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Correct pronunciation?


camillenparadise

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People who live in San Francisco call it" the city." I have heard Guadalajara called el rancho grande

but not by people living there either...

What is interesting to me more than the diphthonging of vowels from English speakers is that many people have a tough time with o and a and very often say one for the other. Like pueblo and Puebla, Nuevo Posada instead of Nueva Posada and so on. They seem to do that even if they see the name in writing. Their o or a sound is very muddled when it is very clear in Spanish.

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I think that those who say Nuevo instead of Nueva or pueblo instead of Puebla is because both exist in Spanish and the speaker is not real clear on things like adjective agreement or have not paid close attention to things like pueblo meaning a town and Puebla being the name of a city. I think the concept of adjective agreement is not so hard to understand but can be difficult to remember to do. Sometimes I don't remember if certain nouns are masculine or feminine and therefore end in -o or -a. For example: tobillo or tobilla? regadero o regadera? There just seem to be certain nouns that are difficult for me so I have to make little mind hooks to remember. And I am not a novice or intermediate level Spanish speaker. The biggest problem is when there are two similar words, one ending in -o and the other in -a, but they have different meanings. Or where verb endings change person and sometimes tense or mood.

But I want to say that I really respect those who are making the attempt to learn Spanish because it is not easy at the age of most of us. One of the real difficulties in learning Spanish here, especially at Lakeside, is the conversation part.

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There apparently is a historical (and rather snobby) reason why San Francisco was preferred to Frisco but apparently among today's "hipsters" it is just fine to call it Frisco. There are even t-shirts available that say Frisco. The new term some are objecting to is San Fran. And to calling California Cali. When I hear Cali I think of Cali, Colombia.

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T SHirt companies always had many Tshirts with Frisco on them , nothing new but they also sell these to

out of towners..

Since people from San Fancisco were not ever calling it Frisco it makes sense that the

younger generation would, young generations are always rebelling or sticking it to the old folks..

We let 15 years ago so I would not know what it is being called by the in people now.

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People who live in San Francisco call it" the city."

Yes, they do. People from New York City do the same thing, particularly Manhattanites, who refer to anyone from outside their own burough as "the bridge and tunnel crowd". It's all the same bullshit.

Back to Spanish which is far more interesting. Yeah, the adjective agreement thing is difficult. Since English doesn't have the masculine/feminine distinction, it's just ONE MORE THING to try to remember as we struggle to string words together.

As someone who's stuck somewhere in the vast pond of intermedio, I sympathize entirely because it always slows me down when I'm trying to speak. Un problema, el tema.

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Well if you think masculin and feminin is difficult do not study German where you have to know masculin, feminin and neutral...and then the articles change depending on the case.

I would say that not having masculin or feminin would be a plus at least you learn it the way they are and it is it. If your native language has 2 or 3 genders, your native language will trip you. I have a tough time with la sangre or la leche which are feminine in Spanish and masculin in French. The only thing to do is to memorize the article with the noun.

When I said some English speakers seemed to have a problem with o and a, I was not referring to the gender but to the sound. Their o and a are vey close to each other almost interchangeable and I think it

is why people will say pueblo for Puebla or Nuevo Posada instead of Nueva Posada. There is no need to think about the gender in these cases, Puebla is a city and Nueva Posada is a hotel, you just learn

those names from reading them and hearing them no need to think about the gender.

The o and a when pronounced by native speakers are totally different letters and there is no confusing one for the other.

Tonalá is another name that regularly gets butchered at Lake side.Many people call it Tonola.

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Ah-HEE-hic. No no no nonononono.

My philosophy is that you have to learn the correct pronunciation for the name of a town, city, or state before you can live there. Who wants to give Quintana Roo a try?

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Oldshoe, I can't tell from your phonetic spelling how you are pronouncing Ixtlahuacán. Note that the name has a written accent on the last syllable. That's where the stress falls: ik-stlah-wah-CAHN.

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This idea that some people have great difficulty, or actually, truly can't hear or distinguish certain sounds that don't exist in their native language is interesting. Now that I think about it, I remember being pulled out of my Spanish class to try to help the teacher next door with some students. These were early-stage learners, and the teacher was/is a Guadalajara native. I can't remember exactly what the issue was but it had to do with vowel sounds (or something similar). When the teacher would give the examples, they'd look at me and say, "Did you hear that?" And I was like, "Hear what?" They were either hearing something--or not hearing something--and I just didn't get it at all. The teacher sounded perfectly fine to me. I have a pretty good ear, and still I was absolutely no help as an intermediary, and just left the room scratching my head.

I'm lucky in that I grew up in Southern California, and while I never learned Spanish there - much to my current chagrin - I was surrounded by the language, so it's never sounded particularly foreign to me. I've always known that's been an advantage now that I'm trying to learn Spanish, but maybe it's a bigger advantage than I thought.

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My neighbor (Spanish speaker, doesn't really speak English at all) complains that Tuesday and Thursday in English sound exactly alike. It is a frequent source of confusion with her English speaking clients.

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In my experience it is mainly Canadians (no offense meant to Canadians) who use that "al" like in the name "Alan" when pronouncing the middle syllable of Chapala. And they seem to say "hair" for the next to last syllable of Guadalajara, like gwa-da-la-HAIR-ah. And carretera like care-ah-tear-ah. They don't seem to have the same problems with the other a's.

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More Liana, thanks for a better breakdown of what I was trying to express and spelling Ixtlahuacán properly showing the accent. And to bdlngdon point, it's a Canadian friend who says ah-HEE-hic but I doubt that's exclusive to Canadians (no offense meant to Canadians from me either). And Betsy's post reminded me of the gardener where we used to live when he asked 'how does a Coke die?' after being around some gringos. It took awhile to come up with 'diet Coke'.

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I've sometimes wondered who decides if a word is feminine or masculine. Like computer is computadora. There doesn't seem to be any obvious reason for it to be feminine, and the word hasn't always existed so someone must have decided that it should be feminine. Is there an official office in the government that is the "Department of Word Gender Determination"?

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I suggest you google "Spanish pronunciation of b vs v." There are two sounds and which sound is made does not depend upon which letter ( b or v) the word is spelled with but rather where that b/v appears in a word or breath group. For a further explanation of the two sounds google "bilabial plosive" compared to "bilabial fricative." The bilabial plosive exists in English; the blabial fricative doesn't.. Again, if there were truly a sound difference between the b and v in Spanish there would not be so many misspellings in Spanish between these two letters.

So having finally spent the time to look up this far-too-in-depth reprimand, I see that you are basically upholding what I said in the first place, if Web definitions are to be believed. And I have since learned that what I am talking about here is "V" labio dental and "b" chica. The labio dental is the forced expression of the letter while the chica is the b-baby sound.

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runner I always heard that wether a word is feminin or masculin depends on it origin.By the way in Europe it is el ordinador and I am repremended when I say la computadora...My Spanish brother in law. tel me that la computadora is Spanglish.. who knows.

You just do not have enough time when you speak to think wether nouns are feminin or masculin or neutral in some other langages. You just have to memorize them and then your ear tells you what it should be.

In German the word for girl is das Maedchen , it is neutral, obviously nothing to do with gender.

There are words in French I am not sure of and have to check them so do not expct to ever get it right 100% of the time in a foreign language.

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Re the Guadalajara / Guad / Guanatos topic...

I was talking to a friend of mine about it. He's 30 years old, went to school in Guadalajara but lives here now. He's definitely "hip", but definitely not "hipper than thou". He said that in his experience, only foreigners use Guad, no Mexicans he knows use it. He then mentioned, without my asking, Guanatos, and said it is used a lot casually by younger people, but not all younger people. He said it lisn't used, for example, by fresas.

He then mentioned one that's new to me. Among younger people, Guadalajara is also sometimes casually referred to as gedele - Heh de le. It's an articulation of the airport acronym GDL.

¡Vamos a gedele! :lol:

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The use of "Guad" dates back to the late 1920s (further than I'd have guessed). For instance, the term was used by Emma-Lindsay Squier, an American author, who concluded a brief discussion about the pronunciation of "Guadalajara" with,

<Or, if you really want to, you can shorten it as many of the 'foreigners' there do, and call it "Guad.">

I'd be interested to know if anyone has come across any earlier usage (in print) of "Guad." for Guadalajara?

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Personally I've never heard anyone call it GDL,but the local tv news is called GDL Noticias.

I think your friend is right about fresa types not using the term Guanatos,but they're special..

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