Alright everyone, let’s start this adventure! Welcome to my second week of learning another language! Honestly, I feel like Spanish won’t be a hard language to learn, but we shall see!

ENGLISH vs SPANISH ALPAHBETS

As a beginner learner, I think it is important to start with the alphabet and pronunciation, as it will give me a solid foundation to learn on. Before I dive into learning the Spanish alphabet and pronunciation, I wanted to pay attention to a few key similarities and differences between English and Spanish languages. Doing so will help me spell in Spanish in no time! After reviewing a several online resources, I put together a comparison summary between the English and Spanish alphabets:

Similarities

• Alphabet origin. Both English and Spanish languages share the same alphabet – the Latin Alphabet. This alphabet, also known as a Roman alphabet, was originally used by ancient Romans, and is now used to write hundreds of different languages.
• The same letters. I find English and Spanish alphabets very similar which makes learning Spanish a lot easier than learning a language with a different alphabet like Japanese, for example.  There is no need to learn a whole new alphabet, how exciting!!

Differences

Number of letters. English alphabet has 26 letters, while Spanish has 27 letters, including the famous Spanish “ñ” letter.

Pronunciation. In comparison to English, Spanish is a very straightforward language when it comes to pronunciation. English language has 44 phonemes, individual speech sounds, while Spanish has only 25! There are way more sounds to learn in English than in Spanish, isn’t it surprising? Each letter has its own sound and will always (with some exceptions) make that sound, no matter where it’s placed in a word. However, there are some different sounds in Spanish language that don’t exist in English.

SPANISH ALPHABET

I found this YouTube video lesson on how to learn Spanish alphabet. It was very helpful: straight to the point and with no long unnecessary pauses, just examples and pronunciation – exactly what I needed to start with! Then I looked for more online resources to find further explanation on each letter, including the examples and tips on how to sound like a native speaker. For example, lesson 1 on the Language Tutor YouTube channel was very easy to learn from. Dr. Danny Evans had very good examples and tips on how to sound like a native speaker. I am enjoying the learning process so far!

Pronunciation Guide and Tips on How to Sounds Like a Native Speaker

Vowels. In Spanish, 90% of pronunciation and reading is knowing your vowels. All vowels are always pronounced the same (unless paired with another vowel). Letter “a” sounds like “aa” (lips and mouth wide open), “e” pronounced as “ey” (lips slightly open and mouth stretched), “i” sounds like “ee” (lips slightly open and mouth stretched), “o” sounds like “oh” (lips rounded and opened slightly), and “u” is pronounced as “oo” (lips rounded and almost fully closed).

Consonants. Most consonants in Spanish sound similar to their English counterparts, with some exceptions:

• letter “h” is always silent
• letter “j” sounds like “h” in English
• letter “g” is pronounced differently depending on the vowel that it follows:

1. when “g” is followed by “a”, “o”, “u”, “ue”, and “ui” vowels, it is  pronounced as a hard “g”, similar to English “go”. For example, gato (cat) and  grande (big);
2. when “g” is followed by “e” and “i”, it is pronounced as a soft “h” sound, similar to the “h” sound in the English word “hello”. For example, gente (people) and gigante (giant).

• letter “ñ” is one of the unique features of the Spanish alphabets and is pronounced like “nio” sound, similar English word “onion”
• “ll” is pronounced like “y”, similar to English “yes”
• letters “b” and “v” sound the same in Spanish, and that can be a little confusing.

To sum up, I think this week was very productive. Using various online resources, I learned a lot about similarities and differences between English and Spanish alphabets, as well as unique letters and sounds in Spanish language. Below is a video of me saying Spanish alphabet with an example for each letter. Wish me luck for next week, when I take on learning the numbers.