Rule #3- Spanish vowels start differently from English vowels -and end differently as well!

If you´ve been reading this blog for any amount of time, you already know how Spanish vowels are:

1.- Spanish vowels are short
2.- Spanish vowels are pure
3.- Spanish vowels start differently from English vowels -and end differently as well!

Today´s topic is rule#3. I´ve decided to split this one in two. This post will be about how vowels start. And please, if you come up with any shorter way to say that "Spanish vowels start and finish differently from English vowels", leave a comment below! But you should read the whole post first.


How do English vowels start?

Put yourself in `careful speech´ mode, and say cooperate, geometry and reaction. If you were careful enough, you must have noticed a short pause, a sort of staccato, like co-operate, ge-ometry, re-action. This device is used as a syllable boundary marker, and is called glottal stop, represented [ʔ]. In English, we also use this glottal stop when we want to apply a particular emphasis on a word, for example, It´s [ʔ] empty, She´s [ʔ] awfully good. But this glottal stop is not only a pause...

Your vocal folds are two folds of ligament and elastic tissue which can be pressed together or parted through muscular action. The opening between these folds is called the glottis. Biologically, the vocal folds are a valve, they prevent stuff to enter our lungs (other than air, duh!). When we produce the [z] sound, like a bee, those folds open and close about 150 times in a second, pretty amazing! But we can also close them, building air pressure below them, and that is called a glottal stop.

As I just said, in `careful´ English, we produce this glottal stop to either emphasize a word, or to show a syllable boundary. In German, we use glottal stops all the time, whenever words or syllables start with a vowel. The reason I´m telling you this? In Spanish there is no such thing as a glottal stop. That brings us to the next question...


How do Spanish vowels start?

In Spanish, whenever a word starts with a vowel, our vocal folds start vibrating slowly. And when there are two adjacent vowels, we do not make a pause between them, we actually join them together.

If it sounds easy, it´s because it actually is. But reading won´t help you much. Start by listening to yourself and others. Are you producing a glottal stop at the beginning of vowels? Do Spanish speakers produce glottal stops?

This is only half the problem. Now I got you thinking, maybe you can tell me: why do we say that Spanish vowels finish differently from English vowels?

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