Archive for August, 2009

Pronouncing the vowels correctly is essential to authentic Spanish pronunciation and, therefore, to communication.

Spanish Vowels tend to sound shorter than english vowels. There is a little tip to obtain clipped vowels: You can add an h (silent h, not pronounced) after a, e and o. By doing this, you get ah, eh, oh.

The spanish vowels e and u, can be represented by “ee” and “oo”.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/n_s_p/2889722862/

This can be a little confusing at first, so let’s check some examples. The spanish words sábado (Saturday), libro (Book) and computadora (Computer) are trnascribed as “sah-bah-doh”, “lee-bro” and “khom-poo-tah-doh-ra”.

Pronouncing Spanish Vowels

Below, you can find individual examples for each vowel:

• ‘a’: The spanish a is pronounced like the “a” in the English word “father”.
  • Example: terraza (teh-rrah-sah)
• ‘e’: The spanish e is pronounced like a shortened version of the “e” in the English word “cafe”.
  • Example: Mesa (meh-sah)
• ‘i’: The spanish i is pronounced like the “ee” in the English word “see”.
  • Example: silla (see-yah)
• ‘o’: The spanish o is pronounced like the “o” in the English word “obey” (but it is clipped short).
  • Example: no (noh)
• ‘u’: The spanish u is pronounced like the “u” in the English word “rule”.
  • Example: azul (ah-sool)

Searching and surfing in youtube, we found some interesting videos of celebrities that speak spanish. Some are really good, and others, well they at least try to speak spanish!

• Jennifer Aniston (Friends):

Our Comments: Ok, it was just a sentence, but it was really funny.

• Dakota Fanning

Our Comments: Dakota learned spanish through personal classes, and because of the movie “Men in fire” which she started. It´s impressive the way she speaks spanish.

• Gwyneth Paltrow

Our comments: Gwyneth gives a full interview in Spanish, she speaks fluently and with no problems at all.

• Kyle Minogue

During her concert in Madrid she gave this short speach in spanish. It wasn´t very fluent and clear, although it was nice to see her trying to speak in spanish.

• Hilary Clinton

There always seems to be a misunderstanding about the pronunciation of the ‘h’ in Spanish.

In this post, we are going to give a detailed and quick guide to pronouncing the letter ‘h’ in Spanish (or, to be more precise, not pronouncing it).

The reality is that the ‘H’ in Spanish is always silent.

So, for example, the word “hay” is pronounced like the English word eye.

How to pronounce the ‘h’ in Spanish:

Honduras is pronounced onduras
And Havana is pronounced avana

It is confusing at first, but it just like the letter ‘k’ in English: You write ‘know’, but you don’t pronounce the letter.

Wait for more quick pronunciation tips here at language4students.

choosing an spanish academy

We get asked this question a lot of times, and most of the times our answer is: ‘It depends’.

It depends on how well you grasp language in general. There are some aspects of the language that make it a little bit harder than English, for example placing verbs in the right form, knowing where to put the adjectives, masculine and feminine words, etc.

Overall, you need to stay dedicated if you decide to learn Spanish.

We don´t want to be too biased, but finding a good Spanish academy is vital for your learning experience. And of course, language4students is an excellent choice if you are looking for Spanish classes in Madrid.

If you go to an academy that doesn´t provide you some basic stuff, then learning Spanish can indeed be a difficult task. What ‘stuff’ are we talking about? For example, take this checklist with you and review it when looking for a Spanish academy:

• They give you the opportunity to take part in realistic Spanish conversations.
• Small groups of people
• Native teachers is always a plus
• Fun and dynamic classes

Those are just some points that you need to be aware of to make Spanish an easier language to learn.

Find those in an academy, and we guarantee you that learning Spanish won´t be hard at all.

Get to know us better! If you live in Madrid, please come and visit us, call us or leave us a message at our contact form.