Amiga Mia

You will hopefully find that your favourite Spanish guide or dictionary has a division on pronunciation. If that section is in any way typical, it will deal largely with the pronunciations of person sounds of the language. It’s surely a helpful starting point to consider how to pronounce, say, “the Spanish rolled r” or “the Spanish ‘i’ vowel” in isolation, or in sure example words. But your system for bettering your pronunciation likewise needs to go beyond this letter-by-letter or sound-by-sound approach.

If you want your speech to sound as natural and intelligible as possible, the rhythm of your speech may be just as indispensable as, say, the quality of person vowels. As an illustration of the importance of rhythm in speech, think in English when it comes to how you’d discern a ‘lighthouse keeper’ from a ‘light housekeeper’. In this article, I’ll outline two primary elements of rhythm and how they work in Spanish: syllabification and stress. Syllabification is the routine of organising the sounds of a word or utterance into syllables, and may differ a little from language to language. Informally, when we clap a word or phrase, we clap once to each syllable[1].

By ‘stress’ we mean making sure syllables prominent relative to others around them. For example, in English, the initial syllable is stressed in the words ‘Inca’ and ‘impotent’, whereas the second syllable is stressed in ‘incur’ and ‘important’.

1. Syllabification

A key to giving your Spanish a more natural rhythm is to understand a routine called diphthongisation: that is, making two vowels portion a single syllable. Whenever you see a ‘i’ or ‘u’ vowel next to another vowel in Spanish, you need to think when it comes to diphthongisation:

(1) if the ‘i’ or ‘u’ is the stressed vowel– normally written with an accent, as in ‘María’, ‘país’ (“country”), ‘dúo’ (“duet”) or ‘búho’ (“owl”)– then the two vowels will form discerned syllables: Ma.rí.a, pa.ís, dú.o, bú.(h)o (remember, the Spanish letter ‘h’ isn’t pronounced);

(2) otherwise, the ‘i’ or ‘u’ will normally be pronounced in the same syllable as the vowel next to it: so Spanish speakers would pronounce ‘San Die.go’ as three syllables, not four as in English ‘San Di.e.go’; Spanish ‘u.sual’ is two syllables, equated to English ‘u.su.al’. In these cases the ‘i’ or ‘u’ “glides” into the other vowel, a bit like an English ‘y’ or ‘w’. In other cases, it could “glide out” of the other vowel, as in ‘au.la’ (“classroom”, “lecture hall”), ‘seis’ (“six”).

Variation

Especially in a heap of elements of Spain, there is a heap of variation to (2): there’s a more outstanding tendency towards distinguished syllables at the beginnings of words (e.g. ‘bi.ó.lo.go’, altho ‘bió.lo.go’ is also possible), and where one word with unquestionably distinguished syllables has an influence on another by analogy. Thus, the word ‘ví.a’ (“road”, “route”, “way”), always pronounced as two syllables, have a tendancy to influence speakers’ pronunciation of ‘vi.a.ble’ (“viable”); ‘rí.e’ (“he/she laughs”) have a tendancy to influence ‘ri.en.do’ (“laughing”), whereas on the other hand speakers would in general pronounce ‘sien.do’ (“being”) as two syllables[2].

The ‘vosotros’ verb forms and triphthongs

Note that the endings of ‘vosotros’ verb forms always integrate a diphthong. In a few cases, an ‘i’ or ‘u’ vowel may take place both before and after another vowel, resulting in a triphthong: three vowels sharing a syllable. Examples include ‘vosotros’ form of regular -iar verbs (so ‘(vosotros) cambiáis’ will be pronounced in just two syllables: ‘cam.biáis’) and a few other words such as ‘buey’ (“ox”; “idiot”) and ‘Pa.ra.guay’.

Syllabification in normal speech

The patterns we’ve staged above utilise to what we might call ‘careful’ speech: for example, the style applied by a newsreader reading from the autocue. In normal, relaxed speech, diphthongisation goes a couple of stages further:

(1) any two vowels next to each other tend to percentage a syllable;

(2) even across word boundaries, two vowels may portion a syllable.

So in careful speech, ‘poeta inglés’ (“English poet”) would be syllabified ‘po.e.ta.ing.lés’, in five syllables, but in normal, relaxed speech would tend to be ‘poe.taing.lés’; ‘come y toma’ (“eat and drink”) would be ‘co.mei.to.ma’; ‘mi amigo’ would be ‘mia.mi.go’ etc. The word ‘zanahoria’ (“carrot”) is often pronounced as three syllables, ‘za.na(h)o.ria’: as brought up before, the ‘h’ isn’t pronounced and doesn’t affect syllabification.

2. Stress

In general, each Spanish word has precisely one stressed syllable (with a couple of exclusions we’ll consider in a moment). The “default” is for the next-to-last syllable to be stressed, and is reckoned to be the case for in regards to 80% of words[3]; words ending in a consonant except plural -s are regularly stressed on the final syllable. Where the stressed syllable of a word isn’t envisioned by these rules– and even in a great deal of cases where it is– the stressed syllable is marked with a written accent, as in ‘fácil’ (“easy”), ‘métrico’ (“metric”). But even when the regular rules apply, subtly, we will have to utilise the above diphthongisation rules in counting syllables. Thus, in ‘monopolio’ (“monopoly”), it is the next-to-last ‘o’ that is stressed: mo.no.pó.lio, since the final -lio forms a single syllable. In the word ‘continuo’, the ‘i’ is stressed, as the word is syllabified ‘con.ti.nuo’, in three syllables, not four (unlike English ‘con.ti.nu.ous’).

A couple of exclusions to the one-stress-per-word rule are worth mentioning. Firstly, a few “function words” don’t in general have any stressed syllable at all. These include:

- possessives (‘mi’, ‘tu’ etc);

- clitic pronouns (the pronouns that come before the verb: ‘me’, ‘te’, ‘se’ etc);

- single-syllable prepositions (‘de’, ‘por’, ‘a’ etc);

- respective conjunctions when not applied in a direct question (‘cuando’, ‘mientras’, ‘quien’ etc).

Where these non-stress-carrying words end in a vowel, they’re ripe nominees for forming a diphthong with the following word in rapid speech, as in ‘mi amigo’ (“my friend”: mia.mi.go), ‘me apuro’ (“I’ll hurry up”: mea.pu.ro) ‘de otra manera’ (“another way”: deo.tra.ma.ne.ra).

Finally, Spanish adverbs ending in -mente are the greediest of words, and in general have two stressed syllables. In effect, the suffix -mente is treated as a word in it is own right in terms of stress (and actually derives from the word for ‘mind’); then, the adverb carries another stress in the place of the sameness adjective. For example, ‘fácil’ (“easy”) is stressed on the firstborn syllable; ‘fácilmente’ (“easily”) is stressed on both the primary and next-to-last syllables. The word ‘frecuente’ (“frequent”, “common”) is regularly stressed on the next-to-last syllable (the ‘cuen’, containing diphthong of course!); the adverb ‘frecuentemente’ (“frequently”, “commonly”, “often”) on both the ‘cuen’ and ‘men’.

Conclusion

In this article, we’ve staged a lot of pointers towards bettering the rhythm of your Spanish pronunciation. If you may get into the habit of following the patterns we’ve presented, this will support make your Spanish sound more natural and intelligible to native speakers.

Notes

[1] This is evidently an informal, intuition-based definition of ‘syllable’. The Spanish pronunciation division of the Español-Inglés web internetlocation gives a more formal definition.

[2] For more details and examples, see: Chitaron, I. & Hualde, J. I. (2007), “From hiatus to diphthong: the evolution of vowel sequences in Romance” in Phonology (24):37-35.

[3] Source: Alcoba, S. & Murillo, J. (1998), “Intonation in Spanish” in “Intonation Systems: A Survey of Twenty Languages”, CUP.

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