Hola clase, buenas tardes. Hoy vamos a hablar sobre las vocales. Las vocales en español.
Okay, before we begin with las vocales, let's talk about our vowels in English for a moment. This lecture that I am covering with you has a handout that you can follow along. So if you haven't done so already, you need to download or print the chapter one packet.
So if you haven't done so, go to Canvas, to our module section, Capitulo Uno, Chapter One, and download that PDF packet. Okay, because we're going to follow through that. And I provided a copy for you so you guys don't have to worry about writing everything.
everything down you can just follow along. Okay? All right, so let's take a look at... Well, before we take a look at that handout, so we're going to learn about the alphabet and Español in these next two videos. Today the vowels and then a little later the next video will be the alphabet in general.
and we're going to learn how to spell and just do a little bit on we'll cover a little bit on accent marks not too much this time we'll we'll build okay so we don't overwhelm you with too much information but just enough to get us uh uh through little by little okay so uh let me do the share screen with you guys and um this is uh page one in your uh packet okay your first page so las vocales so before we do this in espanol let's take a look at our vowels in English we have we have the vowels a I don't know if you guys can see the board a e I owe you right so now even though the vowels are a e I etc they're they're not always pronounced that way right So let's just start with the vowel A in English. Whenever we have a word that has the A, it doesn't mean that it's pronounced A, right? So there are many, many different ways to pronounce that letter A in English. So I put some here for you in this first section, right?
So the A in sand is that A, sand, A, and sound, right? And then we have that. Ah, ah, ah, art, dart. And this is the at, bat, right? The ah sound.
So three different ways already. Here we have the A in fate. So that would sound like what the letter is.
And then fail. So a different hair is a different A sound. All of these are slightly different. So fa, that ah. Sound, right?
Then we have the word earth. Where's the A there? Silent, right?
Earth. And then how do you pronounce this next word next to it? It's hearth.
Why? Because English does that, right? There's just all these different ways to pronounce these vowels. They're actually...
Just for the letter A, there are 21 different ways to pronounce that letter. Just that one vowel, right? And so lots of different ways to pronounce the E and the I and O and U. So when we, as English speakers, learn how to read, that's a pretty marvelous thing, actually. It's actually very...
difficult, complex thing to do. We have to just memorize so many different combinations of words and the sounds that when this combination or this word, it's like sounds like this. And then another word, it sounds like that.
It's pretty complex, right? It used to not be that complex in English. It used to, the vowels were actually pronounced like they are in Spanish.
And then we had something that if you guys like linguistics and you like to look things up on YouTube, you can look up the great vowel shift that happened in English and that changed everything. And that's why spelling is so hard for us in English because there's, that's one. you know, all these different ways of pronouncing things came into effect. So the second part here shows that even though, like, we think that the the pronunciation of a vowel is a certain way in a word, it can not necessarily be that way, right? There can be two different pronunciations.
So for example, we've got wind, like the wind in the trees, and then we have wind, like to wind a clock. Now we have to read a book, but the book has been read. A tear in your eye, but a tear in your pants. And to be close to your parents versus to close the door.
You're close to the door, but close the door. So we have to take that into account as well. Okay, so to learn how to read and how to spell in English is actually pretty darn complicated.
And we're going to now look at Spanish. And you're going to see that that is actually one of the easiest things about Spanish is how to pronounce things and how to spell things because it's very consistent. It doesn't have all these different, you know, ways of...
pronouncing words or vowels or letters that that English does. It's a lot simpler. Okay, so we're going to take a look at our vowels and the nice thing about our vowels is they have one sound and the sound is the sound that they're called, right? So here we have the letter A and A is pronounced A.
That's it. That's all you need to know. right as opposed to like 21 different ways for this vowel in English and Spanish is a a e o u okay otra vez repita a e i o u okay um so you are going to really like that, right? That that's how they're pronounced. Now the nice thing about this is that the A, like sometimes the E in English is silent, in Spanish it's never silent, it's always pronounced.
This can be a little bit confusing because in Spanish we say this is E, and in English this is E. So you're going to have to maybe focus on that a little bit more. study when you use that.
Okay, and then we're going to learn pretty soon, probably in the next video, that this is and is always pronounced except after a U. And then if we do want to pronounce it after, sorry, except after a Q. That's what I meant. After Q it's not pronounced unless we put a special little mark over it.
Okay, so we're going to learn that. coming up probably in the next video. Okay, so in order for you to remember what these vowels sound like, I wrote some words here for you in this packet, right? So we have the ah, just for you to remember, you don't want to have to come back to the whole video. I put the word father down, right?
So that ah, father, ah, isolate it, ah, ah, ah, that's how we pronounce the letter a in espanol so every word in espanol every word that has an a it's going to be pronounced that way right same sound as in sofa that awesome okay now the e is the sound that we make in english that's in the word bed right that vowel sound inside bed bed that's the e the e in espanol uh is is that vowel sound inside the word need which we spell with the double e right in espanol e need e o o is almost uh equivalent to that o sound in our word no right almost not quite we we don't quite have that o because it's a little shorter right we say no but close enough right oh And the is similar to the vowel in . So practice those. That's going to help you immensely in pronouncing your words in Spanish. Okay.
Almost every word, I mean, every word is going to have a vowel. So that's the key for right now to learning how to pronounce correctly is to pronounce your vowels correctly. Okay. So now what we're going to do is we're going to go on to some basic words that I wrote here that are similar.
These words look almost identical, but they have a vowel difference. So see if you can catch the sound difference, right, between that one different vowel sound. And I want you to repeat after me. Okay? Let's go across.
It's going to be done. Mesas. Meses.
Do you hear the difference? Mesas. Meses. Señoras. Señores, calor, color.
Emite, imite. Let's try that one again. Emite, imite. Pelar, polar. LE-GAR, LU-GAR.
Alright, so if you want you can go back and rewind this little piece and just practice them again, right? Make sure that you pronounce the vowels in the correct way in these short little words. Alright, so now that's the first part of our vowel work, but The second thing that's important to take into account is that when I told you that the O is similar to the O in no, our word no, or the OO is similar to the OO in to, it's an approximation. It's an approximation. It's not exact.
that sound because in Spanish our vowels are very short. They're short, they're condensed, okay? And in English it's the opposite. We like to elongate our vowels so they're much much longer. They're drawn out, okay?
That's a huge difference. And that ability to be able to pronounce your vowels in a very choppy kind of way, just kind of cut it off and make it short, is going to take you so far in being able to have a nice accent when you speak Spanish. Okay, so we're gonna work a little bit on your pronunciation right now. You want to, your goal is to have a nice, a nice accent. Now, When you learn a language, a foreign language, you are probably going to end up with an accent, right?
So foreigners who come to our country and learn English, they oftentimes have an accent, right? And accents can be intriguing, they can be exotic, they can be lovely. I love hearing different accents.
trying to guess where people are from and just exotic ways that they, you know, pronounce something, um, pass me the cheese, you know, or something like that. It's, it's fun. Right.
Um, and, uh, some people even think it's a little bit sexy. So, so if you have a little bit of an accent, um, that that's not a bad thing, but, but you don't want your accent to be so thick and so strong. that it's a turnoff, right?
So when people just, I'll give you an example. My dad, my parents are from Argentina, right? So they came to this country and my dad never learned English very well.
His English was terrible. I mean, he thought he, fue muy machista, right? He thought he was wonderful and everything was perfect, but it was terrible.
And people had a hard time understanding him. It was very thick. He couldn't pronounce things very well. And that's not pleasant.
Okay, so you want to have a little bit of an accent, but you want to work on making it sound very nice and soothing. Okay, so we're going to pronounce our vowels short and choppy. I don't want you to do this.
Okay, so this would be a bad American accent. Hola. Hola, clase.
Como estan? Yo me llamo Profesora McGarry. Yo enseño en Citrus.
Ah, it's terrible. It's even me saying it feels like my ears are bleeding. What am I doing? What I'm doing is I am, all I have to do to make that, that. accent, just that very thick American accent, is to make my vowels very long.
And you just don't want to do that. Okay, you want to make them short and choppy. And then and that'll just right away, your accent will will be much, much, much, much nicer.
Okay, and it won't be that that nails on a chalkboard type of sound. Okay, so we're going to practice that. Let me share the screen again.
Okay. And what I put here is a little exercise with some words here at the bottom of this page, on page one in your chapter one packet. Palabras en ingles y palabras en espanol.
And so what you want to do is you want to pronounce. these, you want to hear the difference between Inglés and Español, right? So I'm going to pronounce the English, Inglés, and then the Español, and you're going to repeat, okay? So you're going to be really good at the English, right? Because that's where these are English words that we have here on the first column and on the second column, you're going to see they're going to be the Spanish equivalent, only shorter and choppier.
And that's what you really want to focus on right we we know we know how to do the english pretty well we want to focus on the spanish make sure that that uh we can pronounce them shortened in a shortened way okay all right Con. Ti, ti. Lo, lo.
Dos, dos. Si, si. Me, me. No, no.
Su, su, lei, le, tu, tu, sei, se, dei, de, que, que. All right, so there you have it. So what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to practice pronouncing just the Spanish version, okay?
Just to make sure that you get the short, choppy sound, right? So let's try that together. Mi, fe, es, con. ti, lo, dos, si, me, no, su, le, tu, se, de, que.
Muy bien. Okay, so now what we're going to do is we're going to learn a little bit more about accent vowels and how they're pronounced when they're together and then putting accent marks over our vowels. Okay, all right, so here we have las vocales and I need you to write down this next part. Okay, you need to know what a strong vowel is and what a weak vowel is.
Okay, so the I and the U are weak. And that means that the A, the E and the O are strong. All right.
Okay, now look at me for a moment. Just watch. It's like I and you are weak.
I and you are weak. So make them into people and maybe that'll help you remember, right? That's, these are the important ones to remember that I and you are the weak vowels.
Okay. Now, why, why is this important? Well, because since they're, they're considered weak because of where they're pronounced in your vocal cords, right?
So we have our, our, our mouth and our vocal cords. And, and so the vowels are pronounced a different, different, uh, places in your throat. And when you have a weak vowel next to another vowel, what it does is it it melts, it connects with the other one, right? And it forms a union and they're pronounced together, right? So they form one sound, they would be part of the same syllable, right?
That in linguistic terms is called a diphthong. We have them in English too, right? So like if we say the word say, this is the a and this is the y, say, that's a diphthong, okay?
En español se llama un diphthong. So you don't need to know what it's called. I don't care about the grammatical or the linguistic term.
But what I do want you to know is that they're pronounced together. All right. So let me put some words up here for you on the board.
Okay, so here we have some words in Espanol and we're going to separate them into syllables. We're going to pronounce them. The first one is ciudad.
Ciudad. Two syllables, okay? And it's split right here. Now, this is not pronounced ciudad. There's no split.
There's no split. between the I and the U because the I and the U are weak, right? So that forms a joint venture, right?
They go up onto each other and they're pronounced as one syllable, so they're not separate, okay? Here, the same thing. Cielo, cielo.
It's not C-E-L-O, it's cielo. Because we have a week and doesn't matter if it's a week with another week or week with a strong vowel doesn't matter the order As long as there's one week there. They're going to combine Okay Now what I want you to do is here we have two different words and I want you to take a moment to Separate them into syllables I'm on fossa and if they all pause the video and then come back and we will Split it together. Okay.
All right So we have here, es-tu-dian-te. So here, these are all one syllable, right, because they have a vowel. And here, this whole long thing is a syllable. We have a weak and a strong together. So we can't separate it.
We pronounce it es-tu-dian-te. Okay, and then here we have bueno. All right, okay.
Now, if we have two strong vowels together, then if there's no weak there, no weak vowel, then it's impossible to pronounce them together, and then they are pronounced separately, okay? They become their own separate syllables. All right, let's read some of those words.
So here we have some words that have... Some some of them have a week. There's some with a strong So I want you to pause the video and I want you to write these words down and separate them Okay, so put a little slash separating the the Syllables and then we'll come back and we'll take a look at it. Okay. Bueno, I bet I keep the animals move say oh Musa right there's a split here because these are both strong vowels right there's no way for us to pronounce them together here we have idea idea in English idea in espanol remember our vowels y de ah and the same pronunciation of the vowels we just learned are going to be applied to these words as well right chaos repeat in chaos y a e ro.
Now here we have a weak and a strong puerto. Aeropuerto. Aeropuerto. Repita aeropuerto.
Okay so that is that has an impact in terms of how we pronounce our words. How we split. them.
Now let me show you something else. So here we have the word for God in Espanol. ¿Y cómo se pronuncia?
What do you think? How do you pronounce it? Dios, right? Dios.
Is it one syllable or two syllables? It is one syllable, right? Because we have a weak and a strong together. It doesn't matter. Weak or strong, strong or weak.
The order doesn't matter. Remember, just as long as there's a weak there, it's pronounced together. So this is only one syllable. It would be Dios. Dios.
Okay? Now. This is a greeting.
We've learned our greetings. This is buenos. Buenos. So here we have a weak and a strong.
And we said it's buenos días. Días. This is Dios and días.
And here we have a weak and a strong. And why here is this two syllables? that says one syllable. Do you have any idea? You go back and you take a look at this in your book, you will see that Diaz has an accent line over the I.
So how I want to explain this to you is that when you put an accent Over a weak vowel you strengthen it. You're giving it strength, you're making it strong. And then that breaks that union between the weak and the strong vowels and you then split it, you split that syllable and they're pronounced separately.
Okay, so if you put an accent mark on a weak vowel you make it strong. Let's take another example. I'm going to put here the same name, but the male version and the female version.
Okay? So the male version, ¿cómo se pronuncia? How do you pronounce it?
Mario, right? ¿Cuántas sílabas hay? Mario, what do you think?
¿Dos sílabas, tres sílabas? Mario dos sílabas. Mario. A weak and a strong together.
It's pronounced as one syllable. Okay. Now, how do we pronounce the female version? Maria. Right?
So, clap it out. Maria. We have three syllables. How can that be? We have a weak and we have a strong.
Here we have a weak and strong. What do you think? That's right.
Maria has an accent mark, which when we write it in English, we don't put it in. But when we write it in Espanol, we put it in so that people can know, oh, it's pronounced differently than Maria, right? Maria. All right. So that is the case for all words.
that will have that accent mark on the weak vowel. So you have dios, you have dies, one syllable, right? But then the minute you start separating it, if you wanna separate it, you have to put that accent on the weak.
And you don't have to decide that, the language has already decided it, right? So when you study your words, you're going to see that there's gonna be an accent mark. you're going to understand why it's there. All right?
So, by the way, your accent marks only appear on vowels. Okay? Never on a consonant. So, it's only a, e, o, and u. Right?
So, it's always the accent mark always appears in this direction. Right? So, like this.
I know that in French you can have an accent like this. this and an accent like that. In Spanish you don't.
So if you've taken French this is different. They only go in that direction. So if you are a person that writes your words like this, like your I, your normal I in English and you do this, that's not going to work in Spanish or even like this because it's going to look like an accent mark.
So if you're writing it in Spanish, you really shouldn't do that. You should just put a dot because otherwise it's going to seem like you're putting an accent mark in. Okay.
And you'll probably, if you're in a class, you're probably going to end up getting marked wrong for that. Then we have, we're going to learn the alphabet in the next video. And we have this letter. That's not an accent mark over the end.
That's squiggly mark. that's just indicating the ñ, the ñ sound. That's not an accent mark. Okay, so when you when you are learning the vocabulary words, take a look at where the accent mark is.
For right now, just kind of memorize where it is because you're going to have to write it in. Next chapter, in chapter two, I'm going to show you Right, so chapter, I think chapter, different parts in chapter two. I will give you the rules, the main rules for using the accent marks.
In Spanish two, I go over it in much more depth. In Spanish one, we've got too much material to go over. I don't want to overwhelm you and burden you with too much information, but I'm just going to give you as much as you need to be able to use them correctly.
Not right now. I think this is enough for now for this. Okay, and then in Spanish, not in Spanish, in chapter two, I will show you a little bit more.
Okay, now the accent marks don't always just go on the weak vowels. They can go on the strong vowels as well. So I want to give you an example of that so that you don't think that it's just on the weak.
All right. So, um... Let's say I have the word education in Spanish, right? So we have educación.
So let's split it up. Educación. And here, sion is pronounced as one syllable. because it's got the weak and the strong vowel there. Now, this word happens to have the stress at the end.
The stress is where you hear more of an umph, more of an inflection. So, educación. You hear sion, receives more power when we say it.
So, every word that you say is going to have a syllable that receives a little bit more stress, a little bit more. power when you say it, right? So aeropuerto, it's the pué that's going to have it, right?
Limón, mon has it, right? Teléfono, le in that case has it. So in this case, because I'll tell you the rules later, but just take my word for it for right now, because the stress is here at the end.
That's not where words that have an N, that end in an N. normally have a stress. If a word ends in an N, the stress is usually here.
So about 99% of your words that end in N, 98, 99% are going to have the stress there. And so in Spanish, they want to be helpful and they want to tell you, they put an accent mark in to tell you, this is not pronounced where 99% of the words are pronounced, where it actually should be. This is an exception.
So, um, we need to write an accent mark to show us that, right? So we, that's what the accent mark does, it shows us that there's more stress in that syllable, on that vowel. So if I put the accent mark, the accent mark over the I, what's going to happen in terms of our pronunciation of this word?
Well, what's going to happen is if we put the accent mark on the weak vowel, it's going to break that separation between the weak and the strong, so that would break the diphthong, right? So we would pronounce this, which sounds incorrect, right? That's not how we pronounce it.
We don't pronounce it . We say . So what we do in Espanol, is we, instead of putting the accent mark on the weak vowel, on the I, we put it on the strong vowel. And so what that does is it tells us, oh, this whole syllable receives the stress.
It's going to receive more of an umph when we say it, but we're not going to break that connection, that diphthong between the two vowels. Okay. So we will pronounce it educación.
And actually every word in Spanish that ends in sion, po-sion is going to have that accent mark on the o, right? To show us that this justice is in the end, but we're going to keep that connection. All right. So that is the first part of the alphabet of pronunciation, a little bit on accent marks, a little bit on...
your vowels and how to pronounce them when they're, you know, by themselves or when they're in combination with them. Okay, I hope that that was helpful. And I will see you soon in the next video and we're going to discuss the rest of the alphabet, the consonants, las consonantes. Okay?
Bueno, nos vemos en un ratito. Chao!