Response to comments about [s] - [r]

[@hexiangwu4571]

Natives speakers can rarely notice how they produce sounds.

[@FranciscoTornay]

Native Spanish speaker here: you're absolutely right and the "s" gets often reduced in other contexts as well when speaking colloquially. Yes! Even in dialects that take pride in "pronouncing their s" and by educated speakers, but those speakers will never accept that they do The "s" in Spanish has several allophones, similarly to the "t" sound in English :-D It's really funny that many speakers refuse to accept it. One more thing: professional voice actors often reduce their "s" as you say and as average speakers do, but sometimes they use a little trick to be able to pronounce it before the "s": they pronounce something like "las n rosas", adding a fast "n" (or at least placing the tongue in the "n" position). No speaker does that naturally, it's a professional trick because actually hearing the "s" is considered more elegant. My source for this is a voice course by Guillermo Barrios, he has a YT channel but I'm not sure whether he explained this in the channel or in his private course (which I purchased and I highly recommend). He, at least, is absolutely conscious of the "s before r" reduction

[@NewLife2028]

I learned more from men like you than all the books I´ve ever read.

[@jimmihshs]

Excellent video. Just goes to show that native speakers don't automatically mean great teachers or experts. I'm a native English speaker but i know many learners understand my language way better than me.

[@tenminutespanish]

Very true. I know far less about English in terms of grammar rules, phonetics and phonology rules, etc.

[@NewLife2028]

You're amazingly kind and humble. That tells me you ARE a great teacher more than any other factor.

[@Spvrinnaeli]

Interesting that you got pushback on this one. S+r was always hard for me until I realized even natives don't really pronounce those in the sort of "pure" way we're taught. I imagine you'd get a similar push back from American English speakers if you tried to explain the "t" in "water" is really more like an "r" lol.

[@tenminutespanish]

Exactly. We pronounce differently in streams of casual speech than when pronouncing words in isolation. We don't even notice some of the changes we impose on different sounds.

[@TheMaru666]

You are right . I either reduce the s before r , or I do the r more hissed than trilled , because if I don' t , I can' t do that combination of sounds .

[@alextsvetkov3211]

See this is why I’m happy I’ve picked up an S aspiration. It makes this sound easier to get right and it’s more consistent haha

[@diegocabreraesquivel2058]

Creo que otra razón es que a los hispanos nos enseñan que el español se lee como se escribe y se escribe como se dice, entonces cuando alguien nos dice que no siempre pronunciamos todas las letras o reducimos algunos sonidos, por alguna razón, lo tomamos mal.

[@tenminutespanish]

Muy interesante comentario. Gracias por contribuir.

[@liliareyes7252]

I am teaching Spanish to an American girl. I never thought about pronunciation until now that I am being questioned. I think that we naturally reduced, contract, etc., without been aware. We speak the language but we haven’t studied it in depth. Thank you for your videos. I can tell you have put a lot of hours of dedication studying the language. You know more than me, even though Spanish is my first language.

[@tenminutespanish]

Thank you for your kind words. I'm very happy you find my content useful.

[@trashboat163]

Thank you for sharing these examples! It’s very helpful.

[@tenminutespanish]

You're welcome. I'm so happy you found this helpful.

[@NewLife2028]

The issue isn´t about reality, but rather perception which makes their reality. Had the same thing happen to me in Málaga when I met some wonderful friends there and asked them about the difficult I have making the S sound directly into the R sound. At first, I was crazy, according to them. I'll skip the long story and get to the part where, it´s far better to know a thing and keep it to yourself than to be right and have no friends. The strong S sound, at least in Spain, is a Castile - León region thing. If you are royal, educated, above everyone else, you need to exaggerate your S with a hiss at the base of your bottom teeth. Look how much better I am than you! Then, of course, you have your middle fingers who live in Andalucía who intentional don´t pronounce their S because ¨screw you!¨. The on the ground reality is, YES. It´s physically challenging to S R so, there is a reduction in the S...just don´t tell that to anyone from Madrid or Salamanca.I´ll disclose honestly here and say, I do hiss the hell out of it because, hey, I wanna be fancy! Now, let´s talk about the speed of the thrill and how that relates to your virility!

[@Sandalwoodrk]

I remember asking my Mexican friend how he pronounced S + R and he had no clue what I meant cause folks just don' tthink about how sounds change from how they're written He just ended up sending me a recording of him pronouncing it cause he didn't know else how to explain it except "it's S then R."

[@max_pin]

As another example of this, alanxelmundo, who's from Mexico, contrasts "más pobres" with "má[s] ricos" at about 30 seconds here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mqG4k2qoo7tpg8k

[@tenminutespanish]

Perfect example!!!

[@hannofranz7973]

Con tantos dialectos locales daría por supuesto que unos lo pronuncian y otros no pero si es sorprendente que alguna gente reaccione de una forma como ai los estuvieras ofendiendo, además teniendo razón en que existe este fenómeno.

[@Jkohnson-db9pk]

(Long comment, sorry) As a Black, non-native Spanish speaker, here's my view on the matter. I think that people saying things like "I am a native Spanish speaker, and we don't pronounce 'sr' like that!" or "In my country, we don't say it that way!" is kind of baffling. That would be like English speakers saying "I'm a native English speaker, I'm telling you we don't drop the r at the end of word!" Or "We don't speak English like that in my country!" I'm just like "OK. And?" Just because you pronounce something differently, or people in your country say things differently from another doesn't make it more "correct". Nor does it mean that other people don't pronounce that way, especially when there's evidence that some do. This reminds me of how certain dialects are associated with what type of class a person is in. For example, in the U.S., AAVE is often associated with middle/lower class Black people and is often considered "wrong." Personally, I love English and Spanish dialects and accents, because I think it shows a part of how some people who speak the same language can still view the world differently. And that's nothing short of beautiful!

[@tenminutespanish]

Insightful comment. Thank you.

[@maitesuazo2539]

Soy chilena y creo que tienes razón. Creo que otra cosa que puede pasar (siéntete libre de estar en desacuerdo) es que sea una combinación de sonidos que varía tanto entre un país y otro, o una persona y otra, pasando por una escala de grises tan variada que es muy difícil llegar a una explicación como "se hace así y ya está". Analizando mi propia forma de hablar y la de mis compatriotas me he dado cuenta de esa variación. Pero bueno, no soy lingüista ni nada así que que alguien me corrija si estoy mal. Saludos y buen video como siempre.

[@tenminutespanish]

Gracias por contribuir al tema. Claro que tienes razón. Los fenómenos lingüísticos no son tan blancos y negros. Siempre forman un espectro o gradiente. El propósito de mi canal no es tanto describir con exactitud la situación lingüística para que los nativos y estudiantes muy avanzados puedan discutirla intelectualmente, sino ayudar a los estudiantes principiantes e intermedios. Así que, muchas veces cuando presento algo, lo hago más como “se hace así y ya está”. Es más fácil de entender para mi público meta. Pero sé que la realidad es más compleja.

[@maitesuazo2539]

Oh, no lo había pensado de esa forma. En ese caso no hay mucho qué discutir ;P. Saludos!

[@Hannib4lBarca]

Great video as always. I was wondering if you discuss anywhere how to produce the assibilated r. Is it a variation of the tapped r, and if so how does it differ?

[@tenminutespanish]

I have a whole video on that r. In some dialects it's used a lot more often and in different places. Here's my video on that topic. kzbin.info/www/bejne/o4qwlKObg6qjodk

[@Jkohnson-db9pk]

As for the s before r pronounciation, personally I have no trouble pronouncing the s before r "correctly." (I put quotation marks because I don't think any dialect is more correct than another) I also often speak Spanish with a Puerto Rican accent, and I have Dominican friends who speak Spanish too. So I often just drop the S's completely.

[@tenminutespanish]

On rare occasion I have heard people who could pronounce s followed by trilled r without modifying either sound, but its pretty rare even for natives. Would you mind making a recording for me?

[@Jkohnson-db9pk]

@@tenminutespanish I would make one, but I'm not sure how yet. But the only thing is I just voice the s before an r, making it sound like an English z. Just like how I do before with s before any other voiced consonant.

[@tenminutespanish]

@@Jkohnson-db9pk Very interesting. I'd love to hear it. You could record it using the voice recorder on your phone and then email it to me. My email is [e-mail]

[@Jkohnson-db9pk]

@@tenminutespanish Ok, I just recorded it. I'm about to email them to you right noe.

[@Jkohnson-db9pk]

@@tenminutespanish I just sent the email to you

[@dgoins6]

Have you considered analyzing Spanish of the United States? It is the second largest Spanish speaking nation in the world.

[@tenminutespanish]

Apart from New Mexican Spanish, which is nearly extinct, there is no dialect of Spanish that has survived the US's acquisition Spanish/Mexican territories. In other words, the Spanish you hear in the US is recently imported from elsewhere. The language is spoken differently here than in the countries it came from, due to contact with English and blending of different Spanish dialects, and this is interesting to linguists who study how languages change when they're blended together. But that's not really my thing. I'm much more interested in the Spanish of monolingual natives living in their country and culture of origin.

[@dgoins6]

@@tenminutespanish okay. I've noticed native Spanish speakers in the US willl pronounce double ll and y as the English Y. Also they're pronouncing V as the English V. I wonder if in another 50 - 100 years Spanish will morph as English and Spanish merge.

[@tenminutespanish]

@@dgoins6 I hear those features in the US, too, but of course it depends on the original dialect. Mexican-Americans are much more likely to pronounce ll like y, but Argentine-Americans aren't. Even second or third generation Argentines aren't. You can't say that the US has one dialect of Spanish with consistent features. There are dozens of dialects here, each originating somewhere in Latin America and retaining many or most features of their original dialect.

[@dgoins6]

@@tenminutespanish I understand . New York has the Puerto Rican dialect, Miami is heavily influenced with Cuban. Mexican/ latin American in the west. It would be difficult to analyze Spanish of the United States.

[@hectorherrera526]

This video is correct. But to my knowledge this is NOT a rule, it is done unintentionally. Unintentional just like many people from Spain pronounce the letter "s" like a "d".

[@tenminutespanish]

In linguistics a rule isn't a prescription for how you should speak, but a description of how people do speak (and under what circumstances they speak that way).

[@hectorherrera526]

@@tenminutespanish I'm not a linguistics expert, which you appear to be, I say it respectfully. Many people speak Spanish in erroneous ways, mostly unintentionally, does that make it a rule? or did I misunderstand you?

[@tenminutespanish]

@@hectorherrera526 There are two very different views on language. One is language arts teachers. The rules they teach you aren't an explanation of how you DO speak. They're a prescription for how you SHOULD speak. This is not linguists. Linguists study the way people DO speak, and then we describe that. A linguistics rule is simply a description of how people speak. So, if a sample of educated native speakers from a broad range of dialects all omit [s] before trilled [r] in professional level speech, then this fact can be formulated into a linguistics rule. That rule is an observation about how people speak, not a suggestion for how they should speak.

[@cabarete2003]

I didn’t watch your other video but I’m guessing you are using the /s̬/ here right?

[@tenminutespanish]

I'm sorry, I don't know what sound that symbol represents. You should check out the other video. It's less than 60 seconds. It's one of my shorts.

[@tenminutespanish]

@@cabarete2003 Thank you. I'm really sorry, but I still don't recognize that symbol. Are you talking about a voiced alveolar sibilant? Fricative? I'm very interested in what you're saying, but I don't quite understand.

[@cabarete2003]

​@@tenminutespanish Sorry I mean {s̬}. The voiced alveolar .Update--I agree that Spanish speakers do what you say, and would add the voiced alveolar.

[@cabarete2003]

@@tenminutespanish Sorry it is the voiced fricative aveolar. Having trouble with KZbin today....Anyway...So the same sound that you'd get from an s before a sounded consonant. BuenoS dias vs Buenas tardes. or el tiene maS dientes vs el tiene mas frijoles. So according to the text I learned from that same sort of Z sound that is created due to assimilation is what you get before r

[@cabarete2003]

Also...I learned all this stuff in Spanish and don't always know the terms in English. Like I say sounded....should say voiced.

[@rodrigocampspalacios5408]

why do you do that wrong classification mixing country names and continents? Why do you say Spain, Mexico, and South America as if the last one were a country? Do you know how many and how different countries in South America are? Each has its own pronunciation, his own vocabulary, intonation, etc.

[@tenminutespanish]

I did not classify South America as a country. Yes, I know how many countries are in South America. Yes, I realize there are many dialects of Spanish in South America. I said "South America" instead of specifying which country, because I don't know which country in South America he is from. I suspect from his accent that he's from Colombia, but I'm not sure.

[@aluevanof]

​@@tenminutespanish