[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 when ordering a beer in a Mexican restaurant.
[LONG, DRAWN OUT SPANISH]
We don't want that. We want hola, quiero una cerveza. 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 you 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. [SIGHS] 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 mas lento, or mas despacio, which is slow down or repeta, which is repeat, or otra ves, again, or hablo un poco espanol-- 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 the longs and the shorts. The E is sometimes silent. You have the combination of, say, like an A-E that has a different pronunciation altogether. So we really do have to focus on making sure that we are just pronouncing the ah as ah never as ay, never as ay but always ah.
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 E. So it's pronounced ee.
OK, now let's try some sample words with each. Ah. Here's a word. Try this one, mañana, mañana. Notice all the A's are the same. Now for ay, we have mes. E, libro, not "laibro" but "leebro." For O, we have dolor. Notice how they're pronounced the same-- dolor. Then oo, oo is very tight-- computadora, computadora. And the Y, here's an example where it acts as a vowel-- muy, muy as an muy bien, very good. If you ever see a Y all by itself in a sentence, it's the word "and." So quiero una margarita y una cerveza.
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, which is museum in Spanish, is separated between that ay and the oh. They are two separate syllables. So all together, 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-- moo-say-oh. Moo-say-oh. So you hear the separation between the se and the oh.
Any 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 the U, smushed together to become one syllable. That's what we call a diphthong. It's one syllable that has two sounds. So it's not cee-oo-dad. It's ciu-dad, ciu-dad.
And it's different than if it were just one of those vowels. If it were just the I, it would be cee-dad. If it were just the U, it'd be koo-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 I and E together, or in Spanish "ee" followed by "ay," in a next word, V-I-E-J-O, which is "old," and is pronounced viejo, viejo not to be vee-ay-ho, 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 and Mike Tyson. I don't think either one are actually fighting anymore. But nonetheless, you have two guys who 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 the "ay" and 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-- oh, I don't know-- Niles from "Frasier" 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, and "ay" is crushing the "ee." So your heavyweight 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. Well, 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 their above average intelligence to flee the scene. And there's the example of ciudad, ciudad. They're saying see ya.
You may have learned that you're trilling in the R is the most important thing that you can do in Spanish. If you learned 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 these is after me one more time. Ah, ay, ee, oh, oo. Now all together-- ah, ay, ee, oh, oo. Keep practicing those vowels. Muy bien.
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 SpanishforNursesSupport@capella.edu for assistance.
If you are having technical issues, please contact learningcoach@sophia.org.
Source: This content has been adapted from "Spanish for Nurses" by Stephanie Langston.