L. A. Pinel

Archive for the ‘Second Language Learning’ Category

The pronunciation and written patterns of letter g in Spanish

In Education, Foreign Language Learning, Language, Language learning, Learning Process, Phonetics & Phonology, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning on June 25, 2009 at 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.

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

In Culture, Education, Foreign Language Learning, Language learning, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning on May 15, 2009 at 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.

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

In Education, Foreign Language Learning, Language, Language learning, Learning Process, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning on April 5, 2009 at 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.

Can language usage be poor or vulgar?

In Culture, Education, Language, Language learning, Learning Process, Second Language Learning, Spanish on October 17, 2008 at 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.

Some more facts about Spanish in the Philippines

In Culture, Education, Foreign Language Learning, Language, Language learning, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning on August 23, 2008 at 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)

Spanish Phonology – is neither hard nor dry

In Foreign Language Learning, Language, Language learning, Phonetics & Phonology, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning on August 12, 2008 at 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.

The Spanish personal pronouns tú and vos

In Education, Foreign Language Learning, Language, Language learning, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning on June 1, 2008 at 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.

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

In Education, Foreign Language Learning, Language, Language learning, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning on May 3, 2008 at 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.

Ladino: A Judeo Spanish-Iberian language preserved for more than five centuries

In Culture, Education, Foreign Language Learning, Language, Language learning, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning on March 29, 2008 at 3:42 pm

I’ve always been aware of the existence of Ladino or also known as Judeo Spanish, but it was only today that I managed to have a first contact not only with its written but also its spoken forms in a simultaneous way. And it couldn’t have been in a more magnificent fashion than through music…and a beautiful voice.

Today I bought two compact disks by Yasmin Levy. One is called Romance and Yasmin and the other Mano Suave. The music and the lyrics are a heavenly affair, as its instrumentation and Yasmin’s voice are soothing and bewitching.

On the other hand, every song is for me an exploration of how late fifteen century Castilian Spanish may have sounded in the streets of Toledo, Granada or Seville. It’s like going back in time!

A quick glance at the song’s written lyrics has allowed me to notice that from the etymological point of view the language (I’m talking about some simple language structures found here) seems pretty much the same as any modern Spanish variety. I could be walking in San Salvador, Madrid or Lima and if I met a person speaking to me in Ladino there would only be some little trouble in communicating in a casual ordinary manner if I had to talk to them, or them talking to me.

This is of course my first impressions. I’d have to do a proper study of all the structural aspects of this language in order to have a clearer idea of its intrinsic nature.

In the meantime I searched on the internet and I found at the website orbitlat.com some essential reading about basic features on the history and nature of Judeo Spanish. A very interesting point here is that Ladino – as far as I know – is the only language derived from Spanish, which has also been written in a script different to the Latin alphabet.

The language is also known by many other names and has several dialects spoken in many countries. These dialects also have a great influence from Portuguese regarding words and grammatical structures according to orbilat.com, above.

Ladino is a Spanish-Iberian language that deserves to be preserved, taught and learned by any person interested in language studies, but more so, by all native Spanish and Portuguese speaking people as it can teach us quite a few interesting aspects in relation to the nature of Spanish and Portuguese as the two major languages originated from the Iberian Peninsula.

Judeo Spanish has a very complex and varied history. That fact seems to be reflected in the grammatical, lexical and phonological features of the language that I have perused today in a very brief manner.

I intend to study and learn more about this charming Spanish-Iberian language variety.

PS: I may also be walking in Sao Paulo or Lisbon and speak Portuguese with a Ladino speaker without much problem in our mutual understanding.

Read excellent posts & comments on the blog Hablas español from the BBC

In Culture, Education, Language, Language learning, Second Language Learning, Spanish on March 9, 2008 at 1:35 am

The BBC website has an excellent page named Los blogs de BBC Mundo. Obviously all the blogs are written in Spanish, although some commentaries are sometimes written in English.

There are several blogs dealing with the topic of languages. The more interesting blog for me is Hablas español, because of its focus on issues about the Spanish language, which is of course the subject of my blog here. However, Hablas español is mainly focussed on issues related to Spanish speakers living in the United States.

The blog Hablas español is a first class resource to get to know about the views of Spanish speaking people living in the US on issues connected to their language and culture. It’s also an excellent site for students learning Spanish to practice their reading skills with the aid of real language usage by native Spanish speakers.

As commentaries are not corrected from the grammatical point of view by the moderators of the blog, students need to be aware that there may be spelling and grammatical errors in the comments.

The blog´s posts are written in standard Spanish by BBC staff.

I’m adding the BBC with its Hablas español blog to my Blogroll here.

The lexical wealth of the Spanish language

In Culture, Education, Foreign Language Learning, Language, Language learning, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning on February 17, 2008 at 7:21 am

In my long experience of teaching Spanish, I have witnessed the amazed reaction of students learning this language whenever the issue of synonyms and the abundant number of idiomatic expressions with which Spanish is endowed arises. I’d like deal in this post with the richness of the lexical or vocabulary aspect of Spanish.

The Castilian language possesses a very rich array of lexical terms particularly in relation to nouns and verb forms. I always like to mention in my Spanish classes, for example how the noun pig, can be said in Spanish using a large variety of synonyms. Thus the words cerdo, puerco, marrano, cochino, tunco, cuche, chancho, are some of the words used to name a pig in Spanish.

In the verbal area, the language of Cervantes also possesses a very ample variety of terms from which to choose. There are also in this category abundant quantities of synonyms.

This is a very important feature of Spanish as it contributes to make language usage interesting, entertaining and varied.

The vast amount of synonyms has given Spanish a literature characterized by an elegant and florid language usage immortalized in gold script by giants of Castilian language letters such as Miguel de Cervantes, Gabriel García Márquez, Federico García Lorca, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Calderón de la Barca, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Teresa de Ávila, Rómulo Gallegos, San Juan de la Cruz (Saint John of the Cross), Rubén Darío, Claribel Alegría, Jorge Luís Borges, Rosario Ferré, Nicolás Guillén, Julio Cortázar…

From the practical point of view, the availability of a large amount of synonyms may seem an insurmountable obstacle for the students of Spanish, due to the extra amount of words that they need to learn. However, after the initial learning stages and a constant exposure to written and spoken Spanish and especially when the students are becoming more fluent in the language, they realize that this feature, rather than a hindrance, is a great contributor to the goal of achieving full language competence in Spanish.

The intrinsic value of speaking other languages and of being bilingual

In Culture, Education, Foreign Language Learning, Language, Language learning, Second Language Learning, Spanish on January 5, 2008 at 7:07 am

A few days ago I read an article in The Age connected to the importance of languages in general and second language learning, in particular, for individuals and people. The article also says that 2008 has been declared the International Year of Languages by the United Nations.

A language of any type, especially a natural one – i.e. a language learnt and spoken natively by people – is an amazing tool for creating and exchanging meaning, with no parallel in any other area of human activity involved in the civilization process.

A language, then, as a special way of organizing thought in the spoken and written modes and as a communication tool is a very important human feature that deserves to be learned, or at least be studied by non natives of that language. Reading ‘Empires of the Word a Language History of the World’ by Nicholas Ostler has helped me to understand these aspects in a clearer manner.

In Ostler’s book there are detailed descriptions of the role that languages – used either as native or second mean of communication – have played in shaping human history since the most ancient of times until now. Since the very early beginnings, individuals and social groups, living in normal conditions, have taken as a goal to learn the languages of their neighbors as a way of conducting trade, commerce and diplomacy or simply for showing goodwill to speakers of other tongues.

In modern times people still learn languages following similar paths as the ones described above. However, they also learn a second (or third or forth…) language for fun, namely, the great intellectual satisfaction that is obtained by communicating in the same language with people whose native tongue is different to ours’.

I became a bilingual person in my youth. Now I can exchange ideas in at least five other languages. Nevertheless, I consider myself a truly bilingual person due to the fact that English and Spanish are the languages that I use on a daily basis.

Both Spanish and English are essential parts of my identity now. In both languages I find an immense array of intellectual satisfaction. I can move in the two worlds with ease. This is something of great value if we take into consideration that each of these languages are repositories of vast bodies of language and knowledge to keep a letters’ lover attached to them forever.

I don’t know any longer what the feeling of being a monolingual person is. What I do know however, it’s that knowing other languages and being fully bilingual is a feeling which is not only unique; it’s humanizing to the highest degree.

‘I love chocolate’ …I know that, but do you know about the origin of the word chocolate?

In Education, Language, Language learning, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning, etymology on December 29, 2007 at 11:45 am

In my professional teaching experience it’s very common to find out that many students are often unaware about lots of the aspects relating to the nature of the Spanish language vocabulary when they start their learning process.

For example, they often find it surprising that a Spanish word like chocolate or tomate comes from Pre-Columbian languages. Most of them tend to assume that terms like these are naturally derived from English words; so when I explain to them that these structures come from Native American languages they take it as a very new fact to them.

All the native tongues from the American continent – either dead or still in current use – have made an outstanding contribution to the enrichment of the Spanish language. There is a vast amount of words which have already been officially included into Spanish dictionaries; however, there still are an even larger amount of them which are still waiting to be incorporated into such dictionaries.

These language structures are commonly referred to as Americanisms. All these terms come mainly from Amerind (or Pre-Columbian) languages, which have found a path into spoken and written varieties of Spanish and are generally used by native Spanish speakers in their daily language. Because of this factor, they must be included into dictionaries as a matter of fact.

What it really matters from the linguistic perspective it’s that the terms to which we are making reference here, are vernacular items belonging to the lexicon of a regional or national group of native Spanish speakers; thus there is no need to apply other considerations in order for them to be included into any particular type of dictionary which may be released by a publishing house or for the words to be admitted by a Spanish language academy.

The main purpose of any language dictionary is to provide a complete list of all the words which are actually used by any sizeable amount of its speakers.

Two Pre-Roman phonological features adopted permanently by Spanish

In Foreign Language Learning, Language, Language learning, Phonetics & Phonology, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning on December 22, 2007 at 4:50 am

The trilled (very marked and rolled) sound of the combination rr as found in perro, barro or tierra and in letter r as in dormir or tener, is one of the most difficult – if not the most difficult – sound encountered by most people learning Spanish as a second language.

Well, I must tell my students from now on not to blame the ancient Romans for their predicament, as this particular sound was brought into the developing Castilian tongue by Basque language speakers in medieval times.

I always thought of the trilled r as a feature of the Latin language that was inherited by Spanish. But just last night in ‘La Página del Idioma Español ‘ at elcastellano.org, I read an article by Sergio Zamora in which he names this sound and the dropping of the phoneme represented by f in ancient Latin words but since then substituted by a silent h, in words like harina, hierro and humo, as two features of the Basque language adopted by Spanish very early in its gestation process.

Zamora points out that the suffixes rro, [rra, rre, etc] and the absence of the phoneme for f, were two clear traits of Basque before they were transferred as phonological features of Castilian Spanish.

Basque is an ancient Non-Roman language that has left its imprint in these two phonological properties still present in all modern Spanish varieties. These two language aspects made a significant contribution towards distinguishing Castilian Spanish from all the other languages derived from Latin such as Galician, Portuguese and Catalan that were developing simultaneously in the Iberian Peninsula.

Corpus of Spanish offering 100 million + words

In Culture, Education, Language, Language learning, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning on December 20, 2007 at 3:20 pm

I’ve just opened an email from elcastellano.org reporting of an interview with Dr Mark Davies from Brigham Young University in which he talks about the benefits that his work on a corpus of the Spanish language, can provide to people interested in the aspects of written and spoken Spanish.

The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics by P. H. Matthews defines the term corpus in the first sentence to this entry as
Any systematic collection of speech or writing in a language or variety of a language.

Spanish possesses a vast oral and written corpus which can, with the help of the new IT technologies and the arduous work of academics like Dr Davies, be now available to the general public and Spanish language researchers.

This excellent corpus del español (http://www.corpusdelespanol.org/) is an invaluable tool to research aspects connected to the evolution of the Spanish language as the documents entered in its database comprise a very large amount of historical material going as far back as the 1200’s.

Any word, phrase, or combination of words in any given form can be searched for at the corpus del español website. Apart from the historical aspects connected with the language structures a person may be searching for, they can also search for terms as used by academia, the news, fictional writing and oral language.

Like for the corpus of any language, Dr Davies’ work is complex and therefore difficult to explain its mechanisms in a brief post like this. The best approach – in my opinion – is to spend some time at his website and follow the instructions given there.

I’ve only been able to have a quick look at this website. I’m pretty sure that I’ll be using it at a regular basis. I’m adding it right now to my links here.

The Corpus of Spanish by Dr Davies is a primary resource for any person wanting to know in detail aspects relating to the historical, syntactic, and semantic nature of the Spanish language.

The word ‘resiliencia’ came to Spanish via English

In Foreign Language Learning, Language, Language learning, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning, etymology on December 15, 2007 at 1:35 am

Until today I didn’t know that the word ‘resiliencia’ was used in Spanish. I have always used resilience or resilient as terms fully associated with the English language. Then today I received in my mailbox an email from ‘La Palabra del Día’ (www.elcastellano.org/palabra.html), in which as usual for this excellent service, it provides a very thorough explanation about the etymology of this word.

According to La Palabra del Día, the word resiliencia is not listed in Spanish dictionaries but it says that it’s a term widely used in physics and the social sciences. All of these aspects are new to me!

A big surprise was to find out – although I suspected it – that the word resiliencia and its English cousins (i.e. cognates) like resilience or resilient all originated from Latin. However, the biggest surprise was to know that the word in reference here came to Spanish via the English language.

It was very interesting to know that resiliencia didn’t arrive into Spanish from Latin; that it wasn’t a vernacular Spanish term as I’d expected it to be, if I followed the logic that Spanish is a language almost completely derived from Latin. The analysis of this word explains that resiliencia in its English equivalents was first used in this tongue before being transferred to Spanish, a language derived from the source that gave origin to this term!

The people behind La Palabra del Día at elcastellano.org must be congratulated for maintaining this very excellent service for the study of Spanish, which makes the understanding of the deeper meanings of words a fascinating and intellectually challenging task.

P.S:
It’s also important to note here, that this word in spite of its etymological roots – i.e. that of being so closely associated with the intrinsic nature of Spanish – and of its practical usage in contributing to the enrichment of this language, has not yet been incorporated into the dictionaries as pointed out by La Palabra del Día.

The word resiliencia is not an isolated case, there are thousands and thousands of words, especially of Americanisms (words vernacular to Hispanic America) which for very convoluted reasoning from language academies, find their particular paths of inclusion into Spanish language dictionaries, to be a very difficult and bureaucratic process. But enough of this, I’ll add more to this subject in a future post.

Below I reproduce the text found in La Palabra del Día.

Resiliencia

Esta palabra no se encuentra en los diccionarios castellanos, aunque es muy usada en la Física y en las ciencias sociales. El vocablo nos llegó desde el inglés resilience para expresar la capacidad de un material de recuperar su forma original después de haber sido sometido a altas presiones; en esa acepción, equivale a la cantidad energía que un material es capaz de almacenar cuando la presión lo obliga a reducir su volumen, y se expresa en julios por metro cúbico.

El psiquiatra infantil Michael Rutter (1970) y el neurólogo, psiquiatra y etólogo francés contemporáneo Boris Cyrulnik, inspirados en el concepto físico, introdujeron el término a la Psicología para denominar la capacidad de las personas de superar tragedias o acontecimientos fuertemente traumáticos.

Cyrulnik, cuyos padres judíos fueron asesinados por los nazis, estudió la capacidad de recuperación de los sobrevivientes de los campos de concentración y de niños criados en orfanatos. Resiliencia es una de esas palabras de origen latín que, curiosamente, nos han llegado a través del inglés, en este caso, del vocablo resilience, que a su vez se derivó del latín resilio, -ire, (saltar hacia atrás, volver de un salto) compuesta a su vez por el prefijo re- y el verbo salire (saltar).

Is it called Spanish or Castilian?

In Foreign Language Learning, Language, Language learning, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning on December 1, 2007 at 5:36 am

When I was a secondary school student, I used to study the subject ‘castellano’ – Castilian, in English – as part of the curriculum. At that stage it was natural for me to call ‘castellano’ the subject that studies my mother tongue, as for me ‘español’ (Spanish) and the name of the subject were the same thing.

Very often my students ask me whether there is any difference between the two terms. I usually explain that in English, Spanish is more often labeled that way, to denominate the official language of Hispanic America (Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Cuba, Argentina, etc) and the dominant official language of Spain.

As a school subject, Spanish is generally known as ‘castellano’ in Spanish speaking countries. In English it is more often labeled ‘Spanish’. In Spanish both terms are used interchangeably when speaking about the language in general terms. However, to make reference to its nature, the term ‘Castilian’ takes precedence.

In Spain, ‘Castellano’ is used instead of ‘español’ when is necessary to make very clear that the term refers to ‘Castilian’ and not to any other of the Spanish languages such as Galician or Catalan.

Spanish can also be called ‘Castilian Spanish’ to make the distinction referred to above. Castilian as the main language of Spain has come to be identified as ‘Spanish’, a fact that is quite evident by the popularity of its usage.

Most Spanish speaking countries in South America use the term ‘castellano’ when they are referring to Spanish in general.

In strict terms, the real name of Spanish is Castilian, as this language has its roots in Castile, a region of Spain. On the other hand, ‘Spanish’, as the most popular name for this language in English, can also be used as just another name for the language of Castile. The name ‘Castilian’ is always relevant in order to study features of Spanish relating to its linguistic or historical nature.

On learning Spanish for specific or special purpose

In Foreign Language Learning, Language learning, Learning Process, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning on November 25, 2007 at 12:03 pm

 

Last month I wrote a post here, about the nature of Spanish for travel courses. A Spanish course for specific or special purpose doesn’t have the same characteristics as a typical Spanish for travel course as presented on the post in reference. On the other hand, a lengthy Spanish for travel course can certainly be classified within a specific or special purpose category.

A Spanish course for specific or special purpose usually requires a complete learning of all the language features necessary to achieve language competence in a given field. A medical doctor or an electronics engineer, for example, has specific language needs which must be fulfilled by a course designed to satisfy their particular needs.

No course of this nature is exactly the same even if they are intended for an identical field. A biologist may need specific language structures that may differ with a course designed for an enologist (wine industry scientist).

Spanish courses for specific or special courses require that the student learn all the general aspects of Spanish before engaging in the acquisition of the specialized features needed to become an effective user of Spanish in both written and spoken language.

As stated above, to be really effective, a Spanish course for specific or special purpose involves that a student must fully learn all aspects of the language. This implies that the learning process can be time consuming and that the student must be prepared to do a good amount of homework, apart of engaging in a constant tuition arrangement with an experienced Spanish language professional.

The importance of cognate words in the learning process of Spanish

In Education, Language, Language learning, Learning Process, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning on November 17, 2007 at 11:46 am

There are lots of words in Spanish that have a very close connection to an English word. Just to tease my students, when studying the sound and structure of some Spanish words, I list orally or on the whiteboard Spanish words such us ‘visible’, ‘posible’ or ‘motor’.

In most cases they find it quite amusing and curious that words like ‘visible’ and ‘motor’ are exactly the same in both languages except for the different pronunciation. Then when I write twice the word ‘visible’ on the whiteboard and asked them to tell me which word is the Spanish or the English word, they really think that I’m going crazy; as for them both words are just the same. Things get sort out when I pronounce either of them as Spanish or English word.

Spanish and English share a vast amount of cognate words. Cognate words share a common origin; however, the meaning of a word can be different. For example the Spanish ’sensitivo’ is not the same as the English ’sensitive’, even though they originate from the same source. The Spanish ’sensible’ and the English ’sensible’ don’t mean the same thing either, even though they look exactly the same!

Students learning Spanish should, if in doubt check with their teacher or a dictionary to make sure that a given cognate word has the meaning that they intend to convey.

Cognates are of great help when pursuing a faster and efficient learning of Spanish as they make the sometimes tedious process of learning vocabulary an easier and more enjoyable task.

Where did the Spanish ‘v’ go? Do you pronounce it like a b, a v or…?

In Foreign Language Learning, Language, Language learning, Phonetics & Phonology, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning on November 4, 2007 at 8:02 am

Some of the phonological (sound) patterns of Spanish can seem at first sight an insurmountable challenge for a student learning this language. For lots people who are just starting to learn Spanish, and who are native English speakers, it’s a bit of a shock to find out about the inherent differences that exist between the sounds patterns they know compared to some of the sounds used in the Spanish language. Some of these contrasting sound patterns include the pronunciation in Spanish of the letters b and v.

As a native Spanish speaker I was never fully aware of the nature of these sounds until I started teaching the language and students began to question mi pronunciation of these two letters during their Spanish lessons.

Spanish stopped using a clear differentiation between b and v a long time ago. However it still has two ‘b’ type sounds, but none of them is pronounced as the English v. It can be very helpful to have in mind from the outset, that there is only one of these two sounds which is actually shared in both languages. This sound is the one represented by the letter b as used in English. The letter v as used in a Spanish word does not sound as the English v !

Using the International Phonetic Alphabet symbols, the Spanish letters b (’be’) and v (’uve’) are both represented by either /b/ or /B/. Therefore you must notice that the letters b or v can sound either /b/ or /B/ depending on where they are found in a word. As a result of this, neither of the two letters can exclusively be represented by only one of these two phonetic symbols.

The letters b or v, are pronounced /b/ in words with structures as those found in vino, beso or banco. But when these two letters are found in words such as oveja, cabra or abeja, their pronunciation uses /B/. This sound doesn’t have a direct equivalent in English, so the student very often requires expert help from a language professional in order to achieve acceptable pronunciation ability.

In general terms, achieving the right pronunciation of /B/ is not a very hard task to accomplish. In most cases native English speakers learning Spanish can acquire an acceptable pronunciation of the /B/ sound quite quickly during the initial stages of their learning process or later by direct imitation of native Spanish speakers.

A Spanish speaking gentleman doesn’t need a horse

In Language, Language learning, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning, etymology on October 28, 2007 at 12:57 pm

The Spanish word caballero derives from Late Latin caballarius, (horse groom) which in turn comes from Latin caballus (horse), according to The Free Dictionary. Whenever words like this are encountered in my Spanish classes, students find it very curious and amusing to know what the words actually mean.

Caballero in its more widely used modern meaning, gentleman, has nothing to do with caballo – Spanish for horse – judging by its original meanings. How the word acquired the meaning of gentleman, may be related to the fact that owning a horse was a status symbol in medieval times. Other than that, the word doesn’t have any relation to the level of gentleman ness that a man might possess.

In any case, if anything, a caballero may be more suitable labeled ‘cochero’,’ autero’ or ‘carrero’ (derived respectively from the Spanish words coche, auto and carro, all meaning car in English) if we wanted to update the term, as these days most men own cars more often than horses.

Maybe the term caballero should be more equated to ‘hombre gentil’ (gentleman), which is the most appropriate meaning of caballero in ordinary Spanish usage.

Are Spanish for travel courses really effective?

In Foreign Language Learning, Language learning, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning on October 20, 2007 at 7:39 am


The label ‘Spanish for Travel Course’ can mean many things depending on the content and length of such course. It’s not the same, for example, a short course of five or even ten lessons than a year long course of forty lessons.

In my own experience as Spanish language tutor, I’ve found that lots of people wanting to learn Spanish for travelling purposes tend to assume that a short course – even one of five lessons – will equip them with the necessary skills to get by when travelling to a Spanish speaking country. That assumption maybe relevant if the student wants to learn the language at a superficial level, which involves learning a fragmented form of the language or what I call ‘gimmick Spanish’. This is the type of language presented by popular commercial language travel guides and the typical short courses offered by language schools.

Those guides and courses present the student with language structures such as:”Quisiera una cerveza, por favor” (”I’d like a beer, please”) or “¿Hay una estación de tren cerca de aquí?” (”Is there a train station nearby?”). Guides and courses of this type may be very convenient for the rushed traveller, but as to how useful the language learnt may be for communication and language development purposes, is entirely a different matter.

Any Spanish for travel course which focus on fragmented language and which is not followed up by continuous learning prior to travel cannot provide the student with firm foundations to tackle the whole body of language. This is so because proper learning and acquisition of language implies that the student in any given situation of spoken language exchange must be able to express ideas with ease. I always explain to my students that by using language as clear as the two examples above, more often than not, they run into the risk of being taken by a native Spanish speaker, as users of language that are in possession of full fluency in Spanish.

I put to my students that the reply to a clear request or question – as the two cited above – may be so overwhelming and so long, to the point that the answers apart of not providing any help may instead contribute to get them into an even more confused situation. Answering an open ended question is a complex process which is very rarely straight forward. For the examples above, requesting a beer may involve the waiter or barman asking in return questions -in Spanish – such as: “What brand of beer would you like”; “Do you want a local or imported beer?”; Would you like a glass for your beer?”; “Would you like to eat something with your beer?”; “Do you want an ale or a lager?”. This is not what the traveller expected! But this is what normally happens. The answer to a question asking for the location of a place may be even more complex.

Short Spanish courses for travel – or labeled any other way – do not provide the necessary language skills for anybody wanting to use Spanish in a natural way with native Spanish speakers. Short Spanish courses can only be effective when they can be followed up by further learning prior to travelling. On the other hand, knowing some Spanish, even in a fragmented way, is better than not knowing Spanish at all.

If short Spanish for travel courses aren’t of much use, what about a long course? A long course implies getting to know more about all aspects of language that facilitate full development of oral and written skills. Read more about this subject later.

Tell us about your own language experiences while travelling within a Spanish speaking country.

Which Spanish accent is the best?

In Foreign Language Learning, Language learning, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning on October 12, 2007 at 9:41 am

Throughout my career of teaching Spanish at Tres Culturas and elsewhere, I have often been asked by my students about what accent should be the best for them to use in their spoken Spanish. Without any hesitation I usually reply that they can use any accent they fancy as long as what they’re saying is properly pronounced following the Spanish particular sounds and stress conventions on words, as well as natural speech patterns (i.e. the way that the majority of people normally speak).

The accents people use in their speech respond to a range of linguistic features far too broad to explain briefly. In general terms, accents don’t make any difference to the main role of language, namely to communicate and exchange ideas. A factor contributing to the existence of accents is connected with the intrinsic characteristic of language to differ even within itself, which can happen very often regardless of aspects such as the size of the territory that it’s being considered.

In Spanish, there are a vast amount of accents depending on the country or the particular region a group of its speakers come from. Countries as small as El Salvador, for example, have enough range of accents to keep a linguist studying them, busy for years.

Accents make a language varied and contribute to its ‘charms’ – or ‘detracting’ features – which are very important for the cultural study of the people that use it. However, the aesthetics of the spoken language doesn’t represent a defining factor for its effectiveness; nor does it make the accent used by a group of Spanish speakers better or worse than the accent used by another group in the language. As an accent does not provide any particular objective feature to consider it either good or bad, all accents used by Spanish speakers constitute cultural and mostly natural features that are legitimate by their own nature.

It’s practically impossible for a student to learn or for a teacher to teach all the accents that exist within the Spanish language. So whatever accent the student ends up learning, is always a good accent as long as it’s understood by other native and non-native speakers of the language.

How many varieties of Spanish accents do you know?