The Sounds of Spanish (Part 1)

Las Vocales (The Vowels)

A  E  I  O  U  and just like english Y is sometimes used as a vowel.

Unlike English, Spanish does not have long and short vowels. The vowel letters simply have one sound, and they just say that sound.

A  -  el águila (the eagle) / las águilas (the eagles)
        EL AH-GEE-LAH
A is pronounced like the A in "haha" or in the phrase "a lot."

E  -  el efectivo (the cash)
        EL A-FEC-TEE-BVO
E is pronounced like the long vowel sound of A in English, like the A in Alien.

Now do you see what we're doing here, by relating the sounds to sounds you already know? It is by building on your existing knowledge base, by relating words to words and learning patterns, that you will be successful at retaining a new language. This entire blog series will be based on this concept. Every lesson will lead into the next and refer to previous posts as well.

Now, moving on …

I  -  la isla (the island or the isle) / las islas (the islands or the isles)
      LAH EE-SLAH
I is pronounced like the long vowel sound of E in English, like the E in east.

O  -  la oveja (the sheep) / las ovejas (the sheep)
        LAH OH-BVAY-HA
O is pronounced like long vowel sound of O in English, like the O in open.

U  -  la uva (the grape) / las uvas (the grapes)
        LAH OO-BVAH
U is pronounced like the special OO vowel sound that occurs in English words like zoo and loop

Y (the vowel) -  hay ("there is" or "there are") (pronounced like the english word eye)
                          AYE
Y (the consonant) -  el yaguar (the jaguar) / los yaguares (the jaguars)
                           EL YAH-GWAR
In Spanish, this letter is called igriega, which tells you exactly where it comes from and its vowel origins. Igreiga can be broken apart to read "I Griega" or "Greek I" in English.

This concept of Y being a semi-vowel is debatable. Many would disagree with me, but there is no denying the evidence in my opinion. Clearly Y started out as a vowel and we later derived the consonant sound from the vowel based on the sounds this letter forms when transitioning from one vowel to another. To understand we must first define exactly what is a vowel and what is a consonant.

A vowel is any sound produced by vibrating the vocal cords. So, yes it is possible for there to be more than the vowels we know. Technically one could argue that English has 10 vowels if you were to consider the long and short vowels to be separate, unrelated sounds. It would have more than that if you were to consider all the special vowel sounds such as the two sounds represented by oo such as in zoo and look.

A consonant is formed when the tongue obstructs the breath in such a way as to form a new sound when combined with a vowel sound to form a syllable.

A letter is simply a written symbol that represents a sound. The reason why the letter Y can represent both a vowel sound and a consonant sound is that when you combine the I vowel sound with another vowel immediately after it, such as ía in la sandía (the watermelon), or io as in la viola (the viola), the consonant sound is naturally formed during the transition.

          Examples
               la sandía is pronounced LAH SAHN-DEE-YAH
               because ía is pronounced EE-AH or EE-YAH

               la viola is pronounced LAH VEE-YOHLAH
               because io is pronounced EE-OH or EE-YOH

Lesson To Be Continued….