Manchester Survivor

Thought cebollas; though caballos...

The other day I was complaning with a British friend about how difficult it is for me to distinguish the words thou, thought, though, taught and tough (actually just writing them all together has been a challenge).

Anyway, his answer was quite elocuent: "that's much easier than your "caballos, cabellos and cebollas".

In fact I had never THOUGHT about those words as confusing for they have very different meanings:

caballo = horse
cabello = hair
cebolla = onion

which I guess is the same case as in thought, though... and well, the rest of that crap. Thinking more about it there are actually a couple of cases in Spanish that I think would be even harder for a foreign to learn:

baya = berry
vaya = subjective present for "he/she goes"
valla = fence

In Spanish accent the sound of these words would be slightly different, but in my relaxed Latin America we pronounce them practically the same and just distinguish them by context. In writen language you could be saying "I hope he fence to the berry before eating the goes" only if you write:

"espero que valla a la baya antes de comerse la vaya"

instead of the Correct form:
"espero que vaya a la valla antes de comerse la baya".

However, my favourite case is:

pérdida = loss (the stress falls on the é)
perdida = whore (the stress falls on the i)

Here the entire difference between saying "the loss of my wife" and "the whore of my wife" relies on that little accent on the é, to pronounce one vowel harder than the other.

A similar case is "año" (year) and "ano" (well....)

As you can see for the length and uselessness of this post, I've just submitted the first draft of my first year report and I'm happily waiting for my supervisor to check it, without anything better to do.

Anyway, in the end I still enjoy saying "I thought it was tough, even though thou taught me so"


Cheers!!!!

(if this seemed long, wait to see me complaining about that furchtbar schwierig German...)

posted by Oscarito @ 3:17 PM