Category: Spanish (español)

Alveolar trills

By Simon

One aspect of Spanish pronunciation that can be tricky to master is the trilled or rolled r, which is also known as an alveolar trill /r/. This sound is also used in Italian and many other languages. Some people seem convinced that if you can’t already make this sound, it’s impossible to learn.

If you are having trouble with the Spanish r, this blog post might help. It breaks it down into a four step process and explains clearly what to do at each stage. There’s another explanation of how to make this sound here.

Once you’re got those r’s rolling, here’s a tongue twister to practise with:

Erre con Erre Cigarro
Erre con Erre Barril
Rápido corre el carro
Repleto do ferro en el ferrocarril

It is possible, in fact, to learn to make any sound used in any language, even the rolled r, and other tricky sounds like the clicks used in some African languages and the back-of-the-throat sounds of Arabic. It takes a lot of listening and practise. An understanding of the mechanics of how the sounds are produced can help as well.

There are online introductions to phonetics and phonology here and here, and this site shows you the relative positions of the tongue, teeth, lips, etc when pronouncing various sounds.

I can usually manage alveolar trills, though sometimes find the double rr in the middle of words such as carro a bit tricky and I have to slow down to get it right.

Languages Quick Fix

By Simon

Languages Quick Fix is a very useful site I discovered today. It includes words, phrases, and idioms in English, Chinese, Japanese, French, Spanish, and German, plus a basic introduction to each language. There are recordings of the words, phrases, and idioms in all the languages – in the case of Chinese, the recordings are in Mandarin, Shanghainese and Cantonese. There are also links to news stories, dictionaries, and Chinese paintings (in the Learn Chinese – One At a Time section).

Another useful site I came across today is SmallMarble, a multilingual phrase book to which anyone can contribute. At the moment it has Spanish translations of most of the phrases, but few translations in other languages.

Peeling the library

By Simon

Today’s word, library, comes from the Old French librairie, a ‘collection of books’, which is a nominal use of adjective librarius, ‘concerning books’, from Latin librarium, ‘chest for books’, from liber (genetive of libri), ‘book, paper, parchment’, originally the ‘inner bark of trees’, probably a derivative of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) base *leub(h) – ‘to strip, to peel’.

In French the word librarie means bookshop. A French library is a bibliothèque, which comes via the Latin bibliothēca, from the Greek βιβλιοθήκη (bibliothêkê), ‘a place to store books’, which breaks down into βίβλος (biblos), ‘book’, and θήκη (thêkê), ‘chest’.

Variations on the theme of bibliothèque are used in a number of other languages, including:

Dutch – bibliotheek
German – Bibliothek
Greek βιβλιοθήκη (bibliothiki)
Italian/Portuguese/Spanish – biblioteca
Russian – библиотека (biblioteka)

In Welsh, a library is a llyfrgell, from llyfr, ‘book’ and cell, ‘cell’, while in Irish it’s leabharlann, from leabhar, ‘book’ and lann (not sure of it’s meaning*). In Chinese, a library is 圖書館 [图书馆] (túshūguăn) = ‘map book house’.

It seems that the word library, or something like it, is not used in it’s English senses in many languages. The only ones I can find are Sesotho and Tswana (laeborari), Tsonga (layiburari) and Venda (laiburari), which appear to be loanwords from English. The Basque word for library, liburutegia, might possibly have Latin or Greek roots.

[Addendum] *lann in Irish is an archaic/obsolete word that means floor, enclosure or church. It comes from the Old Irish lann (building, house, land, plot, plate), from the Proto-Celtic *landā ((open) space, land), from the Proto-Indo-European *lendʰ- (land, heath). It is cognate with the Welsh word llan (church, parish, monastery, yard, enclosure, village), the Spanish landa (plain), and the English words land and lawn [source].

Sources: Online Etymology Dictionary, Wiktionnaire, Yawiktionary

Language maintenance

By Simon

This week I’ve been trying out yet another language learning and maintenance strategy. Instead of spending most of the day listening to online radio in one language or other, as I’ve been doing up to now, I’ve started listening to lots of lessons in the languages I’m focusing on at the moment (Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx and Spanish). At the same time I’m converting the lessons I have on tape to mp3 format. Once I’ve done that, I copy them to my mp3 player.

I bought myself a new mp3 player for my birthday and am filling it with language lessons, podcasts and audiobooks. It can also display images, so I might try to make some virtual flash cards for it. Usually I don’t bother with flashcards as they’re quite cumbersome to carry around. This is no longer an issue.

Bilingual toys

By Simon

According to an article in The Boston Globe, there has been a significant increase in the sale of bilingual toys in the USA. These are toys the speak words and phrases and sing songs, and which are designed to help young children to learn languages. The most popular language combination is English and Spanish, which doesn’t come as much surprise given that there are nearly 48 million people of Hispanic origin in the United States. There are also toys that speak Chinese, Russian, Korean, Greek, Hebrew and various other languages.

A related article gives more details and mentions that toy manufacturers are bringing out bilingual phones, globes, dolls, books and laptops. A market niche toy companies didn’t expect was the parents of children adopted from other countries, who are keen on toys that speak the languages of their children as this helps ‘bridge the gap between the two countries’.

If kids get an early start with learning languages, and see it as something enjoyable, this bodes well for their future.

Do any of you know if there are any bilingual or multilingual computer games?

Linguistic adventures in Cuba

By Simon

My linguistic adventures started on the flight out to Cuba, during which I was sitting next to an electrician from Germany. I tried speaking a bit of German with him, but he seemed to prefer using English, which he spoke very well. I also tried out my Spanish on the cabin staff and did my best to understand the announcements in Spanish.

When in Cuba I used my Spanish as much as possible. Some of the people I encountered didn’t speak English, so I had to speak to them in Spanish and was able to communicate fairly well. Other people spoke English and some preferred to practise their English with me rather than to speak Spanish. One feature of Cuban Spanish I noticed was a tendency to drop esses, particularly at the ends of words. For example, they say buena dia rather than buenas dias, and ecuela rather than escuela.

I met some Germans and Austrians and was able to converse with them in German, though I kept on having to use English words when I couldn’t remember the German ones. Not bad considering I haven’t used my German much since leaving school many years ago.

One member of the group was Chinese and I spoke some Mandarin with her. Another member of the group was an Irish speaker and I spoke some Irish with her, though she found it a little difficult to understand me as I speak Donegal Irish, while she speaks Munster Irish. The differences between these dialects are not huge, but they take some getting used to.

Word of the day – papelear

By Simon

papelear, verb = to rumage through papers; to make a splash, draw attention to oneself

This word caught my eye while I was looking through my Spanish dictionary today. Though I try to keep the amount paper I use in my home ‘office’ to a minimum, there always seems to be plenty of bits of papers to rumage through.

Related words
papel = paper
papelada = farce, pretence, charade
papelamen = papers, masses of papers
papeleo = paperwork, red tape
papelera = litter bin, wastepaper basket, desk, paper mill
papelería = stationery, stationer (shop), mass/sheaf/heap of papers
papelero = paper, stationer, paper manufacuturer, paper-boy, ridiculous person
papelonero = ridiculous

Word of the day – garganta

By Simon

garganta, noun = throat, gullet, neck, instep, singing voice, gorge, ravine, narrow pass, shaft

Examples of usage
mojar la garganta = to wet one’s whistle (to have a drink)
le tengo atravesado en la garganta = he sticks in my gullet
tener el agua a la garanta = to be in great danger (lit. “to have water in the throat”)

Related words
gargantear, verb = to warble, quaver, trill
garganteo, noun = warble, quaver, trill

This is a word with an interesting range of meanings. You can see how it’s meaning has been metaphorically extended. This is a very common way for words to acquire new meanings. Over time, the orginal metaphorical meanings are forgetten and the words become dead metaphors.

In The Unfolding of Language, Guy Deutscher claims that metaphor is main way we use to describe abstract concepts. Even such every day words as have, in, behind and front were once metaphors. In many cases, the meanings of words for parts of the body are extended to embrace abstractions. Front, for example, originally meant ‘brow’ or ‘forehead’.