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.

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.

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.

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.

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 18^th 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)

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.

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 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.

Last year I wrote a post about letter ñ presence in Spanish language domain names on the internet. I was at elcastellano.org/noticias website today and I read an article about this same topic, which I think adds to what I’ve already written.

The article in Spanish at elcastellano.org/noticias – by Luis Viviant - reports that Argentina is trying to follow the example set by Chile, Spain and Mexico as major Spanish speaking countries that have already incorporated the letter ñ into their domain names.

I found out in the article, that Chile was the first Spanish speaking country that introduced this letter in 2005 in their domain names. I clarify this here as when I wrote the post that I’m referring to above, I thought it was Spain the first country that did so.

In his article Luis Viviant writes that the initiative for the incorporation of letter ñ into the Argentinean domain names was taken by a private news company (Grupo Clarin). This is a great initiative as it motivates the public to participate on issues that affect their daily language usage.

I said in my first post on this topic, that letter ñ is an integral part of the Spanish language. I consider extremely important that all domain names written in Spanish must use the proper script and graphic symbols of this language. It’s very encouraging to see media organizations of the Spanish speaking countries trying to correct inappropriate language usage.

There is no valid reason for not incorporating the letter ñ and all the other Spanish graphic symbols into all the domain names written in the Castilian language in all the other Spanish speaking countries that still use inappropriate spelling system.

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.