Write a Simple one page English pronunciation guide for Spanish speakers

Public Clarification Board

• 

  mikelbeth

  • 5 years ago

  Hi! I'm also excited to see an opportunity like this open up. I am not formally trained in linguistics, but it is one of my passions. I speak conversational Spanish, and I am in the process of teaching my three-year-old daughter to speak it and to read it. My approach was to consider what kind of guide I'd like to have if I were a Spanish-speaking mother trying to teach her three-year-old daughter to speak English. I do have four years of university-level conversational Spanish language classes. I wrote the guide in English - would you prefer it submitted in Spanish also?

  • 5 years ago
  1. 
     Contest Holder

     • 5 years ago

     Your entry was great! The only thing my reviewer had a question about was the two different pronunciations for "Y". He says that "Y" only has one sound. He said that the "ay" has a unique sound. Does that make sense to you?

     • 5 years ago
  2. 

     mikelbeth

     • 5 years ago

     I think it makes sense - however, that is referring to the English sounds for Y (e.g. try, baby) ... It is true that Y only has one sound - but in Spanish. Hope this clears things up. Let me know if there are any other questions.

     • 5 years ago
• 

  arguedasr

  • 5 years ago

  Hi I'm a professor of English and have studied lingusitics. Firstly, I must say I am thrilled to see such a contest opening. Secondly, I'd like to address something that bothers me. I would like to see the work completed but am curious. Take this as an example, the "a" in apple and the "a" in cat are phonetically transcribed as /ae/. The word "man" is also trnscribed as /ae/. However, most speakers of English would agree that "man" and "apple" have distinct qualities to them. For instance, in "man" it almost sounds like "eh-an" while in apple it's slightly different, it moves from "a" to "eh". Just struck me as curious. The rest of sounds are similar. In total there are supposed to be 15 vocalic sounds and about 24 consonants in the English language, phonetically speaking. Also English has many more exceptions than spanish (voiced h, versus silent h, voiced and voiceles counterparts, aspirated consonants etc). I would very much like to help on your project, it sounds very interesting.

  • 5 years ago
  1. 
     Contest Holder

     • 5 years ago

     Thank you for your information. You are obviously qualified. I do want this guide to be a SIMPLE one page guide. I don't want anything as complicated as phonetics because this guide is for the average Spanish speaking parent and I'm sure many of them don't understand phonetics (just like most English speaking parents don't understand phonetics). Look at my guide as an example of the style and depth of teaching I want.

     • 5 years ago
  2. 

     arguedasr

     • 5 years ago

     I did. I understand and yes something basic can be acheived. Some sounds would be omitted. The difficulty lies in the fact that for every english vowel there are several sounds (allophones and allomorphs). If I have time I would like to prepare something to help you!

     • 5 years ago
• 

  arguedasr

  • 5 years ago

  The rest of the sounds*
  
  Also, English has.....Spanish.
  
  Excuse my grammar and mechanics there, I had typed the message and accidentally hit the "back" arrow on Chrome so I typed fast without editing the message.

  • 5 years ago

Show more comments