your heavy weight is crushing your scrawny nerd, you have viejo.
Now say you have two scrawny guys. So let's keep Sheldon and Niles in the ring and throw the other big guys out, while they're going to have to work together to either fight someone stronger or to get out as quickly as possible so they're going to combine their mediocre powers and they're above average intelligence to flee the scene and there's the example of ciu dad, ciu dad, they're saying [SPANISH].
You may have learned that you're trilling the most important thing that you can do in Spanish, if you learn that don't stress that's not the most important thing to be able to pronounce correctly the vowels are. The vowels are in each and every syllable of each and every word and they contain very important information, such as gender and the verb tense, who did something and when so it's very, very important to pronounce this accurately. OK so try this after me one more time. Ah, ay, ee, oh, oo. Now altogether. Ah, ay, ee, oh, oo. Keep practicing those vowels. [SPANISH]
The key to sounding as authentic as possible is to keep the vowels short. Spanish vowels are very choppy; they are never drawn out as in English. This is one reason that Spanish sounds faster than English. In English, vowels are sometimes "silent;" in Spanish, vowels are always pronounced.
There is only one way to pronounce each vowel in Spanish. Each is always pronounced as follows:
Letter | Sound | Type | Word to Try |
---|---|---|---|
a | ah | strong | mañana (tomorrow) |
e | ay | strong | mes (month) |
i | ee | weak | libro (book) |
o | oh | strong | dolor (pain) |
u | oo | weak | computadora (computer |
y | ee | weak | muy (very) |
Note that two strong vowels next to each other create two separate syllables: mu-se-o
Otherwise, two vowels combine to form one syllable: ciu-dad, vie-jo
If you are struggling with a concept or terminology in the course, you may contact PharmacySpanishSupport@capella.edu for assistance.
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Source: This content has been adapted from "Pharmacy Spanish" by Stephanie Langston.