Talk:Spanish phrasebook

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So, a couple of things about this page: South america uses thousand million and this way isn't ambiguous and wil be inderstood by anyone. Also, the dipthong eu is not pronounced OO it is a sound which doesn't exist in English, just put E and U together. 201.216.3.77 18:25, 15 May 2007 (EDT)

  1. Excellent job so far! I can't believe we went from no phrasebook to an almost complete phrasebook in like 24 hours. I think we need to find out what the Chinese and Turkish /.'s are, and submit links to our requested phrasebooks pages!
  2. There's not much information about the difference between Castilian and Latin American Spanish. Can anyone take that on? I think it's mainly a few vocabulary words and some pronunciation of different letters, but I'm not sure, so I don't want to touch the issue.
  3. Pseudo-pronunciations (SOO-doh PROH-nuhn-see-AY-shuns). We need to throw these in; I think they might actually be easier for English speakers with some experience with Spanish to do, than the other way around. I took a shot at "Basics", and I'll try to do some more later today.

Anyways, thanks to everyone who's thrown in effort on this. -- Evan 06:44, 11 Nov 2003 (PST)

Hi Evan! I left the pronunciation for some English speaker, because I'm not sure of the exact way that Pseudo-pronunciations work. And the main difference between Latin American Spanish and Castilian is the pronunciation, so I will help as soon as somebody tries to do the pseudo-pronunciation in Castilian. The vocabulary difference is not important at this level, almost everything will be understood by any Spanish speaker.

Wow! The phrasebook is now almost finished! From now, it's just a matter of adding some interesting words or sentences, but the template is translated. Let's start with the Catalan now.

[edit] Pronunciation

Pablo.cl wrote in his edit comment:

Suppressed "(...)" 204 times. It's true that many pronunciations are missing, but a) there were too many dots all over the page, and b) it's not so difficult to learn the rules for pronunciation in Sp[anish]''

If there are too many dots on the page, it means we need some pronunciation guides, not that we need to delete the dots. I don't particularly see a good reason to leave the ellipses in, but this phrasebook isn't OK without the pronunciations -- whether or not Spanish is easy to pronounce. --Evan 20:35, 17 Apr 2004 (EDT)

I'm a spaniard, the pronunciation is for latin america; in Spain people not pronuncie the letter 'c' as an 's'; it's pronuncied like in 'come on' or 'court'.

Not when it comes before an e or i. Si miras otra vez, verás que explica la diferencia entre castellano y mexicano. Last I heard, castilian words such as ciudad still started with a soft consonant similar to a "th"... cuál es lo que indica el phrasebook para la pronunciación castellana. - Todd VerBeek 21:10, 22 May 2006 (EDT)

[edit] E is not pronounced like ay in hay 

e 
   like 'ay' in "hay".

I'm sorry, but only gringos pronounce it this way. The correct pronunication is like the short e in English. For example:

señor - SEH-nyour (not SAY-nyor nor SEE-nyor) José - ho-SEH (not ho-ZAY) Pedro - PEH-dro (not PAY-dro) mesa - ME-sah (not MAY-sa) qué - KEH (not KAY) café - cah-FEH (not cah-FAY) quesadilla - keh-sah-DEE-yah (not kay-sah-DEE-yah)

You're right that "ay" as in "hay" is off, but so is an English short e. I don't claim to be a linguistic expert, but I have a pretty good ear for pronunciation, and a Mexican or Castilian e sounds very different from the midwestern-American e I hear all around me (which is only a little different from a short a). A southern-US short e is closer to a Spanish e, but still not quite right. The correct sound is somewhere between "eh" and "ay", but I'd say it's closer to "ay" (especially when accented, and definitely at the end of a word). The problem is that if you tell John Middle America to pronounce café as "cah-FEH", I can assure you that you'll probably get some throaty mess that Juan Latino de Mexico won't even recognize; at least John's drawled open-mouthed "cah-FAY" will be understood as a childishly-enunciated request for a cup of java. - Todd VerBeek 20:48, 22 May 2006 (EDT)

[edit] Usage rules for the different translations of "brown"

-Have added usage rules for "brown" color, "brown" may be translated as "marrón" in case of dscribing the color of an object or an animal; "café2 is a euphemistic way to speak of dark skin color, and also is used to describe the color of dark brown clothing and fabric; whereas "castaño" is used exclusivley to describe the color of eyes and hair. I think this is helpful, most spanish-speakers would be puzzled to be asked to look for a missing "castaño" suitcase... (Edited by Bill Bones, whose Spanish keyboard can't type four tildes, on 18:57 UTM June 15 2006. Now let's talk of "wikipedia bias", LOL!)

[edit] Me llamo

It's been a while since I set foot in a Spanish class, but while Mi nombre es X is a literal translation of "My name is X", isn't Me llamo X a much more common way of introducing yourself? Jpatokal 22:49, 10 July 2006 (EDT)

Ciertamente. - Todd VerBeek 23:16, 10 July 2006 (EDT)
'Me llamo X' is more common in Spain--I don't know about Latin America--and is directly translated 'I call myself X.'
They teach us Mexican Spanish in the U.S., so I can confirm that Me llamo... is more common there as well. - Todd VerBeek 19:21, 15 May 2007 (EDT)
Me llamo... is a very common way to tell your name in Spain and few countries in Latin America. But saying Mi nombre es... is more commonly heard in Latin America. - Sean Young (Young's Language Consulting)

[edit] Romance languages

This is a phrasebook, not an encyclopedia, so we are never going to have an article on "Romance languages". And Spanish is much closer to — in fact, it's almost mutually intelligible — to Italian than French. Jpatokal 12:58, 6 August 2006 (EDT)

[edit] How do you say 1,000,000,000?

This is not a correction but rather more of an observation. I've been doing some research about what these higher numbers are called, and you might be surprised that even in English we do not agree on their label.

For example, in the phrasebook we find that 1,000,000,000 can be pronounced "un billón (oon bee-YOHN)." However, "billion" is what we call it in the United States; while in Britain, it is "a thousand million," which is how it is pronounced in Spanish: mil millón (meel mee-YOHN).

Also, the phrasebook lists 1,000,000,000,000 as "un trillón (oon tree-YOHN)." Again, the discrepancy with this number is that in the United States, it is "trillion," and in Britain, "billion." So in Spanish, this number is actually pronounced un billón (oon bee-YOHN).

Of course, Mexico and South America might follow suit with what the United States calls them. So this is just a bit of interesting trivia that I wanted to contribute.

[edit] Diphthongs, O

Dipthongs are always one syllable. In the diphthong pronunciation guide, 'PEE-yay' was listed as the pronunciation of 'pie'. By nature, a diphthong is one syllable so I've changed the pronunciation to 'pyeh'. In other discussion here, someone discussed the pronunciation of 'e' as being somewhere between 'ay' like in hay and 'e' like in bed. The same is true with the 'e' in 'pie' so we could debate whether it should be read as 'pyay' or 'pyeh', but clearly you can't pronounce a diphthong like '-ie' as '-EE-ay. The pronunciation 'PEE-ay' would be written 'píe' which is not a word.

I've also changed the example for the 'o' sound. Pronunciation of 'o' was listed as "like 'o' in 'come.'" Very few (if any) English speaking people pronounce 'come' with a long 'o' sound. I've changed it to "like 'o' in 'over'" because most English speakers pronounce over with the correct corresponding 'o' sound for Spanish. The exception (I know of) would be Australians (and perhaps New Zealanders) who pronounce 'over' as 'OI-vah.' 'oi' may be a little to strong a phonetic spelling for Australia, but you catch my meaning. 'o' as in 'over' is a much more accurate description for English speakers than 'come'.

[edit] Pronunciación quitada?

I have no idea what this edit was trying to accomplish, but removing all pseudophonetics was definitely not the right way to do it. Jpatokal 11:59, 2 June 2007 (EDT)

i dont know too much english but i think i have explained it well in the article, the pronunciation i added is the normal phonetic system used in the spanish educatin because it merges the identical sounds. It more easy to read too. And dont have any sense to represent every spanish vowel with two english vowels because then the vowel combinations wouldn't have sense
But this phrasebook isn't for Spanish students; it's for people who speak English, and want to learn how to pronounce Castellano based on how their native language is spoken. Using "nonsense" vowel combinations is how English pronunciations work. :) - Todd VerBeek 12:50, 2 June 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Learn Spanish and Spanish Schools Abroad Links

These links link directly to private businesses. I think that there should at least be a directory page so that various people are able to put descriptions of their programs.

Thank you

[edit] External links

I have removed the following external links in compliance with policy:

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