The waiter, who was probably called Juan, frowned and leaned closer. I had already learned to dread this Spanish frown. It is not one of annoyance, it simply means I'm concentrating really, really hard to try and catch some faint inkling of what you're on about.Try again: vino rosado? with hopeful doggy expression. No joy. Juan smiles apologetically and tries a wild guess: 'You want two beers?'
I was rescued by Victoria, the landlady of the apartment where we were staying at that time, who fortuitously passed by at the height of the impasse. She said exactly what I'd said but this time Juan nodded gratefully and toddled off to get the wine.
A bit miffed, I demanded to know in what particular respect my pronunciation had been deficient. Well, difficult to know where to start with that one, but it seemed the crucial failure was the 'r' of rosado.
I hadn't yet learned to trill. In Spanish, when an 'r' comes at the beginning of a word it requires work. You must start it up, roll it along on your tongue then release it like a motorised butterfly: rrrrrosado!
Likewise, a double 'rr' in the middle of a word: Un tarrrrro de mermelada! will get you a jar of marmalade. Maybe.Learning Spanish is no more difficult than learning any other language. It's just that the sounds you're supposed to make demand courage and, especially, a tongue that's unafraid of adventure. It has to be prepared for new and strange experiences.
Our landlady Victoria was very good at nurturing tongue-tied foreigners. With great patience and tact she taught our two tongues the basic tricks. That word rosado for example: it wasn't just the 'r' I was getting wrong. 'You're saying the 'd' so it sounds like 't' to me,' Victoria explained. Really? But surely a 'd' is just a 'd', whether Spanish or English...?
No it isn't. Victoria had uncovered for us a crucially important, breakthrough piece of information. 'You must put your tongue,' she explained, 'behind your teeth like this.' Tip of tongue against back of upper incisors. Your 'd' then comes out like 'th' in bother. Thus, the capital city of Spain is not what you thought at all, it's Mathrith.
The dictionaries make light of this. Some even claim that 'd' at the beginning of a word is the same as in English, which is outrageously false. Just listen to a Spaniard!
Even better, watch their mouth closely as they speak. I offer here the simplest and most useful piece of pronunciation advice you may ever read: When speaking Spanish, the tip of your tongue should play a dominant role, clearly visible from the outside, waggling around like a trapped ferret.Victoria, bless her little waggling tongue, also gave us this useful rhyme for practising the motorised 'r' (erre, pronounced ay-ray, means the letter 'r'):
Erre con erre cigarro
Erre con erre barril
Rápido corren los carros
Los carros del ferrocarril
It's almost meaningless but not quite: R with R cigar / R with R barrel / Rapidly run the cars / the cars of the railway.
I'm sure this little poem has an interesting history.
I'm sure you know that Spanish B and G have the same problem as Spanish D. Saying that they are not even pronounced as their English counterparts at the beginning of words is rather outrageous. You have misunderstood the basic principle of pronunciation and are misguided by writing. Pronunciation is not based on single words. It's based on whole utterances. Whether you pronounce those consonants like in English depends on the pauses and the sounds around them. In isolation, B, D, G are indeed like in English, also after /n/ or /m/ and for D also after /l/.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comments. Have you ever observed, closely, a Spanish native speaker’s mouth as they say (for example) ‘buenos días’? At the start of ‘días’ the tip of the tongue is clearly visible between the teeth. Between, not behind. There’s no way you can produce an English D like that.
ReplyDeleteIf I pronounce my surname, Drake, in the English way a Spanish native will write it down as Trake (or worse).
There are similarly subtle differences for B, G and even P in the real-life language, despite what the textbooks and dictionaries say.
Pronouncing ‘Buenos días’ with an English voiced TH is not a violation to the rules described in more advanced scientific works. Despite of the D being the first letter of a word, it’s in the middle of the expression ‘Buenos días’, which should be regarded as one entity. Children learn their native language through listening and imitating. Writing can influence the way you speak, but it’s nonetheless acquired later in life. Most Spaniards are not aware of the differences because that’s their concept of D.
ReplyDeleteAs for your surname, you may have noticed that the Spanish T sounds quite close to the English D, while the English T has adds a puff unknown to Spanish. Since Spanish D is most of the times like the English voiced TH, it’s probably more natural for Spaniards to associate the English D with the Spanish T.
Yes, exactly. My little story was making the point, in a lighthearted way, that you can’t learn to speak a language correctly from textbooks alone - you need to listen and imitate. Which is, as you say, how children learn their native language. It does work for foreigners too, although it takes determination and a little more time, unfortunately!
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