Master the most confusing Spanish sounds!

Hola, soy Ana, your Spanish teacher here at Butterfly Spanish. Have you had breakfast? ¿Ya desayunaste? Yo ya, ya desayuné, por eso tengo energía. Mi mamá me hizo unos huevos con frijoles. And you? Do you have to make your own breakfast? My mom made me breakfast. You have to make your own breakfast? Well, I hope so, because you need energy to learn Spanish. Today, I'm going to give you, I'm going to teach you some important aspects of pronunciation in Spanish. And with this, I hope you can improve your pronunciation and you can also improve your ortografía, ortography. So let's go and do our review for Spanish sounds. So you sound good in Spanish. So you say the words correctly. Muy bien, bueno, ¿qué te parece? Tarán, aquí tengo mi pizarrón con los primeros puntos. With the first three points of what I'm going to teach you. And there's going to be seven points. So in this first part, we're going to see the be and the uve. Be y uve. Now, this is a constant problem for you. And it shouldn't be. Because unlike English, in Spanish, the be and the uve have the same sound, which is the sound of the be. See, the be. Like the be you would say in English. Be. Many of you ask me again and again. Don't break your brain. Don't think about it. It's not worth it. There's no such a difference in Spanish. And I mean, whoever says otherwise, send them to me. I'll fight for you. Because there is really no difference. I mean, you say be, we learn it as be de burro, like be of donkey. Be de burro, because donkey is burro, and that's how you spell the word with be. Be burro. Y be de vaca, cow. Like be of donkey, be of cow. See, be of donkey or be of cow. No, you hear me. Burro, vaca. Oh, Ana, you sound the same. You sound the same. And now let's go to other words. For example, bebida, a drink. Bebida, bebida, a drink. Bebida, bebida. Oh, sí, Ana, sí, suena igual, suena igual. Muy bien. Convencional, convencional, conventional. Now you might hear the, you're gonna say, it sounds a little bit different. Yeah, I detect some difference. I wanna play it again, I wanna play it again, because I think there is a difference. So if you're going to be the Spanish pronunciation police, go ahead. You might hear a difference, but that's because sometimes these two letters, the sounds of these two letters might be affected by the letters that are between them. You see, sometimes your surroundings affect your life, right? The same happens with the letters. They are affected by their surroundings. They might not act the same, they might not be the same, but it's not on purpose. They are not trying to confuse you or make your life more difficult or make your learning more difficult. No, it just happens that these letters are affected by their surroundings. So if you see the be de vaca before, like after an N, right, an M or whatever, like between words, your tongue might take harder to say be, be, be, right? It might be pronounced softer, but it's not intentional because based on the academy of the language, there's no such a difference. It's not like it is in English, right? If I say, often I said the wrong thing and they say like, what? Oh no, it's ve. That's because I'm a Spanish speaker. So I mispronounce some words that in English have a V or a B. My language affects, my native language affects my second language, right? So you might, that's why I have an accent, right? I'm not, I'm not, I'm not an English speaker. I wish, you know, I lived in, maybe in New York. Sure, take it. Yeah, I mean, but whatever. Anyway, I'm not going to get to the mountain. So you see, in essence, no, in essence, they are the same. They are the same. They have the same sound, ve. Ve de burro y ve de vaca en español tienen el mismo sonido. No hay diferencia. Not, not based on the books. No, no, not based on the, I don't know, the royal, with the academy of the language. But yes, it, sometimes it might be different because of its surroundings. So it's not the same when you start a word and you start with everything or when you're going through a word and your tongue kind of flips around your, your palate and your lower and your teeth and all of it, right? So you have to be like making like that, those things. I don't know how to call those things with your tongue. So in essence, you say burro or vaca, right? It's like the same. When, when I start a lesson, I start all energetic, right? So when you start the word, you're like burro, vaca, same sound, right? When I start a lesson, I'm all energetic, whatever. When I finish a lesson, I'm like, yeah, you know, yeah, I spin it, wake up. That's because sometimes, you know, in the middle or close to the end of the word might sound different. Muy bien? Now, let's get over that. Get over that. Really, get over it. It's the same, okay? All right, I'm not gonna get so upset today. I'm gonna have to have like anger management, like books out now. Reading more. The H, the H in Spanish, we call it, we call it la H muda. The mute H, la H muda. And why? ¿Por qué? ¿Alguien sabe por qué? Does anybody know why? ¿Por qué? Porque no tiene sonido. It doesn't have a sound. So, for example, if you're an English speaker, the H has a sound. Hello. Hola. Hello. You see, that's a H, hello. En español, no tiene sonido. Sorry, no tiene sonido. So, when you see words such as hilo, you know what hilo is? Thread, thread, you know? Sometimes I do that. Fix my clothes with hilo, ¿no? Aguja e hilo. Hilo y aguja. Needle and thread. Muy bien. Hilo. Am I saying hilo? No. I'm saying hilo. As if I were in my, as if I were not using my reading glasses and I don't see it, you know? I need different augmentation. Hilo. Because it's there, but it doesn't have a sound. Hilo. Huevo. Egg. Huevo. I told you, I had eggs for breakfast with my mom and some huevos con frijoles. Huevo. Am I saying huevo? Huevo. No. Huevo. So, it doesn't have a sound, okay? So, we're gonna move on because it's not worth expanding. I mean, I could tell you a lot of stories about the H, you know? The H actually has been very present in my life. Let's get over it because it's huevo, huevo. Hilo, hilo. Hoyo, hoyo. Hueco, hueco. Hueso, bo, no? Hueso. Many words start with H. We don't pronounce it, okay? Muy bien. Now, here I just put the sounds, right? Because you might have a problem pronouncing it. So, hilo, huevo, huevo. Siguiente. Now, we're gonna go to the vowels. Las vocales en español. We have five vowels. And guess what? We have five sounds. Wonderful. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to learn the vowels in English? It's very difficult. And there's no five sounds. And there's tons. Like, I don't even know how many sounds and vowels. It gets really complicated. Therefore, I have an accent. Just get too much, you know, at some point. How easy can it be for you? Five vowels, five sounds. Cinco vocales, cinco sonidos. Dun, dun, dun, see? A, a, e, i, o, u. Back in the day when I was a child, we used to sing this song. A, e, i, o, u. El burro sabe más que tú. Oh, I guess to bully each other. I don't know. It was like, a, e, i, o, u. The donkey knows more than you. We used to say that. I don't remember why we used to say that. Sorry. A, e, i, o, u. Now, we have a, ala. Like wing in Spanish. It's ala. When you know when you give some wings to somebody, it's when you give it like the, like, like, I might go out with you. Like, oh, don't give him wings. Things like that. Like, don't make him or her fly. No, don't give him wings. You don't really like him or like, side story. Um, e, tele, no? Short for televisión. E, tele, tele, tele, e, tele. Oh, we're gonna go here. Pepe, you know, pepe, pepe. It's short for José. Do you know that? Short, like, it's not short, really. It's like only one fewer letter, but to the José's, we call them pepe, pepe. And then, okay, we're gonna see e, tele, pepe, e. So, we have a, e. You see, see my mouth. This is my mouth. A, e. It like, goes like flattened a bit, you know. Goes like a, e. It's longer. E, oh, even, gets even longer. Like e, a bit like freaky e in Spanish. Nido, nest, nido, ni. It's like ni. La i, i, i, i, ni, ni, do, ni, do. ¿Escuchas bien? I. Es muy importante that you see, that you are very aware of the difference between e and i. It gets messed up, right, in English, really. I, I, no? I, I, i. En Español es e, i, e, i. Por ejemplo, nido, nido, is like a i, i. Larga, long. O, o. Now, after having a, e, i, o. O, poco, coco. Poco, a little. Coco, coconut. En México decimos coco, coconut, coco. Poco, coco. O, o, o. You're in tu caballo. O, o. So the mouth goes like that, it goes o. It's strange, I know. But you go like a, e, i, o. And then what we have? U. The u is like a fish, like a fish mouth. U, u. Gusano, caterpillar. I love this word, gusano, caterpillar, gusano. Gu, like imagine, gu, gu, gu, gu-sa-no, okay, gusano, caterpillar. So you see, here, though I'm not an artist, I have a brother who is an artist. He would have drawn for me like really good mouths. Perfect, but he would have taken a long time. So I cannot invite him. No, could you please draw some like mouths? I interpret like the sounds because he'll be, this gets more complicated, right? So, well, you can see it's like this is sort of the mouth. A, e, i, o, u. Muy importante, a, e, o, e, i, u. So practice those sounds because they are important. And then you'll see in Spanish, no matter how long the word is, it's not going to be difficult because you're going to, you're going to know the sound of each vowel and it makes a huge difference for your pronunciation. Now let's move on to the second part of this video. And speaking of vowels, vocales, ¿no? Hablando de las vocales, la i y la i griega, sí, i, i griega, i griega. Well, let me tell you, la i griega is, sounds like an i, like an i, no, i. When? Okay, let's see when. For example, Isabel, ¿no? Isabel, la reina Isabel, ¿no? A la reina Isabel le gustaba el tamarindo. Like, the queen Isabel used to like tamarind. This is all nonsense, of course, I never talked to her, she never gave me this information, but the i, Isabel, tamarindo. The i, oh, I already know Ana, you already told me that i has a sound. Okay, very well, check this out. Estoy, cansada, estoy, ends with i griega, sí, las palabras que terminan con i griega, the i griega is going to take the sound of the i, estoy, when it ends, right? Now, for example, I am saying, Ana y su perro, Ana and her dog, Ana y su perro. I, como la vocal i, es una i griega, but it's acting like a vowel here, como una i, Ana y su perro. Now, imagine Ana and Isabel go for a walk, how would you write that in Spanish? Ana e Isabel. Why are we not putting an i griega here? Imagine that, it would be Ana y Isabel, it's like it has to be broken. So instead of a i griega, we are going to use an e, because the next word starts with i, ¿entiendes? We are going to say i, i, i, Ana y Isabel. So the i griega at the end of the word or two separate words is going to take the sound of a i, of the vowel i, so they are going to be equal, i, i, except when, for example, I say Ana y Yesenia, Ana y Yesenia. I used to have a friend named Yesenia, I liked her very much, I haven't seen her in many years and I hope she is very well. Ana y Yesenia venden, we used to sell products, Ana y Yesenia. The same, the same letter, different sound, why? Well, because here we are going to, we are using it as a, for example, an and, Ana and Yesenia. And here the i griega is going to start the word, so it has the sound j, between. Let's say a j in English and a, like a j, yes, like j, j, Yesenia, Ana y Yesenia, why? Because this is an and and this is the beginning of a word. So let's see how the i griega and the double l act in the beginning of the words. Now we are going to talk about the i griega, continue talking. Vamos a continuar la i griega y la doble l, no? Esta es una letra, this is a letter and this is called dígrafo, no? Doble l is no longer considered a letter on its own, you find it in the dictionary as a doble l, like past the l. La i griega, when the word starts with that, right? You're going to make the sound no i, as I told you, right? At the end or in the middle, let's say. When it starts, you're going to say ch, cherno, cherno. You know what a cherno is? The son-in-law, no? My son-in-law, mi cherno, yo no tengo cherno, que bueno, no? Imagínate, que horrible. Tire, llanta, cherno, llanta, lo mismo, no? Suenan igual, cherno, llanta. It sounds a bit like, let's say, as I was saying, an English j and the sound sh like ch, ch, like something in between, cherno, llanta. Yeso, you know what yeso is? It's like plaster. They put it on the wall, make this space, yeso. Or the cast, when you break a bone. My brother just recently broke his heel and they had to put yeso, yeso. And it's supposed to be healing on its own. I hope so, otherwise it's going to be not good. Llorar, to cry, llorar. For example, you could say, yo lloro mucho, no? Yo lloro, no, yo no lloro mucho. No, es un ejemplo solamente, no? You're going to be like, why Ana, why do you cry? No, it's just an example. Yo lloro, I cry, yo lloro, yo lloro. It's like as if I were saying, yo, yo, ro. My Halloween letters again, it's okay, you understand my writing. Yo lloro, yo lloro, yo lloro. Yogurt, yogurt. Some people say yogurt, it doesn't have to be with tea, it depends. In English it's more like incorporated already, acclimatized to the Spanish. Llama, llama, it's like the animal, I think you call it llama. But also llama is the flame, no? The flames is las llamas, las llamas, muy dramático, no? Fuego, fire, llamas. Or the animal, muy bonito, cute animal. Y yogurt, mismo. Bueno, me vas a decir, you're going to say, ya cállate, Ana. Ya cállate, Ana. You see? Ya, it starts, the sound, ya, ya, la Y con la A, ya, yo, ya. Cállate, cállate, shut up, shut up, and listen. Que te calles, shut up, and listen. Cállate, so you can hear the sound. I'm not just trying to discipline you for nothing. Cállate, shut up, cállate. Pollo, el pollo. ¿Tú comes pollo? Así con pollo, pollito, en mole, mole verde con pollito, el rosito, muy rico. ¿Ya viste? Ya viste. Llerno, llanta. Pollo, cállate. Entonces vamos a ver, we're going to see that in the beginning of the word or in the middle of the word, these two make the same sound. Pollo, cállate. Ya, cállate. And that's all for today. I hope you enjoyed this review for your pronunciation. Keep watching my lessons about pronunciation and orthography. I think you might, I don't think. You'll probably find them useful and you will improve your Spanish. 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