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My girlfriend is Spanish. I don’t think her family would be impressed if I were to pronounce “gracias” as “grassy ass” xD
by codetrotter 4y ago
My girlfriend is Spanish. I don’t think her family would be impressed if I were to pronounce “gracias” as “grassy ass” xD
- spandrew 4y agoIt does kind of sound the same tho? Grassy-ass. Grassiyass. Grassyaas. Gracias.
- dfxm12 4y agoIf you drive from Virginia to Boston, you'll probably hear 5 different pronunciations of "Grassy ass". I don't think any of them sound like how I learned to say "thank you" in high school Spanish class.
- spandrew 4y agoTrue, but it does sound like how they learned to say "thank you" in high school, and how regional dialects can influence the change of language.
- beezlewax 4y agoPretty much what it sounds like
- crazygringo 4y agoNo, the "a" vowels are totally different. "Grassy" and "ass" have the vowel in "bat". "Gracias" has the vowel in "bot".
- netrus 4y agoBot is a problematic example, as it has many different pronunciations depending on meaning and region. But non on the common pronunciations have an 'a' (IPA), like Gracias.
- crazygringo 4y agoTrue, I was simplifying a bit. Technically "gracias" is /a/ as you point out, while bot is /ɑ/. But /a/ doesn't really exist in General American English, so bot (or bra, as sibling suggests) is the closest on the IPA vowel chart.
- jmholla 4y agoI think the a in "bra" works better in your comparison since it has an a.
- tomp 4y agoWhat's wrong with it? I'm a native speaker of neither, but they do sound similar (of course, gracias being pronounced South American style, not Spanish style). Except the fact that Spanish and English "r" differ, but I think it's reasonable for English speakers to know that, once they learn to pronounce Spanish "r".
- akiselev 4y agoEnglish is a stress-timed language whereas Spanish is a syllable-timed language [1] - there's just no way to square that circle pronunciation wise. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrony
- ask_b123 4y agoThey'd certainly not be impressed; they would understand though. I just played that sentence in google translator and it sounds like a beginner Spanish speaker that still gets confused by tonic syllables.
- johtso 4y agoWell, if you read it with a Northern English accent like a Mancunian accent it's pretty close!
- andy_ppp 4y agoI swear some people seem to say “grathios” in Spain but it seems to vary so much…
- monocasa 4y agoYeah, Spaniards pronouncing a lot of 's' and 'c' sounds as English 'th' or 'z' is called the ceceo, and it's commonly incorrectly attributed to Spaniards copying a prior king's lisp.
- monocasa 4y agoYeah, it sounds like Peggy Hill pronouncing Spanish. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cByVeZhKmzo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cByVeZhKmzo