how do we recognize

Question

cómo estas? how r u ? como una fresa . i am eating a strawberry ... both como sound the same .

how do we differentiate these 2 "" como"" s?

thanx. sudha

I asked a similar question a long time ago. - webdunce, Dec 7, 2011

Answer 1

Context is everything - 'how a strawberry' doesn't make sense and likely neither would 'as a strawberry' so you know it must be 'I am eating'

Hm...uno podría decir "es rojo como una fresa", pero "it's red I eat a strawberry" tampoco tiene sentido. Ja ja. - webdunce, Dec 7, 2011

Answer 2

Yes, diacritical (orthographical) accent marks do not effect the pronunciation of the word. The different spellings are just to distinguish one from the other. {ésta (pronoun), esta (demonstrative adjective)}, however, other accent marks change the pronunciation of the word (está)

I don't think that is correct: there are unstressed words, although one could say that the lack of stress is due to their grammatical function rather than spelling.

Answer 3

Hah, I think I asked a similar question...but mine was about saying "How do I eat..."

¿Cómo como una fresa? = How do I eat a strawberry? (two different comos)

Once I realized that having the same word back-to-back in English is not a problem, then it didn't bother me in Spanish either.

Have you got the bill, Bill? (two different bills)

The man had had to go to the bank only once in his life. (two different hads)

The truck that that shovel was in is not here now. (two different thats)

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But your question is a little different.

If English used a 100% phonetic spelling system like Spanish uses, then words like win and when would be spelled exactly the same (since they are pronounced exactly the same).

So, if someone said to you (said...so you can't see the spelling...only hear the words), "If you win that game, you can have a piece of cake," you wouldn't sit around wondering if he meant win or when.

In fact, if they said "When they win, we are gonna celebrate," that wouldn't be a problem, either.

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We even have words that are spelled the same and pronounced the same but have different meanings. Consider the three different uses of "even" in the following:

Even (including) if the scores were even (equal), you would still have an even (divisible by two) number of coins in your pocket.

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Hope the English examples help.

Answer 4

The accent mark on cómo tells you that it is the interrogative (direct or indirect) or exclamatory pronoun. However, whether it is the adverb or conjunction (como) or the 1st person, singular of the present tense of the indicative mood for Comer must come from context.

Yes, diacritical (orthographical) accent marks do not effect the pronunciation of the word. The different spellings are just to distinguish one from the other. {ésta (pronoun), esta (demonstrative adjective)}, however, other accent marks change the pronunciation of the word (está)