Jean-Benoit Nadeau - The Story of Spanish

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Acknowledgments

W E ARE THANKFUL TO A great number of people for aiding us in the research and writing of this book.

The list begins with our late agent, Ed Knappman, who passed away before he could read the manuscript. Ed, and his wife, Elizabeth, believed in The Story of Spanish when it was still a sketch on a restaurant place mat. Shortly before his death, Ed passed the baton to Roger Williams, our new agent, who has supported our work with skill and friendship.

Michael Flamini, our editor at St. Martins Press, also believed in this project while it was still a collection of rough ideas. He was generous with his encouragement and guidance during the research and writing. We are also grateful to the team of editors, correctors, cover designers, publicists, marketers, salespeople, and more at St. Martins Press, who crafted the finished product and got the book into our readers hands (or their e-book reader). We would like to extend our thanks to our copy editor, Cynthia Merman. There are a lot of facts in this book and she truly scoured the manuscript.

Many more people also helped us make the book a reality. We thank Andre Laurier of the Canada Council for the Arts as well as Brad Hector from the Canada-United States Fulbright Foundation. The financial backing of both organizations was vital to the books development. We also are deeply grateful to Yvan Nadeau, our guardian angel, as well as to our assistant and organizing genius, Veronica Louis, and to Tensy Cordoba, our patient and enthusiastic language coach.

In the Spanish-speaking world, key actors played an important role, starting with Daro Villanueva, secretary general of the Real Academia Espaola (the Royal Academy of Spanish) and Humberto Lpez Morales, director of the Asociacin de Academias de la lengua espaola. We also address special thanks to Rosa Arbol and Miguel Somovilla, who are, respectively, head librarian and head of communications at the Academia, for their enthusiastic support. Jose Mara Martnez, of the Instituto Cervantes, gave us a lot of his valuable time. And without the input of the Fundacin Telefnica, we would have entirely overlooked the unprecedented study carried out to evaluate the economic value of Spanish. Professor Jos Antonio Alonso, director of the University of Madrids Institute of International Studies in Alcal de Henares, was very helpful in explaining it to us.

We gained early moral support and encouragement from Alejandra de la Paz, executive director of the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington; as well as Guillermo Corral Van Damme, cultural industries policy director general of the Spanish Embassy in Washington; Javier Francisco Oterino Cuch, cultural attach at the Spanish embassy in Ottawa; and Mara Julia Rodrguez , who was cultural minister at the Canadian embassy of Argentina. The Arizona State University at Phoenix also gave useful institutional backing, including access to its library and databases. And Emily Spinelli, executive director of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, opened a few more doors.

In Phoenix, Arizona, where we spent six months in 2010 as part of Julies Fulbright grant, a number of people supplied precious help. First among them was Erik Lee, associate director of the North American Center for Transborder Studies at Arizona State University, who supplied us with a lot of good advice, insight, and help, and who in so doing became a good friend. We also thank NACTS director Rick Van Schoik and Sara Sonnenberg for welcoming us and helping us get the most out of our time at ASU, as well as Jaime Aguila for his advice.

In Phoenix, we owe a warm thank-you to Gantry York, organizer of the Phoenix Amigos Meetup Group, who oriented us through bilingual Phoenix and steered us toward some excellent sources for interviews. We were also fortunate to meet a rich variety of people at our daughters school, notably Rona Johnson, Alicia Webber, Michelle Greenberg, and Irma Garca, who became a permanent resident of the United States shortly after we left Phoenix. And we are grateful to our neighbors in Tempe, Billy and Ashlee Miller, for helping us and our daughters feel at home.

We are also grateful to a number of friends who over the years helped us forge a personal connection to Spanish. Among those are Nuria and Claude Godcharles in Palo Alto and Celia Vara in Alicante, Spain, who opened our eyes to the reality of La Movida.

Contents

Maps

Appendixes

A Guide to Spanish Pronunciation

T HERE ARE A LOT FEWER sounds in Spanish than in English. Almost all Spanish words adhere to the following pronunciation rules.

Vowels

In Spanish, each vowel is pronounced separately. Auto (car) has four sounds, one for each letter.

A sounds like the a in far but shorter.

E sounds like the ay in play when stressede.g., mdico (doctor). If not stressed, it sounds more like the e in bet e.g., estudio (study).

I sounds like the e in be but shorter.

O is the same as the o in lock.

U sounds like oo but shorter. Before most vowels, it becomes a semivowel that sounds like the w in wall e.g., fuego (fire). U is always silent after q, as in que . After g, u is generally silente.g., guerrilla . But if gu is followed by a consonant, the u is pronouncede.g., gusto.

Y; when used as a vowel, sounds like the e in be but shortere.g., y (and). When used as a semivowel, it sounds like the y in yo-yo e.g., hoy (today).

Consonants

B, D, F, K, L, M, N, P , and T : are pronounced the same way as they are in English.

C in front of a, o, and u is pronounced like k e.g., canal . In front of e and i, there are variations. In the Americas and some parts of Spain, c is pronounced like s. In northern Spain, c is pronounced like th in path.

Ch : Until 1994, this was a distinct letter (in the dictionary) but not anymore. It is pronounced ch .

G is complicated. In front of e and i, it sounds like a throaty h e.g., general. In front of a o , or any consonant, it is harde.g., gato (cat). The special case is in front of u . Then it may sound like gw e.g., lengua (language), or it is hard g e.g., guerrilla . Or it may disappear into wa e.g., guardia (guard).

H is always silent.

J is called la jota . It sounds like a very throaty h .

Ll: Until 1994, this was a distinct letter (in the dictionary) but not anymore. Depending on the location, it sounds like the y in yo-yo (e.g., llama ) or the soft j of measure or pleasure . But in some dialects, it may sound like the lli in million .

is a distinct letter in the dictionary that falls between n and o . It sounds like the English ng of sing e.g., nio (child).

Q is always pronounced like k and is always combined with a silent u .

R at the beginning of words or when appearing as rr sounds like a long trill. A single r anywhere else is almost always pronounced like a very short trill, or a single tap of the tongue.

S sounds like s except when it comes in front of l, m , and d . In those cases, it sounds like z .

V sounds like b but slightly softer.

W is reserved for foreign terms. It sounds like w . In Spain, it may sound like b e.g., wter (toilet).