Plosive Epenthesis. Yes, it does sound complex.

Guy goes to the doctor and says, Doc, I've got a problem! One day I feel like I'm a teepee, the next day I fee like I'm a wigwam. Teepee! Wigwam! Teepee! Wigwam!

Doctor says, Relax! You're two tents! (too tense!)

Behind this rather stupid joke (thanks Kid's Turn Central) you will find a device utterly common in English pronunciation. This very same device sounds utterly horrible when speaking Spanish. 


I'll give you a clue. Plosive means 'sound produced by a total closure of the oral passage' (that would be your mouth). Epenthesis means 'insertion of a sound'. Second clue: there's no name for that thing in Spanish.

Theoretical mumbo jumbo will arrive in some post soon. In the meantime, I've entrusted one of my students with a little poll: 

-Do the words 'tense' and 'tents' sound alike when said by a native English speaker?

-Do the words 'tense' and 'tents' sound alike when said by a native Spanish speaker?


What do you think? 




If you don't want to miss the answer to this week's mystery riddle, subscribe to the Spanish 101 RSS feed. If you want to insult me for abusing bold letters, send me a mail, or leave a comment below.

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?

Subscribe to the Spanish Pronunciation 101 RSS feed for the last post on Spanish vowels, coming soon!

The no voiced fricatives rule

Last week, Eleena, from Voces en español, released a podcast we recorded together, you can listen to it here. It deals with the base of articulation: the main differences between the overall "feel" of the two languages. You can find out more about that here and here.

The base of articulation is not a new concept, I´ve first read about it in a book edited in 1937. But, for some unknown reason, it´s been neglected in recent Spanish phonetic books. To those four rules Eleena and I discussed, I´d like to add a new one, it´s really simple: there are no voiced fricatives in Spanish, as opposed to the relatively complex series of English fricatives.

Too much too fast? Don´t panic. If you want to understand why you sound so gringo when saying words like manzana, jueves or calle, just keep on reading. One step at a time, I promise you will get it at the end.


So, what is a fricative again?

If I ask any of my students what a fricative is, he or she will probably say it´s a sound produced by friction. Now you know too, congratulations! So which are the sounds produced by friction? It´s easy, try to make any sound, if you can make it really really long, chances are it´s a fricative. For example, /s/. Try it, say ssss, you could go forever -if you had air enough.

Now you know what a fricative is. There are more, can you guess which ones they are? If you guessed /n/ or /m/, you are wrong! You can produce a really long nnnn, but /n/ and /m/ are nasals (the air escapes through the nose), so think about the other sounds that can be really really long. Nothing? Ok, I´ll help you.

English fricatives

/f/ as in leaf AND /v/ as in leave
/θ/ as in thing AND /ð/ as in this
/s/ as in soup AND /z/ as in zoo
/ʃ/ as in station AND /ʒ/ as in vision
/h/ as in heal

Now, the following are the Spanish fricatives, tell me if you see a pattern. It should be noted that I´m talking about the Spanish used in Argentina.

Spanish fricatives

/f/ as in fácil
/s/ as in sol
/ʃ/ as in coyote
/x/ as in joder

If you don´t see a pattern, don´t worry, bear with me just a bit more.


Voiced vs. voiceless

If I ask any of my students why I wrote those fricatives in pairs, he or she will say that the sounds from each pair share the same place of articulation, but the one of the left is voiceless and the one on the right is voiced. Let´s translate that: to make the sounds from the pair /f/ /v/, your mouth and tongue are in exactly the same position, but the difference is that when you say /v/, your vocal folds vibrate, when you say /f/, they don´t. If you still don´t know what the hell I´m talking about, just do this: put your hand on your throat, and say ffff. Now say vvvv. Which one produced a vibration? If you guessed /v/, congratulations, you´ve just discovered what a voiced sound is! If you´re not sure yet, this may also work: put you hands on your ears, and say ffff, then vvvv, noticed any vibrations? (Thanks Charlotte for the tip!)

Now that we know what a voiced sound is, why don´t we rewrite those lists?

English fricatives

voiceless------------voiced
/f/ as in leaf AND /v/ as in leave
/θ/ as in thing AND /ð/ as in this
/s/ as in soup AND /z/ as in zoo
/ʃ/ as in station AND /ʒ/ as in vision
/h/ as in heal

Spanish fricatives

voiceless------------voiced
/f/ as in fácil
/s/ as in sol
/ʃ/ as in coyote
/x/ as in joder

Seeing any patterns now people? Nothing yet?! We´re almost over.


The no voiced fricatives rule

In English, almost every letter "z" is pronounced as the sound /z/, like zoo, zip or quiz. But, how will you pronounce the letter "z" from Spanish words like zapato or azul?

In English, almost every letter "v" is pronounced as the sound /v/, like vine, savage or love. But... how will you pronounce the letter "v" from Spanish words like voz or avión?

You taking the hint? In Spanish, the letter "z" will always we produced as the sound /s/. If you still don´t know what´s the diffeerece between /z/ and /s/, I must ask: have you even read this whole thing, or have you just skeemed through the headlines? One last time: /z/ is produced with vibrations of the vocal folds, /s/ has no vibrations whatsoever! And what´s more important: there is no /z/ in Spanish!

As you can see, there is not one voiced fricative in Spanish. We´ll say ssss in words like cazar, zápate, corazón, we´re are so crazy we´ll even say ssss in zoológico. If you don´t, you will sound like a tourist, sorry! What about the letter "v", you ask? Just pretend it´s a "b", because we´re out of our minds, we don´t care if we write jueves, vaca, violín or nieve, we will say juebes, baca, biolín and niebe, don´t you dare us!

Now, the philosophical part of the blog, why is it there are no voiced fricatives in Spanish? We can simply guess, or study philology, but I´d rather guess, is funnier and doesn´t take as much time. I guess it´s connected with the relatively strong muscular tension that characterizes the Spanish language, as opposed to the rather relaxed English pronunciation. These voiceless sounds are all fortis, which means that they require more tension around the mouth. But it´s just my very personal guess. You got any better?

The other side of the /l/

Buenos días a todos. Hoy me sumo a la postmodernidad: quiero una solución rápida y momentánea para un problema complejo. Si quisiera resumir la clase de hoy en tres oraciones, eligiría éstas:

1. En inglés, la letra “l” tiene dos variantes: /l/, como en let; y /ɫ/, como en well, aka the dark /ɫ/.

2. En español, la letra “l” tiene una sola variante, como en lonja o gol (la misma de let, por si no lo notaron).

3. La dark /ɫ/ no existe en español; se debe usar el mismo sonido de let para palabras como gol y sal.


Creo que es una regla simple. Uno la lee, y la entiende enseguida. Pero lo más probable es que se la olviden en no más de diez minutos, o la recuerden pero sin ponerla nunca en práctica. En definitiva, el sonido que le damos a cierta letra es un hábito, algo en lo que no pensamos, algo sale automáticamente… ¿cómo se cambia un hábito? Sabemos que no alcanza con leer tres oraciones, pero… ¿qué es lo que hacemos entonces?


1. Theoretical background


Hay gente a la que le encanta leer teoría. A mi me encanta, siempre y cuando pueda conectarla con la realidad. Si describimos los dos sonidos, y los comparamos, nuestro cerebro va a estar mejor preparado para escucharlos… suena lógico, ¿no? Entonces, ¿qué es esto de que existen dos “l”?

Clear /l/ [the one you have to do all the time]

The front of the tongue is raised, the tip of the tongue touches the area just behind the upper teeth. It happens [a] in the beginning of a syllable, like in leave or look, [b] following another sound in the same syllable, like in placebo or flow, or [c] at the end of a word following /j/, like in feel it or will you.

Dark /ɫ/ [the one you must never do (in Spanish)]

The front of the tongue is somewhat lowered, the back of the tongue is raised, and the tip of the tongue touches the area right behind the upper teeth. It happens [a] after vowel before consonant, like in feel or help, and [b] when the “l” is syllabic, as in table or middle.

Ya está, ya sabemos qué tenemos que cambiar… ¿alcanza?

2. Ejercicios prácticos

Estamos cambiando un hábito: años y años de usar la dark /ɫ/. Les propongo balancearlo, practiquemos mucho tiempo la otra /l/. La dark /ɫ/ se da al final de la sílaba, pero como no existe en español, las siguientes palabras se van a decir con la clear /l/:

final de palabra ágil azul cal canal débil fiel gol hiel

igual mal miel piel riel sol sal

final de sílaba palco polca talco alto esbelto multa

almirante Peralta álgido hilvanar sultán

colcha malta palta calco

¿Cómo practicar? Primero, en inglés. En voz alta, digamos las palabras let y well. Si tenés a un amigo cerca, llamalo y pedile que te las diga. Si tu amigo no tiene un acento muy bueno, es muy probable que escuches la clear “l” en las dos palabras. Supongamos que no tenés un amigo cerca, y leés las palabras solo. No me vas a decir que se trata del mismo sonido, ¿o si? No, no es el mismo sonido, es bastante diferente. Observá atentamente tu boca, y mentalizate en hacer el sonido de let mientras repetís las palabras de la lista de arriba. Yo creo que si las leés todas las palabras, una vez por día, a los siete días va a ser de lo más normal usar la clear /l/ siempre. O, al menos, cada vez que uses la dark /ɫ/, te vas a dar cuenta de lo horriblemente ajena al español que suena.

You might have noticed I could finaly write some phonetic symbols. If you want to add phonetic symbols to your webpage, you may find this link useful: IPA transcription in Unicode. Thanks, University College London! I´m reading the About Us page, and just found out that A. C. Gimson himself was Head of the Linguistics Department in 1971, WOW! Thanks for the great phonetics books Gimson!