Friday, January 23, 2009

Very confusing

In all the books we have about Spanish, on the audio CDs and in our dictionary we are told that the letter 'v' in Spanish is pronounced exactly the same as the letter 'b' . At the start of a word the sound is like the b in boy, in the middle it is like the v in very but without letting the lips touch.

Yesterday our teacher was pronouncing his vs just as we would. His pronunciation of the Spanish for twenty sounded like 'venty' rather than 'benty' . We wondered if this was a regional variation.

Eduardo explained that having being brought up in Bigastro, his pronunciation was not perfect.

For example Bigastrense pronounce the 'c' sound, which when it precedes an 'e' or an 'i' should sound like 'th' in 'thin', like the 's' in 'same'. Locals also have the habit of clipping words for example - 'para' becomes 'par' and 'hasta luego' can be 'luego', 'tluego' 'talor' or even 'salor'. They also have a habit of using the future tenses of some verbs to express the past. So "I went to the market yesterday" could become "I'm going to the market yesterday".

Eduardo tells us that to hear Spanish pronounced properly you'd have to go to Castillon.

I'm begining to think that learning to converse with the locals could take a little longer than we anticipated.

No comments: