Spanish Route episode nine. Your guided route to Spanish



Hello! How are you, Spanish student? Welcome to SpanishRoute. The program, the podcast, to learn and improve your Spanish.My name is Sergio and I speak to you from Spain. This is the ninth program, your ninth stage on your way to Spanish.Today, we continue with the series of programs abaut the Spanish alphabet. In the previous program we focus on the letters be (b), uve (v) and uve doble (w).Today we are going to focus on the letter jota(j) and ge (g). And the digraph formed by the letters gu.The letters ge and jota can be a source of confusion for Spanish students, but with these small instructions that I present here today, it will be much easier to differentiate them.I recommend you to follow the class through the transcript that you will find on my website, SpanishRoute.com, since we are focusing on the written form of Spanish and it is advisable to read the words to differentiate when using G and when using the J. On the web you will also have access to a very easy written test to practice and memorize the concepts we are talking about today.And now. Let's start with the class.



The letter "jota" of Spanish



The letter "jota" is always pronounced the same. It is a sound that is produced by the approach of the back of the tongue and the back of the palate. Scraping the throat. jjjj (/x/)It is used with the five vowels: Ja, je, ji, jo, ju. With the vowel a: Jamón (ham)With the vowel e: Jefe (boss)With the vowel i: Jirafa (giraffe)With the vowel o: Jota (jota)With the vowel u: Jueves (Thursday)  The letter j can also appear to end words: Reloj (clock)



The letter g in Spanish



The letter g can be pronounced basicly in two ways in Spanish. And for that, we divide them according to the vowels that they accompany.



G pronunciation same as J



The g with the vowel e and the g with the vowel i are pronounced the same as the j: with a strong sound from the throat. Ge / Gi. With the vowel e: Gente (People). With the vowel i: Girar (Rotate).My name, for example. It is written with g and pronounced with the sound equal to the j. Sergio.The reason for the use of j or g for the same sound has to do with etymological reasons and the way in which Spanish evolved from Latin and also by the incorporation into Spanish of words from other languages such as Arabic.



Soft g sound



The other sound for the letter g is /g/. Also with the throat but softer: Without scraping. And it can be: ga, gue, gui, go, gu.But, I said earlier that the g with the e and the g with the i are pronounced like the j. Therefore to write the words that are pronounced gue and gui, we use a vowel u between the g and the vowels e or i.For example: Guerra (War). Guerra is written: g-u-e-r-r-a. The u is silent, it is not pronounced. Guerra.



Guitarra (guitar): Guitarra is spelled: G-u-i-t-a-r-r-a. The letter u is not pronounced, remember. Guitarra.Examples of words with the letter g and the rest of the vowels for this phoneme:With the vowel a: Gato (Cat).With the vowel o: Gota (Drop).With the vowel u: (gustar( (to Like or to love)



The umlaut (diéresis) in Spanish



But this can still be complicated a bit more.There are words in Spanish with the letter g that are pronounced güe and güi. How are these words written then? In the Spanish written to indicate that we must pronounce this letter, we use the umlaut (diéresis). Which are two horizontal points on the letter u of this syllable.For example: With the vowel e: Cigüeña (Stork), with the vowel i: Güisqui (Whisky). If we do not use the umlaut when reading these words we would say: cigueña or guisqui. and this is wrong.