Another Easy Prounciation: I
Monday November 9, 2009
After last week's challenge of learning to pronounce the g and j, we're back an easy letter: i. Despite what you might initially think, it basically has what we call the long-E or "ee" sound of English. And once you've mastered the i — it's not hard — you'll also have learned the y.
Comments
I’m surprised you didn’t mention that many people actually don’t pronounce the Spanish “y” as the same as “i” (although I’m sure many do). It’s often like a French J, though often with a softer sound than that. (Of course, this only applies when it comes before a vowel, not in words like “rey”.)
By the way, you have a typo in the article: you spelled “origin” as “origen”. I suppose for some reason you had the Spanish spelling in mind.
- Kef
And a few times I’ve heard speakers pronounce the y something like the ll (which are pronounced differently in some areas, but not all). I don’t know if that’s a regional variation or an overcorrection or what.
Origen, origen. On my bad days I find myself spelling words like “depression” with a single “s” and making similar mistakes. I used to be a great speller! The spell checker would catch those mistakes if I didn’t have both languages loaded into my dictionaries.