In the alphabet soup of life, I pick aitch
How weird is the alphabet? A J and K sound alike (unless you are a Scot – they say jiy, not jay)B C D G P T V sound alike – and if you are American, Z joins that bunch
E L M N S X sound alike
I J (Sottish) and Y sound alike
Q U W are linked
O, R and Z (English) stand alone but none are so utterly odd as H.
In English, it is aitch
In Spanish, hache – you might think hash, like cache? oh no. You say it, uh-cheh.
As an utterly odd person (out and proud), I’m looking for another H. Hopefully a hero not a heel.
Since J and Z have alternate pronunciations maybe other letters do in your version of English - maybe even H folds quietly into the mix as a simple he. But I suspect H is always the one which sneaked in from galaxies far far away. I mean, look at it. It's just - different.
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And ..... continuing to learn the Spanish alphabet. As you were.
Comments (27)
This might be off topic ( MiMi’s fault as usual
They’d end up as ‘ospital’ and ‘ouse’
True story
Hmmm. Maybe I'm not an aitch
There is a definite hay sound at the beginning of our aitch
By the way, the Spanish J is easy for Irish people as Irish is a gutteral language with the same sound. The rolling r no.
The Spanish Y? don't get me started! Luckily it is increasingly said as yeh and not its original WEIRRRRRRRRRD name.
Anyway the only way I can really learn anything is to re-invent the wheel for myself, reverse engineer it so to speak so I understand from the bottom up. I don't know much, but what I know, I know inside out
And W
Those are my favourites, but Y is definitely number one.
Afrikaans pronunciation sounds like:
A - ah
B - beer
C - sear
D - deer
H - ha
J - year
K - car
P - peer
Q - key (closest I can think of)
T - tear (crying)
V - fear
The J in spanish has always been my problem but... in Catalan, or Portuguese, pronounced j a h is just right for me.
Imagine my son´s name being "Jonathan" - in German: Yonatan.... French: Jonatan (ge) and Spanish... and Portuguese?
When living in Germany, I had 3 Japanese visitors who came on business and I invited them to our house as I was supposed to entertain them during their stay.
This was their first time in Europe and their English was just basic.
Anyway, when introducing themselves, I asked them for their first names and also to write them down - with the Roman alphabet, of course!
Then, they were very surprised to hear us pronouncing their names the way it should be.
A sudden conversation went on between the three of them and I didn´t have a clue about what they were talking about?
Then... the spokesperson decided to translate it in English and said that we were the only ones who could pronounce their names as they had not had much luck with the Germans, so far!
Then... I had to give them a lesson about the different languages in Europe....
They had assumed that there was only ONE common language!
So I gave my son´s name (Jonathan) as an example and how it was pronounced in various languages.
That really made their day and they had to make notes in their little books so they could tell their colleagues at work.
I myself had learned a lot too during their stay.