... or more specifically, "rr." My new pet peeve.
Allow me to explain. First of all, most of you know that I can't roll r's to save my life, therefore, I can't pronounce the Spanish r sound. My fallback default, the French r sound, is not correct either. So I get the choice of swallowing my r's (and sounding like I'm dying) or saying the horrible American pronounciation of the letter r, you know, as in the word "argh". Put that sound into "arriba." Just doesn't quite sound right.
But, I am taking Spanish classes, and I've been workin on it, and now I don't sound quite so horribly American, and I thought I was doing okay.
Then EGAD! I started working at Warmi. Most of the kids there speak both Spanish and Quechua, so they have weird accents. That and they talk like kids. For a while, I just didn't understand what they were saying. Then slowly, it dawned on me that they pronounce some sounds differently.
Por ejemplo: we were talking about Shrek. For some reason, the kids think I have a crush on Donkey, who in Spanish is called "Burro." But do they pronounce it Burro? No, they pronounce it Bujo. Once I realized that, I freaked out a little bit, but then I remember reading something about that in our orientation package. So I calmed down a bit.
Then, I met a guy who runs the youth group at my work, who introduced himself as "Zay". I asked him about it, and he said it was short for "Zaynaldo." Oh! You mean "Reynaldo!" Yes, that's what it was.
Thus, I come to the following conclusion: the letter R is out to get me.
This broadcast also brought to you by the number 3.
1 comment:
Ou're bugged by "rr". I'm bugged by "y". Take the word "I," spelled "yo."
In Chile, it's pronounced "jo."
In Ecuador and Costa Rica, it's pronounced "yo."
In Columbia, Venezuela, and parts of Argentina, it's prounced "gho"
Now, multiply this by every word where the letter "y" shows up, and don't forget to change the pronunciation in the process.
It's almost as bad as the psky gender problem. Every noun has a gender. There are simple rules about changing endings to associate la and el with the noun. For instance:
la puerta -- the door, feminine
el puerto -- the seaport, male
Now, these are the same word, just with the gender switched. If you don't remember that doors are female, you will do what I did in Antofagasta, Chile, one day -- try to convince a hotelier that the seaport is closed and won't open.
Augh.
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