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Words beginning with an a which should be feminine (eg agua (water) and ave (bird)) have the gender changed to avoid the Spanish habit of running words ending with an a and one starting with an a. Otherwise la agua would be pronounced la gua and la ave would be la ve. They change it to el so it stays as el agua and el ave and splits the words.
The same with y for and when followed by a word beginning with i. This changes from y to e, as in nacional e internacional (as opposed to nacional y internacional).
The letter b and v are interchangeable and it seems to be a cross between the two sounds, always softer and more akin to b than v. I have seen Viquini (bikini) advertised in shops as well as Biquini and vikini.
The use of a soft c (th) before i or e mirrors that of English, we use a hard c unless followed by an i or an e (bacon, receive). The letter g is the same in both Spanish and English as being hard unless followed by an i or an e (in English, general pronounced with a j, in Spanish general sounding the same as a J. To keep the hard sound, a u is placed before the i or the e to keep it hard - For example guerra (war) and guisantes (peas). (All those who pronounce margarine as marjarine have got it wrong all these years).
The letter z is also interchangeable with the lisping letter c such as zanahoria (carrots) and stays soft no matter what letter follows it.
The lisping letter c (th) is also more common throughout Andalucia and the central areas. Other places it becomes more like an s sound. it is always s in Central and South America.
The y and ll sounds are slightly different. The ll has a hint of an ly pronunciation. Paella should be pronounced more like pie el ya as opposed to pie ay a.
There are no double letters in Spanish (with a couple of reservations). The Ll is a separate letter, The rr sound is not a double letter as it is pronounced as two separate letters. If you want to pronounce a double r, you should learn to roll your r's. Try Ferrocarril (railway) which is ferrrrrrrrrrrrrocarrrrrrial (one of my favourite words) and the cc is again pronounced as two separate letters, one hard and one soft (accidente , aksidentay or akthidentay in some areas). The letter k is not Spanish (nor Latin for that matter) and only appears in "foreign" words such as kilometro.
I will be moving permanently to Spain next year in the Quesada area. I would be quite happy, once or twice a week, to run basic Spanish lessons in pronunciation, what to do at the shops, etc, if anyone is interested. Absolutely free of charge, just someone provide the coffee and sandwiches at each session. It is now 16 years since I passed my civil service linguist exam so I would find it handy to brush up on my fluency (fluent in Spanish, by the way, is fluido which is quite apt as I tend to speak it better when the tonsils are lubricated). Anyone interested and I will give them a shout nearer the time.
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Bobaol, thanks for the explanation about using el with a feminine word, makes much more sense now and being able to apply a basic rule is so much easier. These are the tips you don't get when trying to teach yourself a language.
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Jacqui
http://relocatetospain.blogspot.com our adventure from deciding to move to Spain to being here and moving back to the UK.
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Hopefully we will be in a position to take you up on that kind offer Bobaol. 
_______________________
If you're going through hell keep on going, you might get out before the devil even knows you're there.
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Hello,
Just thought I would post a new sentence...We have the greetings so far, buenos días, buenas tardes (good afternoon) and buenas noches (good night) so now we could go into asking someone for their name:
¿Cómo te llamas? komo tay yamas (I´m not very good at spelling out pronunciation!) What is your name? In Spanish there is always an upside-down question mark at the start and end of a question. The same with exclamation marks.
Me llamo Carolyn may yamo Carolyn My name is Carolyn
¿Y tú? ee too And you?
Something to practise! I´m sure many of you know this but it´s best for everybody to understand from the beginning I think!
¡Que tengáis un buen día! - Have a nice day!
PS Please correct me if you spot a mistake! This message was last edited by LifeOverseas on 3/31/2008.
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www.lifeoverseas.com
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Hi Bobaol,
I think that in general your response is very good.
But can you please clarify these? la amapola and not el amapola, el agua not la agua, la avalancha and not el avalancha .......
You have words like salt that you can use the femenine and masculine form: la sal, el sal
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Esteruca
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Further to LifeOverseas' post about upside down question marks etc.....I think this came up somewhere a while back but may be useful here. If you are using an English keyboard, you can still look fluent, even if your pronunciation is crap!
Hold down ALT GR and any vowel gives you the accents: á,é,ó,í,ú
Hold down ALT and 0241 = ñ, 0191 = ¿, 0161 = ¡
¡Saludos!
_______________________
"Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please"
Mark Twain
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Hey, I didn't invent the language, esteruca, simply murder it now and again.
I think I mentioned el agua. Maybe a poppy and an avalanche aren't common enough to go through a sex change. I thought salt was la sal, however I stand to be (and probably will be) corrected.
It's bit like learning all the regular verb foundations and then being given a book that's 50 pages thick with a list of irregular verbs.
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Hey Bobaol,
Don´t get upset about it. I think you are doing great. I am a castellano speaker from the north and we speak the proper castellano. I only was trying to let you know that it does not work always like that.
I am happy to help if I can. I wish my english was as good as your spanish.
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Esteruca
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La sal is the only correct way recognised by the spanish academy of languages (but a lot of people used el sal).Well done. My mistake I was thinking in -la mar, - el mar and I choose the wrong one. SORRY
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Esteruca
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Buenos días,
¡Vamos a aprender la frase del día! (We´re going to learn today´s sentence!)
Yesterday we did what´s your name, today we´re going to do the how are you stuff...
¿Qué tal? kay tal How´s it going?
¿Cómo estás? komo estas How are you?
¿Qué hay? kay I What´s up?
Muy bien, gracias mowee beeyen gratheeas very good thanks
Estupendo (think that one´s self-explanatory) Fantastic
Con sueño kon sooenyo Tired/sleepy
There are many more, but these would probably get you by. Any questions, additions, corrections just ask!
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www.lifeoverseas.com
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Mañana = not today, i.e. any time after today, but not necessarily tomorrow (commonly misunderstood to mean the day after today)
a partir de las 10:00 = from 10:00am, i.e. definitely not before 10:00am, but could be anytime after 10:00am, that is, maybe sometime this year (maybe not, though)
I hope our Spanish contributors will not be offended by this, and take it in the manner it is intended.  I have had a couple of really frustrating days waiting in for developers / architects / builders etc. etc., and as you can tell, I'm hacked off!
_______________________
"Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please"
Mark Twain
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Very funny. I totally agree with you.
The word "mañana" in the south has a completly different meaning that in the rest of Spain. JA, JA, JA
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Esteruca
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Buenas tardes a todos
Hoy vamos a aprender cómo se dice "nice to see you/nice to meet you" Today we are going to learn how to say...
Me alegro de verte may alegrow day bertay Nice to see you
Encantado/a (de conocerte) encantado day konothertay Nice to meet you
In the above, if you are a man you say encantado and if you are a woman you say encantada. de conocerte in brackets is not necessary but you can say it if you want.
Days of the week:
Monday Lunes loonez
Tuesday Martes martez
Wednesday Miércoles meeyerkolez
Thursday Jueves who-ebez
Friday Viernes beeyernez
Saturday Sábado sabado
Sunday Domingo domeengo
¡Hasta pronto! See you soon!
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www.lifeoverseas.com
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Still watching and learning,muchos gracias contributors
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If you're going through hell keep on going, you might get out before the devil even knows you're there.
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Useful words:
a la izquierda (on the left)
a la derecha (on the right)
todo recto (straight on)
Hay - pronounced eye. meaning is there or there is. Very useful if you want to know whether something's available - hay albondigas (mi favorito).
What I cannot get my head around is when to use what tense. I understand past, present and future, but the Spanish have 13 tenses!
I'm starting another class at the end of April.
Can anyone recommend some music I could listen to that would help me understand the spoken word better? Something modern, but preferably not rap ('cos I'm old you see!)
Irene
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Hi Irene,
I think that Sergio´s Dalma music could help you. He sings very clear, pronunciating the words correctly and he "looks good". What else you want?
Checked his web page and listen his music. www.sergiodalma.es
If this is not your type of music give us more clues.
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Esteruca
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Will look for Sergio Dalma. Until I've had to start learnign Spanish used to hate OH's CDs of Ricky Martin & his dad Julio but now I listen to them to try and understand the words not just the music. As I prefer Spanish classical guitar though not really able to advise on who to listen to.
If you've got sky there's a Spanish channel - sorry can't remember the number just now. OH watches it a lot so helping to improve my woeful skills.
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Just small correction, Ricky Martin is not Julio´s son. Enrique Iglesias is.
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Esteruca
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I´m just going to say which is my current favourite group in Spain, La Quinta Estación. This group is basically pop and they also sing pretty clearly. PLus the main singer is reeealy good!
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www.lifeoverseas.com
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