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Good question, Alfredo. (Not Alfraydo, right?) 🙂
I'd be interested to hear what others have to say here, but I remember when I was about 12 years old reading "See It and Say It in Spanish," and if memory serves, the pronunciation guide at the beginning specifically suggested pronouncing the "e" as an "ay" sound -- maybe as just a simple, shorthand way to differentiate it from how U.S. speakers might naturally assume it's pronounced?
When I speak Spanish these days, it's often with Argentinians, and they think my pronunciation of "me encanta" is just hilarious. They insist that I say "me en-CAHN-ta" in a way that strikes them as very funny. But when I ask them to pronounce it the way they say it should pronounced, I fail to hear any difference at all, struggle though I might. I thought my ear was pretty good for these things, but I guess it's not as good as I thought!
In English, we have no pure, long /e/ vowel. Instead, the general tendency is to diphthongize it to /e?/ or /ei/. Given this, many Americans of non-Latin background are prone to say /?pe?d?o?/ instead of /?peð?o/.
The ‘e' in “hell” is /?/ which, to my awareness, is a phoneme that doesn't occur in standard Spanish (American or European).
The English vowel system is far from perfect, in case you haven't already noticed. We angloparlants tend to minimize non-tonic (i.e., unstressed) vowels to a schwa /?/ which is absent in many languages, including Spanish, I believe. So, a phrase like “me encanta” is liable to come out of the non-hispanoparlant mouth as /?me? ?n?k?nt?/ instead of /?me en?kanta/.
These are big humps which many English speakers struggle to get over.
Hope this has been of help!
I beg to differ, phonemically. True, /?/ and /e/ are both mid-front vowels, albeit open-mid and close-mid, resp. /??/ is even closer but still different. Closer still would be /ø?/, which doesn't exist in General American. The main thing is about the point of articulation which is something most languages are very strict about. /?/ would definitely sound out of place in Spanish. It's a subtle distinction to many people. In some English dialects /e/ can occur. Some Irish speakers will pronounce the word "gave" like /?ev/ and others /??v/. These, of course, are very broad transcriptions. But I think Martha made a great point about her being unable to distinguish between her efforted pronunciation and that of the native speakers. American English speakers often miss these subtle distinctions that mean a world of difference to those who have fewer vowels in their native phonemic inventory: 5 in Spanish vs. 14 (or so) in American English.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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