Spanish: An Essential Grammar

before consonants: as

s(especially in Spain)

explicar

, extenso

in Mexico: sometimes like Spanish

j

México

, Oaxaca

y

i griega

at the beginning of words and between vowels: as in English

yet

,

yema

, mayoría

but in parts of Latin America, especially the River Plate and Chile, like

s

in

pleasure

at the end of a word and as the conjunction y: = Spanish

i

rey

z

zeta

or as

th

in

thin

in the centre and north of Spain

zorro

, mazorca

zeda

as

s in

six

in most of the Spanish-speaking world including Andalusia

and Latin America (

seseo

)

apart from the name of the letter itself,

z

is very rare before

e

and

i,

being replaced by

c, e.g.

feliz

but

felices

. Amongst the few exceptions

are:

Nueva Zelanda

, Zimbabwe

, zigzag

Notes

:

1 The letters of the alphabet are feminine, e.g.

la efe

. In contrast to most nouns, the names for letters use the feminine article

la

even when they begin

with a stressed

a, i.e.

la a

, la hache

(cf.

el agua

, el hacha

). The plurals add -

s, with the exception of vowels, which add -

es

: efes

, aes

, ees

(or

es

),

íes

, oes

, úes

.

2 Each Spanish vowel has a single sound, whereas English vowels may have different sounds in the same word, or may not even be

pronounced at all, e.g.

Gibraltar

, accommodation

, trouble

. The vowel sounds themselves in Spanish are also single, and

never

diphthongs as in

hate

, pure

.

3 Typical of Spanish is the fact that concurrent vowels at the end of one word and beginning of the next (even if separated by

h) are run together, espe-

cially if they are the same: e.g.

está

_aquí

, mi

_hijo

, venga

_usted

, hasta

_hoy

.

4 In general, double consonants are less common in Spanish than English (

ll

and

rr

are considered to be single elements in their own right).

Nn

exists in

a few words, e.g.

ennegrecer

, innato

, and

cc

only when each

c

has a different sound, e.g.

occidente

, fracción

. Since there are no other double

consonants, words such as

profesor

, imposible

, or

difícil

, should pose no spelling problem for speakers of English.

5 Learners of Spanish need to take special care when in regions where

seseo

is the norm, since words with different spelling can have exactly the same pro-

nunciation, e.g.

sebo

‘grease’ and

cebo

‘bait’,

casa

‘house’ and

caza

‘hunt’,

cegar

‘to blind’,

segar

‘to reap/mow’,

ves

‘you see’ and

vez

‘time/occasion’.