Spanish Lesson #1

Classes started Monday evening and we have about 20 students. Our "profesora" is from Argentina.

Her name is Myrna and I think she will be a better instructor for John than I can be. It quickly became apparent to her (and a couple of other students) that I'm a "ringer" and already speak Spanish.

This class is a college level course and its really geared to speaking the language. Myrna gave us some tips on a great web site tool at the University of Iowa. This actually shows the anatomy of the mouth and vocal cords as vowels and consonants are spoken.

I did learn an interesting bit of trivia from Myrna. The double "LL" in Argentina is spoken like the soft "G" in English, such as found in the word mirage. So instead of pronouncing "silla" as "see-ya" for the English word "chair", she says "see-sha". She did promise to try and pronounce the double "LL" like a "y" since this is what we will hear most often in the Spanish speaking world.

Today is Friday so I'm going to have to push John to start his homework this weekend.

Como siempre, les deseo "Pura Vida" mis amigos,
Tita