Issues about the Spanish Language

July 28, 2009

Dalí Concocts a ‘Liquid Desire’ of Language and Culture at the National Gallery of Victoria

Filed under: Culture, Education, Foreign Language Learning, Language, Language learning, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning — L. A. Pinel @ 4:30 pm

Last Sunday I went with my advanced Spanish class to see “Liquid Desire” an exhibition of an extensive collection of works of art by Salvador Dalí the celebrated Spanish surrealist artist at the National Gallery of Victoria. A full range of programs of this exhibition can be found at ngv.vic.gov.au/dali.

This exhibition has brought to Melbourne many of Dalí’s work belonging to all the periods of his long and illustrious career. There are many things that I’d like to write about this prolific and complex artist and his work but I rather leave that for another occasion. What I want to concentrate on this post is about the language learning opportunities that exhibitions such as this can present for the Spanish student.

There are many ways to use works of art for language learning and teaching. In fact the National Gallery of Victoria runs special programs for schools. Tres Culturas Spanish was invited to participate in the educational programs organised for this particular exhibition.

Apart from those special programs, there are an immense amount of language activities that can be carried out based on art exhibitions. It is up to the teacher’s own creativity and imagination and the student’s enthusiasm to make the most of this particular learning field.

Students can write little essays in Spanish about the life of Salvador Dalí. Do an internet research in Spanish about any particular area of his personal or artistic life. They can go to the local library and try to find if they have any literature about the artist; or they may like to translate a small article or essay into Spanish. These are only some examples the list may go on and on.

For students with a high level of language proficiency it is possible to organise lessons that focus on oral work. Each student can talk about what he knows about the artistic work of Salvador Dalí or make a list of things about him that they would like to know more about, like the years he spent in exile in the United States; his collaboration with other artists or the very special relationship he maintained with Gala, his wife.

At the actual exhibition the teacher can use the names and titles of the art works as a further learning practice. For example finding out why a name or tittle is said in different ways in English and Spanish. Students can also write a list of terms that they encounter during their viewing at the exhibition and bring them to class for further analyses and discussion.

Finally, illustration of works by Dalí obtained during the visit to the exhibition can be used to create real or fictional stories about the artist, his life and times. The teacher can direct the students to write more complex stories or essays about the topic.

Salvador Dalí Liquid Desire is at the National Gallery of Victoria until October 4.

July 17, 2009

The charming softness of the Spanish sound patterns

Filed under: Education, Foreign Language Learning, Language, Language learning, Learning Process, Phonetics & Phonology, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning — L. A. Pinel @ 3:48 pm

One of the nicest rewards of teaching a language is to be complemented by your students about aspects not directly connected to you as a teacher but to the language that they’re learning from you.

It happens to me quite often. One of such rewarding aspects relates to comments they make about the nature of the Spanish sounds; as it happened during the development of a lesson today, while going over the standard pronunciation of some words, one of my students mentioned to me how interesting and ‘nice to the ear’ are the Spanish sounds when spoken loudly.

Getting to a situation were a student can make comments about the nature of the sounds of the language they’re studying tells a lot about how well they’re making progress in mastering basic aspects of their learning process.

The student that I’m making reference to here has clearly been able to understand how consonant and vowels when combined to form Spanish words change according to certain inherent properties attached to a particular letter whether they are a consonant or a vowel.

Consonant letters in Spanish have a soft sound when they are used between two vowels – in the words abeja, guayaba, envergadura, ataviada, alabado or escalada for example, all the consonants between vowels, are pronounced in a very soft manner.

For the words from above, the sounds of the b of abeja, the v of ataviada and the d of envergadura lend to these words certain phonological properties that change their particular nature. This produces very soft oral structures that create a feeling of auditory softness when they are pronounced in a loud voice.

Understanding how the consonant sounds mix with vowels within the basic language structures – nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, etc, is for me a very delicate but appropriate area to start phonological work with any student that may be unfamiliar with the nature of the Spanish sounds.

Students can obtain great benefit in acquiring the standard basic aspects of Spanish phonology by focussing in an analytical way on the individual structure of the lexical repertoire that they are learning in the classroom, namely, to be observant about the way that any word is written and pronounced. To do this they need to have a good understanding of all the basic phonological properties attached to the sounds used in Spanish words.

As I have written elsewhere here, students must be able to relate and use the basic symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet in order to be able to succeed in their endeavour to become fluent, intelligible speakers of the charming Spanish language.

June 25, 2009

The pronunciation and written patterns of letter g in Spanish

Filed under: Education, Foreign Language Learning, Language, Language learning, Learning Process, Phonetics & Phonology, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning — L. A. Pinel @ 3:49 pm

Getting to know the correct way of pronouncing and using the different written patterns in which letter g is used can be an arduous task for the beginner learner of Spanish.  In my classroom experience I have found that most students can get quite confused about the correct pronunciation of the sounds represented by this letter. Most of their confusion tends to arise from their lack of a detailed knowledge regarding the phonological nature of g.

Letter g possesses three basic sounds: /g/ / γ/ and /x/ – represented here in the International Phonetic Alphabet (API) symbols. It requires a good amount of classroom work for the beginner student to get to correctly use these three sounds.

In general terms, /g/ is used when letter g is found in the written patterns: ga, go, gu, gue, gui, güe, and güi placed in initial positions like in gato, goma, gula, guerra, guiso, güero and güisquil. This sound can also be found in structures where the written patterns we are referring to here are preceded by a consonant sound as in the words ángulo, gorgojo or engalanar.

The sound / γ/ can be found in the written patterns that have been described above -  ga, go, gu, gue, gui, güe, and güi – when they are preceded by a vowel as in the words agarrar, egoísta, cigüeña and gigante.

Letter g is pronounced as /x/ when it is found in the written patterns ge and gi, like in the words gemela, ángel or ingeniero.

The /x/ sound for g as used by Spanish is mainly an unfamiliar sound connected with this letter, as for the majority of speakers of other languages learning Spanish, the phoneme /x/ is applied to other letters. On top of this learners must also come to terms with the sound of letter j in Spanish, which is also/x/.

The triple phonological values of the Spanish g – two of them quite often unknown for beginner learners – and the complexities of the written and sound patterns of the structures, in which they are found, contribute to make the learning of the correct usage of this letter quite difficult, according to my own classroom experience.

Students of the Spanish language at the beginner level need to learn to use these sounds with the help of a professional language teacher or a linguist that can provide them with sufficient oral practice and written exercises of each sound.

Without an early intervention, learners may acquire wrong phonological traits when making use of the sounds of g in their oral language. I have taught many students that even though they may be quite fluent in their spoken Spanish, still do repeatedly improper use of the sounds of this letter.

Getting to master the written patterns of letter g and their accompanying sounds, is without doubt one of the most difficult hurdles that the beginner learner needs to get through in order to be able to become a competent user of spoken and written Spanish.

May 15, 2009

“Latino America Viva” Daily online News in Australia: Read Interesting Cultural Articles about Spanish Speaking People & Countries, in Spanish

Filed under: Culture, Education, Foreign Language Learning, Language learning, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning — L. A. Pinel @ 6:56 am

I have been meaning to write a post about this Australian based website for quite a while. I don’t know exactly since when this daily news service has been on the net; but I have been getting a weekly email from its publishers which contain links to news websites that include some Australian newspapers and BBC News as well as a community events listing that may be of interest for the Spanish speaking people from Latin America living in Australia.

“Latino America Viva” is a good website to find links for news from Latin America, however, what I find more useful for the discerning reader and from the Spanish language learner perspective is its pages ‘Nuestros Colaboradores’, ‘Nuestros artistas por el mundo’, ‘Opinión¨, and ‘Comunidades latinas en el mundo’.

There are some quality articles about Spanish speaking background people connected with the literary, cultural, social and political areas. One of such articles is ‘Fallece Tránsito Amaguaña: símbolo de la lucha indígena’, by my colleague and friend Silvia Cuevas-Morales, writing from Madrid.

Most articles are written in Spanish, but there are some only available in English.

The website offers Spanish and English versions. This is a good thing for the student of the Spanish language as they can navigate between the two versions with great ease.

From the social perspective it seems to me that it’s very good to have an online site that offers information for the Spanish speaking people in Australia, particularly for those living in Sydney and Melbourne.

April 5, 2009

How important are the ’small words’ in the learning process of the Spanish Language?

Filed under: Education, Foreign Language Learning, Language, Language learning, Learning Process, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning — L. A. Pinel @ 4:02 am

One of my students asked me yesterday if I could prepare a lesson that could deal with the nature of the ‘small words’ in the study of Spanish grammar. I replied to him that I could certainly do that, but that I could also write something on my blog about this particular subject.

For the purpose of this post I consider as ‘small words’ only those containing one, two or three letters. However, some four letter words must be included as well because they are intrinsically related as in the case of the small words grouped grammatically as articles.

Every small word can be classified in several grammatical categories. There are lots of nouns like té, pan, paz, can, luz, cal, pus, res, and fin. There are however, many other small words that fall on to certain categories that may present the student with a considerable amount of difficulties when trying to understand their role or their usage in structuring meaning in a phrase or sentence.

These small words can be classified in several groups, the most important are: articles – la, el, unas, etc; pronouns of several types – que, te , le, mío, se, etc; verbs – most of them conjugated forms such as voy, va, fui, ríe, or des, adverbs like tan, mal, sí , ya, allá, aún/aun or muy; conjunctions such as y, o, or ni and prepositions like por, para, a, de or en.

There are also some adjectives of several types that are also small words, such as mal, un, una, qué, mi, tu, or su.

It is obvious that a full classification of all these words can’t be presented here, especially in relation to nouns. A complete list of grammatical structures such as articles, pronouns, adverbs and conjunctions can be found in any good Spanish grammatical source.

Students must be taught about how to use these extremely important grammatical structures and try learning as many as possible of them in order to be fully competent speakers and write Spanish properly. Preferably these words should be learnt in contextual situations, but this does not exclude the possibility of learning them in their pure grammatical forms.

Making correct usage of these ‘small words’ is more important than knowing their grammatical classifications. Students can also create their own classification charts of these words if they wish to make sure that they can have a clear knowledge of the grammatical labels and language meanings that are applied to them.

October 17, 2008

Can language usage be poor or vulgar?

Filed under: Culture, Education, Language, Language learning, Learning Process, Second Language Learning, Spanish — L. A. Pinel @ 10:39 am

I haven’t been able to write a post for quite a while. But there is plenty to write about, especially in relation to many of the news found in elcastellano.org website. One of the news items is about some Spanish language academies criticizing what they see as “a vulgarization of the Spanish language” by radio and television media in the Spanish speaking countries.

On the other hand I’m reading at the moment a really interesting and magnificent book about the nature of language. The book is “The Unfolding of Language” by Guy Deutscher. By reading this text I have been able to understand more closely some more aspects in relation with the scientific, social and cultural nature of language.

Deutscher presents in his work some very comprehensive analyses about the way in which all languages have historically evolved. How every living tongue used by any speaker is the result of complex and subtle never ending changing processes. I recommend this book to any person interested in getting a good grasp of the fascinating way in which all languages evolve and keep forever changing their intrinsic nature.

The news article I’m talking about here attracted my attention because it fits with the line of thought presented by “The Unfolding of Language”. Deutscher Lists a historical account of how since ancient  times until the present there has been a constant criticizing of the way language is used in the social setting; of how “language usage has always been superior” at a certain point in the past. He presents us with detailed analyses of why arguing about any perceived superior language usage in past epochs exists only in the mind of the person making such judgement.

What I’ve learned from this excellent book is that no matter from what point of view a language is analysed, the only judgement that any sensible person can pass about the nature of language – especially of the particular  ways in which it is used by a large human group – is one of open-mindedness and of critic outlook at the amazing wonder of what we call language.

Language usage cannot be legislated, controlled or imposed in any given manner. If the media presents a “vulgar” or poor language usage can only be the result of the social context where that particular usage is taking place.

What I’m saying here doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be an encouragement for everyone to have a “better” usage of  language as registered in the grammatical rules or prevalent social conventions. The real issue here, however, it’s to do with with the fact that the quality of the language used by any group of people has nothing to do with the assumption that their particular language usage is better, poorer or of vulgar character.

August 23, 2008

Some more facts about Spanish in the Philippines

Filed under: Culture, Education, Foreign Language Learning, Language, Language learning, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning — L. A. Pinel @ 12:06 pm

Late last year I wrote a post here about the proposal of reintroducing the teaching of Spanish in the school system of the Philippines.

My post has generated many responses. It has been in fact the most popular of my post since I started this blog. Since the time I wrote it I’ve found out some other facts relating to the history and nature of the Spanish language presence in the Philippines.

  1. During the colonial period (over three centuries) Spanish was the language used for administrative purposes, however, there was never a massive immigration of Spanish colonists as the Philippines didn’t have the economic potential of Mexico or Peru.
  2. The preaching of the gospels and the overall propagation of Christianity was mostly carried out via the native languages.
  3. Spain as colonial master only made the teaching of Spanish compulsory quite late in the 18th century.

Based on Ostler (2005:377 – 379)

Point 1 translates into a situation where a language doesn’t need to be used or maintained and consequently naturally reproduced by new generations of native speakers. The lack of enough native Spanish colonists didn’t provide the necessary environment for Spanish to have an initial firm hold at a greater scale during the period of the Spanish domination of this country. Ostler (2005) also lists the case of Dutch, as a colonial language with similarities to the fate of Spanish in the Philippines’ context. (p 395-403)

Apart from the primary role of the family for the maintenance of a language and the role played by a same language group setting to achieve this same goal, a language is propagated by organised school systems. Spain’s late response to the need to teach the general population Spanish together with the effects caused by the other two factors listed above may be assigned as the main reasons for Spanish not to have taken firm roots in the Philippines.

Bibliography

Ostler, Nicholas. Empires of the Word (Harper Perennial, 2005)

August 12, 2008

Spanish Phonology – is neither hard nor dry

Filed under: Foreign Language Learning, Language, Language learning, Phonetics & Phonology, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning — L. A. Pinel @ 3:38 pm

To achieve success in the learning process of a second language, students need to acquire a high level of understanding of the phonological features of the language they’re studying. This can be done in the medium to long term by direct and continuos exposure to the sounds patterns of that language; conversely they can endeavour to systematically study those patterns and their properties.

Phonetics and phonology are two aspects of the nature of language in relation to second language teaching and learning that I find extremely fascinating. There are so many aspects to consider when we focus on the true nature of the spoken language; I mean the type of speech used on daily basis by a given human group or what is also called a dialect of a language.

The study of the phonological patterns of the Spanish language can be seen from many angles. From the amount of sounds that exist in its language varieties or dialects, Spanish doesn’t have the sound complexities of English for example. Most of the sounds found in all Spanish dialectical forms, are quite easy to master for most second language learners.

Standard Spanish has very few sounds that may represent a major learning problem for most people studying it as a second language. These learners soon find out, for example, that in this language variety a prominent distinctive sound pattern is the one represented by letter z in combination with any vowel and c with e and i. This is perceived that way mainly because those phonological features of Spanish are not pronounced in the same manner in the Peninsular (European) and American Spanish dialectical forms.

As a matter of fact there are several distinctive sound patterns among the Spanish dialectical forms; however, the case mentioned above is one of the first sounds that students become more aware of or may be presented with in the language classroom. As soon as they start to find out more about the nature of the other sounds that are found in the American Spanish dialectical varieties, like the aspiration of s in final positions or the several pronunciations for ll, they realize that the phonology of this language rather than complex is rich and varied.

In my long experience as Spanish teacher to adults, I have always taught Spanish phonology based on a structured yet simple way which uses the International Phonetic Alphabet as the main methodological tool. However, I’ve always presented the subject based on a general or standard model, except in relation to the sound of z and c in the manner referred to above. It has only been through my own study and classroom practice that I have managed to get into the finer aspects of the phonology of my mother tongue.

A few moths ago I was trying to find some information about a particular sound and I came across a link containing an almost complete description of all the sounds patterns of the main dialectical varieties of Spanish. The link is by the University of Iowa.

It was only in one of those moments of hunger for learning that I decided to study what there was in the link. And to my amazement I came to understand quite a few other aspects of the Spanish phonology that weren’t still quite clear to me. The link presents the Spanish phonological patterns in a detailed and illustrated manner that provides audio-visual aids to understand the finer linguistic terms associated with the scientific study of language.

I found the information provided by the University of Iowa on the classification of the properties of the sounds of the Spanish language to be one of the most thorough analyses of the phonological patterns of this language that I’ve ever encountered. It provided me with a much defined panorama of this subject especially in relation to getting acquainted with the linguistic jargon associated with the complex nature of the phonetics and phonology fields.

I have added here a link to the excellent chart of the phonological properties of Spanish language provided by the University of Iowa. It’s not only easy to understand; it’s also an intellectually refreshing challenge for the student of Spanish as a second language, since it’s presented in Spanish!

The study of Spanish phonology can be a very fascinating endeavour for any person interested in getting a fuller understanding of this subject. This type of study, however, must go beyond a quick glance at the convoluted and often superficial explanations of the sounds of Spanish as given by most dictionaries or to just trying to make some sense of the complex range of  the phonetic symbols listed in the general IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) chart.

June 1, 2008

The Spanish personal pronouns tú and vos

Filed under: Education, Foreign Language Learning, Language, Language learning, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning — L. A. Pinel @ 12:34 pm

Many modern American Spanish language varieties use the personal pronoun vos instead of tú when referring to the grammatical second person. The pronoun vos is the predominant, if not the only form used by an enormous amount of Spanish speakers in many countries. This usage is especially evident in ordinary day to day oral language exchange.

The Spanish verb forms experience changes in their structures: Vos users say, for example, vos tenés or vos sabés instead of tú tienes or tú sabes.

The pronoun vos is used in countries such as Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay and all the Central American countries with the exception of Panama. Speakers in some countries make a selective use of this pronoun. In Chile and Colombia for example, tú is also used. On the other hand, vos is used by everyone in Argentina or Uruguay in daily speech.

The historical reasons that gave origin to this language phenomenon are far too complex and convoluted to be examined in detail in a short post like this. However, I must add that it’s very important for all users of any Spanish language variety, to have a clear understanding of the basic nature of it.

Firstly, the pronoun vos is as legitimate as tú since it’s used by a vast amount of speakers in many countries of the new world.

In the second place, contrary to the official position of Spanish language academies, the pronoun vos should be taught alongside tú as synonym structure for the second person singular in all modern Spanish grammar texts. Doing this would not only contribute to enrich the Spanish grammar as taught in the school system, but it would – more importantly – recognize a language usage that some people pretend that it doesn’t exist.

For students of Spanish as a second language it’s extremely important to know about this language aspect, especially in circumstances that require them to be in Spanish speaking regions or countries where vos is used.

May 3, 2008

The aspiration or loss of /s/ syllable final in spoken Spanish

Filed under: Education, Foreign Language Learning, Language, Language learning, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning — L. A. Pinel @ 3:42 pm

The aspiration or loss of the /s/ sound in a final position of a word is a natural phonological feature found in many varieties of Iberian and American Spanish.

This language phenomenon is marked by an aspiration or dropping of the /s/ when speakers articulate structures like los niños, las casas or las tiendas grandes. An approximate phonological transcription for these structures may be: loh niñoh, lah casah and lah tiendah grandeh.

I’ve heard quite often people commenting about this issue in a negative way. Some of them think that some native Spanish speakers aspirate the /s/ due to pure linguistic laziness and that such speakers must make an effort to correct their speech. Whenever I can I point out to anyone making this type of comments, that this phonological phenomenon – like all other aspects of language – is neither wrong nor right. That speakers resorting to this kind of linguistic structures are just making use of language in a way suitable for them.

At the end of the day what really matters for speakers of a language quite independently from the conventional features such as standard pronunciation patterns, is that the linguistic structures being used in any given situation must be socially accepted in the setting where they’re using such structures.

Thus it doesn’t really matter whether some Spanish speakers say lah casah instead of las casas as long as they are mutually intelligible.

In the language classroom, however, students must be taught to pronounce the standard /s/ whenever necessary in their spoken Spanish.

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