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How many syllables in Nacional?
It's back to the basics trying to learn syllables for me.
My Spanish pronunciations are bad mostly because I am having problems with dividing words into syllables. Today the question is about nacional. I am using a web site spanishdict.com and the dictionary option. It pronunciation key shows "nah-the-o-nahl". When clicking the speaker it sounds like "nash-u-nal". Are the syllables na/ci/on/nal? thanks |
Three syllables: na·cio·nal :)
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Angelica's answer is correct: na-cio-NAL (emphasis on the third syllable)
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That "nah-the-o-nahl" sound is supposed to be "na-thee-o-nahl" and it corresponds to how a Spaniard would pronounce it. The way it is pronounced in América is "nah-sseeo-nahl" with the emphasis in the last syllable. |
I vote 4. nah see oh nahl <- (that is American English sounds) Of course the see and oh portions are pronounced almost as one, but it still has 2 vowel sounds (in my head at least).
This is coming from a non-native speaker though. Maybe it is just an enunciation thing? In the US, certain regions don't pronounce all the real syllables in certain words. Can you post a link to the clip you are referring to? |
@ Awaken: This is the rule of thumb:
In Spanish vowel groups that form diphthongs or triphthongs are not separated. Diphtongs are formed by a strong + a weak vowel (ai = a-mai-nar), a weak + strong vowel (io = na-cio-nal) and a weak + a weak vowel (ui = cui-dar). Strong vowels are A, E, O and weak vowels are I, U. All in all, there are 13 diphtongs in the Spanish language: ai - ie - au - ei - io - ua - eu -ue - oi - uo- ia - iu - ui |
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Awaken..here is the link http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/nacional
Luna.. thanks for a good lesson. My pronounciation problems really are coming from not being able to get the syllables correct. This is a big help. |
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Luna, Is that speaker not saying it correctly? I can easily hear the see oh sound and I was expecting a native to blur those 2 vowels into 1 syllable. For instance, in English "tion" is pronounced "shun" which is 1 syllable. This reminds more of a word like "stereo" in English. The 'eo' sounds just like 'io' in nacional when that guy says it. |
@Awaken: There's only three syllables in his pronunciation. He's saying it as any average Latin American would say it.
A dypththong does not blur sounds; in Spanish all sounds are pronounced. :thinking: |
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@awaken: You may want to conceptually equate 'io' with 'yo'. There's clearly only a single syllable in the latter and this is what is said immediately after the 'c' in the second syllable of 'nacional'.
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Nobody understands me when I pronounce English "yo" like Spanish "io". It's much worse than those "good-a-books" or "meet-a-ball" moments.
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I just looked up syllable and maybe my English definition of it was causing me problems. I always think of syllables as vowel sound based because that is the normal way in English I guess. In Spanish, the "uninterrupted element of speech" can be a sound like the cio with the diphthong. Thanks for helping me to understand. |
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Let's do an excercise. Pronounce this: Awake asks Luna: -¿Oyes? Luna replies: - Sí oigo. (no comma after 'sí') A native speaker will leave a short space of time between the two vowels, very noticeable by expert ears, even if he's speaking fast. That's not something that happens in the recording. The two vowels are close together, they don't change sound as it happens with other diphtongs but still you can tell it's a single syllable. |
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