Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Hint: All spanish is pronounced just like it's spelled.
> 
>   Not letter-by-letter, though. Some combinations of letters are
> pronounced differently than those letters alone would be. For example,
> the 'u' in "gu" is pronounced differently than in 'gui' (where it, in
> fact, is not pronounced at all). Moreover, the 'g' in "gu" is pronounced
> differently from the 'g' in "gi".

I didn't know that.

>   The letter 'l' is pronounced differently when it's doubled: "ll"
> (although official Spanish grammar considers 'l' and 'll' two distinct
> letters of the alphabet, to be precise).

Yeah. This and the "c" / "ch" are considered single letters. Like, in 
the dictionary, "lk" and "Lm" don't surround "ll". I think "r" and "rr" 
do the same thing, too. That's sort of what I was implying by "some of 
the letters are pronounced in unexpected ways."  I think the accents (as 
in stress on sylables) are very consistent too.

>   The pronounciation of the letter 'x' varies according to which
> (Spanish-speaking) country you are in. Maybe even inside the same country.

I'm sure stuff has drifted.  It's a heck of a lot more consistent than 
English, tho!

>   IIRC, there are no words in Spanish which start with an 's' and with
> the second letter being a consonant. If a Spanish-speaking person tries
> to pronounce a foreign word like that, he will usually instinctively
> pronounce an 'e' at the beginning of the word (ie. before the 's'), for
> some reason (I never understood why).

Cool. A lot of the oriental languages (mandarin, japanese) have mainly 
sylables with one consonant. (I.e., every consonant is close to a 
vowel.) So you don't get words like "consonants", which are easy for me 
to pronounce and hard for most people I know who grew up speaking chinese.

A funny story. "Hoya" is the spanish word for "cove" (as in, a bay of 
water good for parking boats). When the british/americans/English 
speakers took over the town next to where I live, they asked the spanish 
living there what it was called.  "La Hoya."  The brits then said 
"Hmmm... But it's spanish. Better mark it on the maps as "La Jolla".

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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