Spanish 101

If you have heard any Hispanics speak, it seems like they have a machine gun in their mouth spitting out hundreds of words per second. It is really hard to try and understand people when they talk so fast. Of course when Hispanics are learning English, they say we speak very fast.

But there are reasons that the Hispanic speakers truly talk fast. Two of the reasons are uniones and dipthongs. Dipthongs are when two vowels occur together in a word. Take the word for God--Dios. The i and the o occur together. Both letters are pronounced but with the timing of one letter so the pronunciation is very fast. The speed of pronunciation for the two letters is the same as is normal for one letter.

Uniones or unions are when the last letter of a word is a consanant and the first letter of the next word is a vowel. Then you join the two together, only when speaking, to form one syllable. So the words "infundiran aliento" (from the 23rd psalm) become one word. The syllables are divided as follows: in-fun-di-ra-na-lien-to (the ie in lien is a dipthong as well). So now the two words are pronounced as one word making the speech very fast indeed! Trying to understand a new language is hard enough but when 2 words become one word, deciphering what people are saying is a true challenge.

The good news is that when I went to the market this past Saturday, I was so appreciative that all the venders had decided to start talking much more plainly and understandably. I just wanted to thank each and everyone of them. Or maybe I am just learning to understand what they are saying and they have not really changed at all. Either way, it's a good thing!