Wednesday, May 11, 2011

It is all too confusing

Getting to grips with Spanish can prove to be a task and a half when there are so many words that are similar and when there are words that have several meanings according to their context.

Yesterday, I was giving an account of Easter in England and of course I mentioned chocolate Easter eggs which I interpreted as “huevos de chocolate” in Spanish. Due to a mispronunciation on my part, our teacher thought I said “jueves” which is of course Thursday. To my untrained ear they do sound similar as do "casa" and "caza".

We are told that the letters j and h are not pronounced in Spanish however, I understand that they subtlety change the sound of the word they proceed. When you have spent many years telling English children that they must pronounce the “h” at the beginning of words like house ( it is not not ouse!) it is hard to get out of the habit.

Looking at the weather report for this morning, I came across the word "brumas" which means sea mist. I can well see that at some point I am going to mix that word up with "bromas" which are jokes or even "brujas" which are witches. I know they don’t sound anything like each other but then neither do “hormigas” (ants) and “hormigon” (concrete) which I have mixed up in the past much to the amusement of our hairdresser.

No comments: