today's infonugget

[egypturnash]

In Spanish, 'll' is pronnounced 'y'.

I just learned this rule, though I'd known examples of it for a while; they were, however, filed under 'foreign words with pronnunciations that follow foreign rules I don't know'.

A day without learning is like a day without breathing.

Comments

[supersocks.livejournal.com]

And the letter is pronounced Aigh-yay. But in Spain, ll is pronounced with a zhuh sound, I believe, and z is more like th. I think. It's been a long time since I watched that Spainish spanish video about the chick with the big braces who pronounced things all funny.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

The letter Y is pronnounced 'Aigh-yay' by Spanish speakers? Hm. In what context - encountered in a word, or when saying the alphabet?

While there's a segment of Cuban immigrants in New Orleans, Spanish is not a major cultural force the way it is in Texas or SoCal, so I don't know too much about the way the language works.

Re:

[supersocks.livejournal.com]

Sorry, when saying it in the alphabet. You're correct that it's Y in context, e.g. "tor-tee-ya" is tortilla.

[revar.livejournal.com]

Spanish is actually very consistent in how you pronounce a word from its spelling. Far, far more consistent than English. If you can spell the word, you can pretty much pronounce it. For instance, the vowels don't have a dozen sounds associated with them; they more or less just have one each.

a = ah (like paw)
e = eh (like bed)
é = ay (like bay)
i = ee (like me)
o = oh (like bow)
u = oo (like through)

ll is like y (llama ~= ya ma)
ñ is like ny (señor ~= seh nyor)
x is like h (mexico ~= meh hee koh)
j is like h (rojo ~= ro hoh)
qu is like k (qué ~= kay)
h is quiet or sometimes silent (hora ~= orah)
c followed by i or e is like s (hacienda ~= hah see end uh)
c followed by anything else is like k. (calienté ~= kal ee ehn tay)
r is an r with a bit of a trill/roll. (pero ~= pair-roh)
rr is like r, but with more of a trill/roll. (perro ~= pair-r-roh)

Everything else is more or less as you would expect.

This has been your obnoxious Spanish lesson for the day. :)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Whoo. Thanks for the unexpected infodump. Now I'll look a little less like a fool when I try to pronounce the Spanish words that litter the landscape out here - assuming I can actually remember all of this.

[riose.livejournal.com]

So whatever happened to Esperanto, anyway?
Weren't we all supposed to be speaking it by now?

It appears that H4xx0r is more widely spoken.