"Ah wonito"
is equal to "está bonito."
I'm telling you, the Spanish spoken where I work is really terrible. Elisions are chronic, but turning "está" into 'á is the worst case of it I've heard yet. When I first started working here it took me 6 months to figure out that "onde" means "donde." I wonder if anybody else here has noticed this kind of Spanish slang or accent?
4 Answers
But, honestly, at least where I live, we do the very same thing in English. We speak it fast -- or, at least, faster than you think -- and the drop or blur a lot of syllables.
The phrase "what are you" can be extremely blurred and said very fast. Below are five ways (BESIDES the proper way) that I might say this phrase...the last two ways are very fast and could barely be considered speech at all...just little muttered noises that precede the main part of the question. In fact, I've used the schwa in the examples below because the schwa is a quick "uh" sound we make when we're going from one consonant to another.
- /w?tch'-y?/
- /w?-d?-y?/
- /w?dj'-y?/ (very fast) {actually, this is my slurred version of "What did you"}
- /w?'-y?/ (very fast) {and I use this for both phrases as it drops the helping verb altogether}
When used as part of a well-understood, oft-used phrase, "no I don't" (ex. "No, I don't think so.") can be just as butchered. When I do this, it is so fast, and the whole phrase sounds like a single, swallowed syllable -- a mere muttering before I say what my mind considers the important part of the sentence.
/no-ah-doh/ (very, very fast -- the terminal -oh sound is a bit nasally due to the N)
When put in context of an entire sentence where the more important words are spoken clearly, these mumbled, breezed-by parts are actually understandable to others I speak to (otherwise, I'd have to stop speaking like that). It actually sounds quite natural to me. But, I imagine non-native speakers might find it challenging to listen to.
Also, were I ever to speak my Spanish to a native speaker of Spanish, I would probably sound like I was trying clumsily to imitate an automated voice recording (you know that stupid automated person you get whenever you call customer service before you get transferred to a human)...slow, too careful, mechanical (except that I would also make many mistakes along the way).
It was my understanding from ChamacoMalo (or whatever he was calling himself before he got himself banned) that the d sound is frequently dropped in conversational Spanish. And it is a gentle sound that I would expect to see get dropped. Like the tongue probably almost reaches the teeth and then brain is like, "Close enough! Let's do the next sound already!" This probably produces a slurred effect on the surrounding sounds that lets the native Spanish speakers know a d was just attempted but not completed. And, their brains are so intimately familiar with all the ins and outs of Spanish, it doesn't give it a second thought. But our English-wired brains are playing a juggling game of trying to both hear and understand the stream of foreign sounds entering our ear. In fact, as the sounds enter, we must hear the sounds and then temporarily store them so that we can translate them. So, we're always a few ticks behind and this makes our brain a bit distracted. So, since our brain is struggling so much with the clear sounds, the slurred d sounds like it was missed altogether, which makes our brains stop and puzzle over just what that word was supposed to be.
And, I'm just totally theorizing about how the brain processes this stuff. But it seems like it would work sort of like that.
Hola, es verdad en los hablantes del español hay diferentes acentos, asi como en el ingles hay diferentes acentos, ejemplo:sudafrica, australia, USA, Inglaterra, Belice, Haiti, etc, etc.
Sin embargo estas "onomatopeyas" como "Ah wonito" son producto del entorno social, mucha gente que es del campo o indigena como los mayas, los guaranies, los pueblos que hablan "quechua", afroamericanos y en general la sociedad de cada una de los paises que hablan el español, tienen su propio acento, sus popios "slag", y debido a la educación pobre que reciben, en algunos casos no asistieron a la Escuela por falta de recursos, origina que nascan estas expresiones o vulgarismos, algunas de estas expresiones son entendibles para los nativos que hablamos el español como nuestra lengua nativa, pero para los que estan aprendiendo es muy dificil, e inclusive algunos hablan muy rapido que ni se les entiende lo que dicen.
Me imagino que también sucede con los nativos que hablan inglés, un jamaiquino debe tener diferente acento al britanico o al americano.
Y créo que "ah wonito" quiere decir :"está bonito" o también en algunos paises lo utilizan para arrear al caballo o al burro "aaaa bonito" o "arre bonito" "arre caballito"
Espero haberte ayudado.
I realllly notice it a lot. It also transfers to written.. IMing with costa rican friends has shown me the shorthand in spanish. I have also noticed the shortening of words a lot spokenwise, but writting has been the hardest part.
Where do you live? There is not enough Spanish spoken at work for met to get a clear audio input much less critique the pronunciation.
