Re: Sentence above:
No, no me gusta la paella.No, I do not like paella.
In the lesson above, I was surprised to hear how the word "paella" was pronounced. I had never heard that pronunciation. My question is, are the letters "ae" considered a diphthong, and if so, what would be its pronunciation?
Thank you and wishing you a great day!
Nicole
Hola Nicole
Paella has 3 syllables: pa-e-lla because "ae" forms a Spanish hiatus. This separates the vowels into two separate syllables. I am not quite sure what you mean when you say you've never heard it pronounced like in the audio. This word for English speakers is quite difficult generally and you often hear the wrong pronunciation, for example I often hear this from students: [pie - ella].
Always remember that in Spanish all vowels are pronounced, independently of whether they form diphthongs or not.
Un saludo
Inma
Hola Inma,
Thank you for your reply. I really liked your note at the end, which is very helpful.
1-The way she pronounces "paella" it's more like a diphthong sound, i.e." pa-ya", and not the usual way I have heard it, or how I learned to pronounce it, i.e. "pa-e-lla" . Are we putting too much emphasis on the vowels or is it pronounced like that in Spain? (Or are my ears not atuned)
2- RE: "Always remember that in Spanish all vowels are pronounced, independently of whether they form diphthongs or not."
I assume this includes triphthongs ?
I don't know if this will help, but the pronunciation website forvo has a lot of different recordings of paella from Spain and all over Latin America.
https://forvo.com/word/paella/#es
Actually, we realised that the automated voice used in that specific example wasn't great so I changed it to another one where it is more realistic: pa-e-lla. I think it is clear now that there are two vowels there: a + e
As per tripthongs in Spanish, the same applies, we pronounce all the vowels. It is common to find triphthongs in the vosotros conjugation in the present, for example. Here are some of them:
estudiáis
cambiáis
copiáis
Saludos
Inma
Re: Sentence above:
No, no me gusta la paella.No, I do not like paella.
In the lesson above, I was surprised to hear how the word "paella" was pronounced. I had never heard that pronunciation. My question is, are the letters "ae" considered a diphthong, and if so, what would be its pronunciation?
Thank you and wishing you a great day!
Nicole
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