Spanish

Why choose Spanish? With 20 countries (excluding Spain) using Spanish as an official language. Spanish is the #2 world language after English and the #2 language in terms of numbers of native speakers after Chinese. Spanish is the "other" American language, spoken as a first language by nearly 40 million Hispanics/Latinos in the United States (more than one in eight), and by the majority of the population in Central and South America. Written Spanish is almost completely phonetic: you can look at almost any Spanish word and guess correctly how it is pronounced.

How to start studying Spanish?

1. Try to get yourself familiar with the sounds of Spanish (the language is nearly 100% phonetic so you should be able to pronounce words well very quickly, and spelling will be much less of a problem than for English ¡V see above and http://lc.ust.hk/~sac/advice/european/Dontknow.htm). The best way to do this is to watch a video with English subtitles or listen to an audio tape from one of the Spanish beginners¡¦ courses available in the SAC. Then go to the section on Pronunciation below.
2. Meet an adviser in the SAC who will show you the physical materials available and decide which ones to use. There are currently 3 advisers for Spanish.
3. Decide if you intend to join a course taught by a Language Center instructor or consultant. Courses currently cost $900 for 42 hours and enrolment for the beginners¡¦ Spanish I course opens in the first week of every semester and sometimes during the summer and winter breaks.
4. Browse the websites organised at
   http://lc.ust.hk/~sac/materials/spanish/web/index.html

Apart from ¡¥h¡¦ which is always silent (=never pronounced) and the ¡¥b¡¦ and ¡¥v¡¦ which both sound like ¡¥b¡¦, Spanish pronunciation is basically regular with very few exceptions, and very few sounds which do not exist in Chinese or English. For a rough guide to the sounds of Spanish click HERE

The only sounds which do not exist in English are the consonants ¡¥j¡¦ (and sometimes ¡¥g¡¦ or ¡¥x¡¦), which are pronounced like the aspirated ¡¥h¡¦ or ¡¥ch¡¦ sound in German, made by expelling air between the back of the tongue and the soft palate. The ¡¥r¡¦ sound is a trill, formed by a blowing through a flap of the tongue against the roof of the mouth. Try them!

The vowels 'a', 'e' and 'o' in Spanish are usually short and should be pronounced separately in vowel combinations with each other; with 'i' and 'u' however they produce diphthongs. So 'oeste' (=west) is pronounced with 3 syllables like 'o-s-tay' and aceite' (=cooking oil) is also pronounced with 3 syllables approximately like 'a-say-tay' in Latin America or 'a-thay-tay' in Spain.

Spanish words ending in a vowel or ¡¥n¡¦ or ¡¥s¡¦ are always stressed on the penultimate syllable; words ending in any other consonant on the last syllable, and exceptions are indicated by an accent on the vowel in the stressed syllable, e.g. ¡¥inglˆms¡¦ (=English).

There are 2 main varieties of Spanish pronunciation: Castilian (from Spain) and Latin American. They are no more different from each other in pronunciation than British and American English.