More about rhythm and vowels
We were talking about the rhythm of words, and how important it is in both English and Spanish.
Understanding where the beat goes in a word is so fundamental to communication, that I am always surprised not to hear it mentioned more often. In our own language, it is completely unconscious; which is all the more reason why we should pay attention to it when learning another language.
We have looked at the three basic rules of word stress in Spanish, which are really straightforward.
They mean that we can always be confident in knowing exactly how a Spanish word should sound by the way that it is spelt, and whether it has an accent or not.
There is one last matter to deal with before we have the whole picture, and this is slightly more complex, but again completely fixed and regular.
The first thing we need to learn is that the five Spanish vowels that we know and love so well, for the purposes of this subject, are divided into ‘ weak’ and ‘ strong’ vowels.
The three strong vowels are A, E, O and the two weak vowels are I and U. If it helps you to remember which one is which, it is connected to the shape of the mouth. A, E and O are sounds made with the mouth wide open, whereas with I and U the mouth is narrower.
As you know, many words in Spanish have combinations of vowels in them, possibly even the majority of words.
There are many thousands of examples, so here are just three – aceite, puedo, residencia. As you will see, each of these words has a different vowel combination ‘ ei’, ‘ ue’, ‘ ia’. In fact, if you look at any text in Spanish you will find examples of every possible combination of vowels.
One or two are less common, and I’ve only ever found one case of ‘ ou’ which is ‘ estadounidense’ ( someone from the United States) which is cheating really as it’s a combination of two words.
Anyway, back to the point. If you look at the three examples ‘ aceite, puedo, residencia’ you will see that in each case the combination is of one weak and one strong vowel ( ei, ue, ia). When this combination occurs, in whichever order, it is counted as one syllable.
Therefore ‘ aceite’ is a three syllable word, ‘ puedo’ is a twosyllable word and ‘ residencia’ is a foursyllable word.
If you remember the rules of stress we learnt last week, you can work out where the beat goes on each of these words.
All three of them fall into the category of words ending in vowels, which have the beat on the last but one syllable. Therefore they sound like this: aCEIte, PUEdo, resiDENcia. In the case of ‘ residencia’ you will see that, since ‘ ia’ counts as one syllable, the beat goes on the syllable before DEN.
If nothing else, this should answer the eternal question – how should we say ‘ farmacia’ which is very often mispronounced by English speakers. Since ‘ ia’ is only one beat, then it has to be ‘ farMAcia’. When two strong vowels are put together, they count as syllables in their own right hence, the next time you need the loo in a restaurant you should ask for the asEo, and not the ‘ Asio’, as it is so often mispronounced. Mind you, they always seem to know where you mean for some strange reason.
Finally, when the beat does actually fall on the weak vowel in a ‘ weakstrong’ combination, this is indicated with an accent: for example ‘ panadería’, the accent making it a fivesyllable word.
I know I have condensed a lot of information into one article, but the idea is that you spend the rest of the week, or month, or year, testing it out for yourself to see if I am telling you the truth, and if I am, to help it stick in your mind.