How do you pronounce Juan de Pareja?

[Kathleen in VA]

We are going to be reading this soon and I would like to pronounce it correctly.

[jujsky]

Wan Day Pair-A-ha

[Kathleen in VA]

Wan Day Pair-A-ha

 

Thanks, Julie!:)

[Angie in VA]

Wan Day Pair-A-ha

 

 

Have an "h" sound (like in WHO) for the Juan part, saying WHAN, and instead of PAIR-A-ha, make it pa-RAY-ha.

 

:)

 

Hello, Kathleen! :)

[Angie in VA]

Oh, and if you can roll your r in the "ray" part of Pareja, that would be great!

[Kathleen in VA]

Oh, and if you can roll your r in the "ray" part of Pareja, that would be great!

 

Hi Angie!! I love to roll my r's - think I'll give it a go.:)

[dragons in the flower bed]

Oh, and if you can roll your r in the "ray" part of Pareja, that would be great!

 

I don't think this r is rolled. It's usually just a double rr that's rolled.

[Britomart]

I don't think this r is rolled. It's usually just a double rr that's rolled.

 

Ideally, all "r"'s in Spanish are rolled a bit, and "rr" is rolled even more.

[Cheryl in NM]

Spanish vowel pronunciations:

a = long e as in "beam"

e = short e as in "egg"

i = short i as in "it"

o = short a as in "ah"

u = double o as in "oo"

 

Js are pronounced as "h". "H" is silent. Juan is "Whan" with a short "ah" vowel sound.

 

Juan de Pareja

 

Whan day Pa-RAY-ah

 

Hope this helps!

[nukeswife]

Spanish vowel pronunciations:

a = long e as in "beam"

e = short e as in "egg"

i = short i as in "it"

o = short a as in "ah"

u = double o as in "oo"

 

Js are pronounced as "h". "H" is silent. Juan is "Whan" with a short "ah" vowel sound.

 

Juan de Pareja

 

Whan day Pa-RAY-ah

 

Hope this helps!

 

I've never heard the a said as a long e, always as "ah" like open up and say ahh.

[Matryoshka]

I've never heard the a said as a long e, always as "ah" like open up and say ahh.

 

Yes, that's right. The vowels in Spanish are the "true" vowels. What we call "long e" is actually the only "long vowel" in English that's a true vowel, not a dipthong - but the sound should be represented as "i"

 

It's the "i" in Spanish that's prounonced "ee".

 

A - ahh

E - ehh (hold it out a bit like the "open up and say ah" but with "eh") Or, maybe think old guy with an ear horn - EH, what's that, sonny?

I - ee

O -this one's hard to explain. Our "long O" is a dipthong - phonetically "ou" Say "oh", but leave of the "oo" part, and you get a proper "o". Yes, I know you don't hear an "oo" in "oh". It's there. :)

U -oo

 

And "J" in Spanish is not pronounced like H. It's pronounced /kh/ - pretty much the same sound as "ch" in German "Bach". It's just that most English speakers can't pronounce /kh/ so they mispronounce it H - the W sound in Juan comes from the "UA", not the "J".

 

Also, the Spanish untrilled "r" has no English analog... If you can trill your "r", you're most of the way there - touch the tip of your tongue to your palette as if you were going to trill it, but only give it one beat. I'll call that "R" in pronunciation guide below - it's nothing like an English r. PP was right that R is only trilled in Spanish if it's "rr" or the first letter in a word.

 

So, it's about like:

 

khwan deh paR-éh-kha (accent on the middle syllable as noted)

 

The thing is, Spanish is almost 100% phonetic, so if you know the proper pronunciation of each letter in Spanish, it's spelled exactly like it sounds. :tongue_smilie:

 

If you really can't get your tongue around any of this, especially the Spanish J and R, I'd say the closest pronunciation would be:

 

hwan deh pad-éh-ha - yes, a "D" is a better approximation for Spanish "R" than American "R". It's not great, but a heck of a lot closer than American "R".

[Kathleen in VA]

Yes, that's right. The vowels in Spanish are the "true" vowels. What we call "long e" is actually the only "long vowel" in English that's a true vowel, not a dipthong - but the sound should be represented as "i"

 

It's the "i" in Spanish that's prounonced "ee".

 

A - ahh

E - ehh (hold it out a bit like the "open up and say ah" but with "eh") Or, maybe think old guy with an ear horn - EH, what's that, sonny?

I - ee

O -this one's hard to explain. Our "long O" is a dipthong - phonetically "ou" Say "oh", but leave of the "oo" part, and you get a proper "o". Yes, I know you don't hear an "oo" in "oh". It's there. :)

U -oo

 

And "J" in Spanish is not pronounced like H. It's pronounced /kh/ - pretty much the same sound as "ch" in German "Bach". It's just that most English speakers can't pronounce /kh/ so they mispronounce it H - the W sound in Juan comes from the "UA", not the "J".

 

Also, the Spanish untrilled "r" has no English analog... If you can trill your "r", you're most of the way there - touch the tip of your tongue to your palette as if you were going to trill it, but only give it one beat. I'll call that "R" in pronunciation guide below - it's nothing like an English r. PP was right that R is only trilled in Spanish if it's "rr" or the first letter in a word.

 

So, it's about like:

 

khwan deh paR-éh-kha (accent on the middle syllable as noted)

 

The thing is, Spanish is almost 100% phonetic, so if you know the proper pronunciation of each letter in Spanish, it's spelled exactly like it sounds. :tongue_smilie:

 

If you really can't get your tongue around any of this, especially the Spanish J and R, I'd say the closest pronunciation would be:

 

hwan deh pad-éh-ha - yes, a "D" is a better approximation for Spanish "R" than American "R". It's not great, but a heck of a lot closer than American "R".

 

Well, I tried and I cannot get my tongue around the Spanish J and R - at least not right now. Think I'll go with the second offering here. We had a Spanish exchange student live with us the summer of 1991. Her name was Raquel and she sort of rolled the R in her name. It took me all summer to get it right and I probably still massacred it - she was very gracious.:)

[ktgrok]

I learned the R as a "hard" ound, like the d. glad i was right.

 

oh, and the character was from Spain, no latin america, so would castillian pronunciation apply?

 

by the way, love the story, we watched it as a film strip in 2nd grade.

[Halftime Hope]

Think I'll go with the second offering here.

 

The second one will be exactly what I would have told you, and I speak Spanish fluently. (Spent my entire childhood and most of my teen years in Central America.)

 

Matroyska's likening the single-trilled /r/ to a /d/ is pretty close to what it should sound like, just remember to keep it very fast and light in the front of the mouth, with the tip of the tongue. It does not involve the the middle of the tongue and the mouth like when we say /duh/, at all. I taught my students to think of it like a /d/ that is un-emphasized, such as when you are saying d'Urberville, or DeGarmo, or some other name in which you almost don't hear the D up front. Another way to give you the location of this (tip of tongue, upper palette, front) is that it is just behind where we touch our tongues to say /th/ as in "this" or "that."

 

The /kh/ for J is something I've never heard in Latin American pronunciation. (??)

 

HTH

Edited June 21, 2010 by Valerie(TX)

[AHASRADA]

hwan deh pad-éh-ha - yes, a "D" is a better approximation for Spanish "R" than American "R". It's not great, but a heck of a lot closer than American "R".

 

This is what I would have told you as well, to get the most exact approximation.

 

My Spanish professor was from Columbia, for what that is worth ;).

[Cheryl in NM]

I've never heard the a said as a long e, always as "ah" like open up and say ahh.

 

I was taught by a lady that was raised in Bolivia, but she said it was conversational Spanish. I live in NM and when I started paying attention I noticed it. I'm not fluent by any means because we dropped the classes, but we had to recite those vowel sounds many, many, many...times.:tongue_smilie: I think "a" is pronounced differently when combine with other vowels/letters.

 

ETA: People in the southwest will laugh at you if you pronounce Juan "hwan". In the southwest it is pronounced "whan". Of course, you probably didn't have a problem with pronouncing Juan anyway.:tongue_smilie:

Edited June 21, 2010 by Cheryl in NM

[Matryoshka]

Her name was Raquel and she sort of rolled the R in her name. It took me all summer to get it right and I probably still massacred it - she was very gracious.:)

 

Yes, a single R is trilled if it's the first letter of the word.

 

oh, and the character was from Spain, no latin america, so would castillian pronunciation apply?

 

 

There are no letters in any of those words that are pronounced differently - the main difference in pronunciation between Spanish in Spain and Latin America is the 'th" that's used for Z and C before E and I (but S is still S!!) - neither of which apply here.

 

The /kh/ for J is something I've never heard in Latin American pronunciation. (??)

 

It's there. I've lived in Mexico as well as Spain and have spoken with people from all over Latin America, and I've never not heard it. If you don't have an analog in another language, it's probably hard to figure out what it is. It's not a throat clearing hairball kind of /kh/, it's light and subtle (and so is the 'ch' in German Bach - guess it isn't a great analog unless you also speak German :tongue_smilie:). An H is all air. A Spanish J has a bit at the back of the throat.

 

Really. Say Jorge. It's really not Horhay. Egads. Actualy, my Spanish dictionary shows the phonetic character as an /x/ (I was using letter equivalents, not phonetic symbols - it's not ks!)- or you can hear it here. Here are three different pronunciations of "Juan" - one from Spain, one from Chile, and one from Columbia - the Columbian is the most subtle, but it's still there. Here's pareja pronounced by a Spaniard.

 

I looked up phonetic /x/ for a better example - they gave the 'ch' in Scottish "loch" - that may have been a better one for me to use for an mainly English-speaking audience. :)

Edited June 21, 2010 by matroyshka

[Matryoshka]

I think "a" is pronounced differently when combine with other vowels/letters.

 

The beauty of Spanish vowels is that they're pronounced exactly the same always. If you combine them with other vowels, you get a dipthong (two combined vowel sounds).

 

So, in Spanish

 

ei - same as long A in English

ai - same as long I in English

ou - same as long O in English

iu - same als long U (like Unicorn) in English

ue - like Weh

ua - like wah

ie - like y in yes.

 

For the basic vowel sounds in Spanish, here's a nice little song. (click on "Los Vocales" to hear it - the song starts "son cinco vocales, A E I O U")

[Cheryl in NM]

The beauty of Spanish vowels is that they're pronounced exactly the same always. If you combine them with other vowels, you get a dipthong (two combined vowel sounds).

 

So, in Spanish

 

ei - same as long A in English

ai - same as long I in English

ou - same as long O in English

iu - same als long U (like Unicorn) in English

ue - like Weh

ua - like wah

ie - like y in yes.

 

For the basic vowel sounds in Spanish, here's a nice little song. (click on "Los Vocales" to hear it - the song starts "son cinco vocales, A E I O U")

 

This is really cool. I need to start studying Spanish again. Then I'll know what the people behind me in the grocery store are saying! LOL