The importance of being fluent in both this and English is increasing on an almost daily basis. English is widely regarded to be the most difficult language to learn, as it has more exceptions to its rules than any other, and is reported by many to be the most difficult language to learn.
Spanish is fairly straight forward, and therefore great for self-education. Learning the following rules can go a long way toward helping you learn Spanish free.
Spanish Vowels And How They Sound
All of Spanish’s vowels are associated with strong sounds that will help each word jump off the tongue, like from a diving board. The letter “A” is pronounced like an “uh,” an “e” sounds like “ay,” the letter “i” becomes an “eee” sound and finally a “u” results in an “ooh” noise. The only vowel that retains the same sound from English to Spanish is the “o,” which keeps the “oh” pronunciation.
Let’s take a one Spanish sentence and examine how it is pronounced using these sounds. Our sample will be the easy sentence “I like to eat the cheese.”
Me gusta comer el queso.
The first two words, “Me gusto,” is pronounced “May Goose-toe,” which means “I like” in English. The word “comer” means “to eat” and you say it like “koh-mare.” “El pollo frito” means “the fried chicken” and is pronounced “Eh-l poh-yo free-toe.”
The Sounds of Spanish Consonants
Consonants in Spanish are understated for the most part. Even so, many rules apply to the consonants that can make subtle changes to not only meaning but the very sound of a word. In addition, there are a couple new letters to play with in Spanish. The first new letter is “ch,” which is voiced just as it would be in English.
The letter “c” on its own becomes an “s” sound when it shows up before an “e” or an “i,” like in the word “cero,” which is how you say “zero” in Spanish. A “g” letter in front of an “e” or an “i” causes that “ch” sound, but anywhere else will mean that same letter will sound like a hard “g,” like in the English word “go.”
There are additional hiccups as well. The letter “z” will make a “th” sound. The letter “h” is always silent. There’s a second new letter as well, the “ll,” which is pretty common in Spanish and makes a hard “y” sound like in “you.” That sound is used in the word “llamar” and gives the word the following pronunciation: “ya-MAR.”
Then there’s the little tilde that shows up above many Spanish words, such as in “el nio.” In this case, this word makes the same sounds as the “ll” did. As a result, it is pronounced “el neen-yo.” These are the majority of Spanish sounds, so as long as you practice these often, you’ll be able to say whatever you want.
Even so, the ground we’ve covered in this article certainly isn’t everything, but it’s a good start for those who want to learn Spanish free. There are a couple more sounds which can come in handy.
More sounds come in handy as you get more advanced, include “qu” which turns into a hard “k” sound, the “r” which is always said with a roll, and the long “eee” sound of the letter “y.
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