+10 in Linguistics

For several years I have been touting video games as an excellent learning tool.  Sometimes I get funny looks and people sort of glaze over as I explain.  That’s fine, not everyone likes games, but I want people to really understand where I am coming from with this. First of all: English. If you area native English speaker and want to expand your vocabulary, play a video game.  I am particularly fond of RPGs for this.  World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, the Elder Scrolls games, Assassin’s Creed... these are all very well known and serve this purpose just fine. Do you need to know what a kobold is? Probably not, but knowing what a “tuft” is might be nice. Video games are amazing for expanding vocabulary because they have to find ways to call the same images, the same models, a dozen different things.  You learn a lot of adjectives and a lot of synonyms.

Foreign language: I play World of Warcraft in Spanish. Like a lot.  World of Warcraft is my go-to video game to play in Spanish, but pick your own poison for gaming in a foreign language. It works for the same reason gaming in English does.  You go into it knowing whatever you know, and pick up words along the way.  You might not know, for example, that a boar is “jabalí,” but when “jabalí” is in the name of every boar you see in the game, you quickly figure out that that is a boar. Whatever words are around it might change, and so those are slower and more difficult to pick up, but it comes in time.

Math: Another one people scoff at, but let me tell you a story.  My best friends and I all play a game called Summoner’s War on our phones. You get a bunch of little monsters, like Pokemon, and can give them special runes to make them more powerful.  Each one has slightly different abilities and are stronger at certain things.  So when you get a rune that adds 13% health and want to apply it to a monster with 12,000 health, but there’s another rune that adds 367 health, you have to stop and say “which one is the better rune?”  Well, my friend was with her mom on “rune day” (when you can scramble runes around for free once a month) and clearly rune day takes priority over visiting with mom because it only comes once a month.  So she grabs a pad of paper and a pencil and sits down and does the math.  Like full blown algebra.  She hated math as a kid just as much as everyone else. Her mom asked her if she had gone back to school.  Because why else would you spontaneously start mathing?  Video games, that’s why.  I use more math in video games than pretty much everywhere else in my life, including bills.

Science: Want another story? How about the famous “Corrupted Blood Incident” in World of Warcraft, wherein a contagious “disease” that damaged characters over time escaped from a boss fight through a glitch and obliterated low level players.  The fucking CDC studied this event because players went insane.  Some of them fled to remote woods to try to avoid catching it.  Others fled to cities looking for help from high level healers.  Places with high populations, like cities, were FILLED with corpses of low level players that did not make it to someone who could help. And then there were the jerks that were infected who saw people that weren’t and intentionally tried to infect them.  Potion (medicine) prices in the market skyrocketed as people tried to stay alive in whatever way they could. It was a mess.  And it was a perfect, realistic model for scientists to study human behavior in epidemics without there actually being any real-life damage.

History: My go-to here is usually games like Assassin’s Creed, which are based on actual historical events and use actual historical characters wherever possible, but let’s go back to World of Warcraft again since that one is a little more abstract.  Let’s take a look at orc culture for a moment.  They are seen as savages by many, but part of their storyline is a fight against cultists.  What, precisely, is a cultist?  Well, that is something you can actually learn by doing the quests that tell their story.  Or how about the Tauren, who are based on Native American cultures?  Is it a perfect replica? Not by any stretch.  But you do learn some of the culture of some tribes through what is represented there.  Or how about humans, with all their subgroups that fight one another, and the starving people who are preparing a rebellion against the king?  Do you hear hints of feudalism or the French Revolution in there somewhere?

Video games will usually not be a full replacement for a class on the subject, and if you want to know more about Native American cultures, pick up a damn book about it.  But if you have a kid (or an adult) who is completely disinterested in school and learning, give them the right video game and they will absolutely blossom.

I taught both of my youngest stepdaughters how to read using Skyrim.  I helped them with sounding out words as they played, then gradually stopped helping them and made them do it themselves.  They picked it up very quickly because they WANTED to.  I helped still when a weird or hard word popped up (like fjord).  But now they both read--one has intellectual disability but is reading just under her age group, the other is reading at high school level in 5th grade.

Just like the letter B in english isn’t pronounced “bee,” the Spanish B isn’t “bay.” Here I will use Spanish words, but as these lessons are intended for beginner Spanish students, most of the Spanish words will probably not be recognizable.

Vowels are always pronounced as the alphabet pronounces them.  To refresh, vowels are a, e, i, o, and u (ah, ay, ee, oh, and ooh).  There are no silent vowels in Spanish and these sounds will never change.  Remember, though, that a diphthong (two vowels strung together) is not a vowel.

Consonants are every other letter in the alphabet.  The sounds of these letters can change depending on other letters in the word.  We’ll go in alphabetic order, skipping the vowels.

B is pronounced as a “buh” sound, but the “uh” is pretty much inaudible.  Bebé (bay-BAY) is a good example here.  The “ay” sound in this is not generated by the B, but by the following vowel, e. C is a letter with dual pronunciation.  Like in English, it can have a soft “s” sound or a hard “k” sound.  In carro (Kah-RROH) the C is followed by an A; Whenever a C is followed by A, O, or U, it is pronounced as a hard C.  Rinoceronte (ree-noh-say-RON-tay) shows the C followed by an E; When C is followed by E or I, it is soft.. CH is one of the unique Spanish letters from lesson 1.  This is one of the letters removed from the alphabet.  The “chuh” sound is just like the English counterpart and, like the B, the “uh” should be virtually inaudible.  Charlar (CHAHR-lahr), meaning “to chat” is a fine example here. D is also pronounced like the English D. Dolar (Doh-LAHR). F is used far more often in Spanish than in English because we use the crazy “ph” to substitute for F rather frequently.  F is a regular letter and is the same as the English F.  Falta (FAL-tah). G, like C, has two pronunciations and follows the same rules as C.  Gente (HEN-tay) follows the I/E rule and is soft, pronounced like the English H.  Ganar (Gan-AHR), following the A/O/U rule, is the same as the hard English G. H is the only “silent” letter in Spanish, and is used primarily for spelling and gender purposes.  Helado (Ay-LAH-doh) would be written as “el helado,” not “la helado” because it is masculine and the ah sound followed immediately by the ay sound would be difficult to pronounce.  Remember that CH is one letter and not a C and an H!  Charlar doesn’t have a C or an H in it and if you tried to spell it aloud as “C-H-A-R-L-A-R” a Spanish speaker would likely be confused about the new word you had created. J is the Spanish equivalent of English H.  Mujer (Moo-HAYR).  It’s hard to remember that if you hear an H it’s a J, but you will eventually get used to it. K is the same as the hard C and is not used often.  K is seen most often in words borrowed from other languages.  Kárate (KAH-rah-tay), for example, is obviously not Spanish. L is the same as English L.  Quelidón (Kay-lee-DOHN). LL is one of the crazy double letters and one of the letters removed from the alphabet.  For beginning students, it will be most used in llamar (Yah-MAHR) and the forms of llamar.  Remember that the LL sound like the English Y, but the Spanish Y does not!  Like the J-H situation, the one that doesn’t look like it sounds like it! M is the same as English M.  Tiempo (Tee-EHM-poh). N is the same as English N.  Nunca (NOON-cah). Ñ is another special letter.  The squiggle over the N is called a tilde.  The only tilde accented letters I have seen are Ñ in Spanish, Õ in Latin, and à in Portuguese.  It causes the N in Spanish to gain a Y sound at the end.  This can be tricky because the N sound and Y sound can actually be in separate syllables.  Niñeta (Neen-YEH-tah) is a perfect example. P is the same as the English P.  Perfecto (Payr-FAYC-toh) Q, like the English Q, is followed by a U and either an E or an I.  The only words having UA and UO are both borrowed words, and UU doesn’t exist.  Make sure you look at the next lesson, where I explain diphthongs, as Q is always followed by a diphthong.  The Q is pronounced as a K sound and, unlike the English Q, is not followed by a W sound.  Que (KAY). R is the same as the English R, although many people are actually incapable of producing this sound.  If you have trouble with your R’s, you can substitute it with an L, just be careful not to emphasize the sound.  Rompar (Rom-PAR) RR is the a rolled R.  The tip on rolling R’s can be found in the Tips category.  It is used some, but not with the frequency of other letters.  Erradicar (Ay-rrah[rolled]-di-CAHR). S is, again, the same as the English S, and is similar to the R in that many people cannot produce S sounds.  It is not bad or wrong to replace an S sound with the English TH sound.  In fact, in Spain this is done very often.  All S sounds (the Z and the soft C) can be pronounced this way.  Estar (Ays [or th]-TAHR). T is also the same as the English T.  Batalla (Bah-TAH-yah). V, as I explained in lesson 1, has a sound that is really more of a combination of English B and V.  Just say a B sound instead of V.  Vengo (BAYN-goh) W is used in words borrowed from other languages, like K.  It is pronounced exactly as the English W.  Windsurfista (Weend-soor-FEES-tah) is one of the few spanish words with a W in it. X has dual pronunciation.  In some words, like Extraño (Eks-TRAHN-yoh), the X produces the same sound as the English X.  In others, such as México (MAY-hee-coh), it is pronounced as a Spanish J or English H. Y is a strange letter that is an oft used word by itself.  I haven’t actually seen it used very often except by itself.  The word Y will be explained in later lessons.  Hoy (OYEE) is a good example of it used in a word.  The pronunciation is a bit hard to explain because it sometimes has a light English Y sound followed by a long E or Spanish I sound.  Both “parts” of the sound are together and don’t generate their own syllable like Ñ can. Z is pronounced as an English S.  It never takes on the buzzing tone the English Z has.  Zapato (Sah-PAH-toh).

This is a post I wrote several years ago for a different blog. Hopefully this is helpful for someone.

Accents

Over the past three years I have heard every complaint under the sun about how ridiculous accent marks are.  Here I will clarify how they work and why you need them.

First of all, accent marks indicate stress on a syllable that isn’t usually stressed.  There are two general rules for this.

The second to last syllable is stressed if the word ends in a vowel, an S, or an N.  For example, Gano (GAH-noh) has the stress on the A, but has no accent mark.  That is because it ends in an O.  If the stress was on the O, as in Ganó (Gah-NOH), the O would need an accent, as shown.

The last syllable is stressed if it ends in any consonant other than N or S.  Ganar (Gah-NAHR) has the last syllable stressed like Ganó, but there is no accent because the last letter is an R.

The above rules  apply in most cases, but not all.  Two and three letter words can get complicated.  The rules also change with words that are spelled the same but have different meanings, as the difference is often only an accent mark.

De vs. Dé De means “of” while Dé is a form of Dar (to give). El vs. Él El is masculine “the,” Él is “he.” Si vs. Sí Si means “if.”  Sí means “yes.” Te vs. Té Te is “you.”  Té means “tea” (as in the drink).

Accents are also used when asking a question, even though the question words all follow the first rule of accents.  The best example is Qué.  Unaccented, Que means “than,” “who,” “whom,” “that,” “which,” or “whether.”  Accented it means “what” because it will always be part of a question.

To my knowledge, the only other accent rule is for the word meaning “or.” Ó is used as “or” only when numerals are on both sides of it.  If the number is written out, there is no accent. Uno o dos 1 ó 2

Diphthongs

We use diphthongs all the time and don’t think about it.  So why does it always throw people for a loop when they try to pronounce a Spanish word with a diphthong?  I can’t answer that.  I can give you a cheat-sheet of diphthong pronunciations.

AI is pronounced like the English word “eye” EI is pronounced like Spanish E OI is pronounced like the “oy” in English “boy” UI is pronounced like English “we” but the W sounds more like “ooh” AU is pronounced like the “ow” in “owl” EU is pronounced as a combined “ay” and “ooh” sound IA is pronounced like the “eo” in English “neon” IE is pronounced as a combined “ee” and “ay” sound but the Y is clipped IO is pronounced like English “eo” in “video” IU is pronounced like the English word “you” with a slight stress on the “ooh” UA is pronounced as a combined “ooh” and “ah” sound UE is pronounced as a combined “ooh” and “ay sound UO is pronounced as a combined “ooh” and “oh” sound

Diphthongs only apply if the two consecutive vowels do not have accents on either vowel.  If a vowel is accented before or after another vowel they are pronounced as separate sounds.

Umlauts