I dont pronounce the g in agua? is that wrong?
I have heard people say agua with the g and some without the g help please im confused
8 Answers
The ommision of part of a word when speaking is called elision - elisión
e·li·sion? ?/??l???n/ –noun
1.the omission of a vowel, consonant, or syllable in pronunciation.
2.(in verse) the omission of a vowel at the end of one word when the next word begins with a vowel, as th'orient.
It happens a lot in English.
In various parts of the world it seems that some consonants get dropped from pronunciation.
However, the "g" is not supposed to be a silent letter. So technically it's wrong to drop it.
Well, I hear the g dropped in Mexican Spanish all the time, even when they say "agua" but usually when it is used in the phrase "aguas" which means something like "be careful" I think.
Go to following link for a good and simple lesson on the Spanish g.. Hear the g pronounced in all three of it's phonetic sounds.
http://www.studyspanish.com/pronunciation/letter_g.htm
Spanish speaking people are like any other people in their speech patterns. Not very precise. English speaking people pronounce words differently from one another as well. The soft g, as in agua, has no English equivalent. So might sound like a hard English g or the English "wha" combo as in "what" depending on speaker and on ear hearing it.
jeezzle has a point but it is not dropped. Instead of the "g" as in the word "gota", ie hard, in some Spanish speaking countries the "g" as in the word "agua" becomes a lot softer, ie suave. This is one of the letters, this soft or suave "g" that doesn't appear in our English vocabulary. I suppose some speakers make it so suave that our English ears do not pick it up. Don't worry too much about it though, just go and
Missing, or mispronounced, consonants occur just about everywhere. I think I have yet to meet a citizen of the USA who pronounces "t" in the middle of a word as anything but "d" or a non-voiced stop. The other day I quoted the streetwalker guy in Santiago, Chile who used to have a pitch outside one of our favorite Chinese retaurants. As we parked the car he would stagger up and say "lecui'l'au'os'nor" = "le cuido el auto señor". I don't advise anyone deliberately to sound like this but it's only an extreme version of how a lot of folk talk.
I don't think the letter "g" is ever silent in spanish. Sometimes it is pronounced like an h sound like in "gente", but it's never silent.
The letter "h" however is silent, every time as far as I know. Words like hora and hecho and such are pronounced as though the "h" wasn't there. Although, when it's "ch" it just makes the same sound as it does in English.
I have never heard "agua" said without the "g" sound, but I am mainly exposed to Mexican Spanish; perhaps it varies regionally in some cases. It could also be you heard a different word similar to agua in which the "g" is closer to the English "h" sound. When the "g" is said, it's not quite as "hard" as in English, but a "thicker" sound instead (unfortunately, I do not know the correct linguistic terms to describe "hard" and "thick" sounds!).
