Thursday, May 03, 2012

Another funky quirk.

SS now has her vowels in Spanish down. In English we have the alphabet song, and in Spanish such a thing does not exist. If it does, I will be receiving an e-mail from Abuela, but I am not aware of an ABC song. There is a vowels, or vocales song in Spanish, but what annoys me is that the intro is too darn long. SS does not have the intro down yet, but does her vowels just fine. The Spanish alphabet also has three extra letters, and for the life of me, I consistently leave them out, I have to really make an effort to get through the whole darn thing without skipping. After the letter C we have CH, after L there's LL, and of course after N, there's Ñ. That last sound is a witch and one of P's pet peeves, when people say jalapeno instead of jalapeño. Thankfully for him, SS got that sound down right away.

And this is where SS's quirk comes into play. Last week SS was singing along with me in Spanish, and P noted how well she pronounces her words. P then stated "you know, her Mandarin pronunciation is as good." OK, the limited words she knows and repeats from TV.  I asked P, hey what are you trying to say? My husband does not mince words, he said he was not trying, he was merely stating that SS's English pronunciation sucks. So it is kind of funny that Spanish/Mandarin, which are more complex, do not seem to be a problem. Oh well, two out of three is not bad.

Today I was looking for words in Spanish and English that begin with the same letter, and have the same meaning. For example avion/airplane, bola/ball, carro/car. I was stumped on D and P quickly came up with diablo/devil. I was very impressed. So far I still need I, J, K, N, Ñ, O, Q, U, W, Y and Z. It did seem like a good idea at the time. As I was writing the words I groaned when I recognized another pain in the neck aspect of the Spanish language, accents. Call me a sell out, but there's such freedom in typing when accents are not involved. Hand writing is not too bad, since it just comes natural, but typing is a witch. SS, when you are mumbling about why on earth do you have to learn another language, please remember it was your Baba's idea.You know, the monolingual one. :)







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