Merging of vowels
I want to ask about cases when people talk fast. Little Spanish that I know - I've mostly learned from songs.
And from what I've heard in many cases when "o" and "e" go together they turn into "we" or "oy", when "o" and "i" are together they transform into "wi" or "oy", "o" and "a" become "wa". Which basically means that "o" transforms into "w" or at least something very similar to it.
Well, it's common knowledge that "i" turns into "y", but in some cases where "e" comes with another vowel it also turns into "y" or at least this is what I hear.
But I don't know if anything happens with "a", I have no idea about how you can shorten this phoneme.
I mentioned music because I want to give an example when two vowels are merged to such an extent that I can hear only one of them.
Here's the first verse it starts at 0:44. The cases when I hear only one vowel are quoted.
Que llamen al nueve-once, que es tiempo de juego
Diganle que Yankee ahor"a e"sta tirand"o e"l fuego
Pa' las dulces ladies, las furiosas baby
Ell"a e"sta pidiendo que le suelte yo mi gravy
De la rima espesa, pa no midas fuerza
Que voy a fundir todos tus aires de grandeza
No te busques fuete, soy hach"a y" machete
Yo naci pa' esto no pegue de golpe suerte
Here's the second verse it starts at 1:44. The cases when I hear only one vowel are quoted.
Mama tu no tienes fiebre, per"o e"stas que hierves
Muevete esas nalgas hasta que la tierra tiemble
Nadie sale ileso, siempre sueno grueso
Sigo, repartiendo past"a y" queso
Mami sigue suave dan-do dir-ecto,
dan-dole duro, dan-dole afue-go, dan-dole
Yo s"oy" real, ya que el otr"o e"s un fake
Y aqui te va mi syrup pancake
El azukita pa' to'as las gatitas
Fundiendo mi letra hasta que el acero derritan
Norte, sur y este, hast"a e"l viejo oeste
Tod"o e"stan concientes que cuando le meto es excelente
Can native speakers hear another vowel?
I also want to bring your attention to the phrase "repartiendo past"a y" queso" where I hear only "i" phoneme (in English the equivalent of it is "ee" or "i?" in International Phonetic Alphabet), but in this case it's more like russian "?" (the only phoneme in English which is similar to it is "?" in International Phonetic Alphabet which represents "i" in the word "sit"). Does this change indicate the letter "a" in front of "i"?
And does this happen in real life conversations?
Update:
Just to be clear: it has nothing to do with "a" in front of it. I'm sure many people here don't really know what "?" is. And maybe that wasn't a good idea to compare them, but you have to admit that it sounds very differently from "ee" here.
When I said that "o" turns into "w", and "e" turns into "y", I added that the actual sounds may be just similar to the phonemes I chose. And I was right, here's an excerpt from wikipedia article "Spanish phonology":
"Non-syllabic /e/ and /o/ can be reduced to [?], [w?], as in beatitud [b?ati?tuð] ('beatitude') and poetisa [pw?e??tisa] ('poetess'), respectively; similarly, non-syllabic /a/ can be completely elided, as in (e.g. ahorita [o???ita] 'right away'). The frequency (though not the presence) of this phenomenon differs amongst dialects, with a number having it occur rarely and others exhibiting it always"
[?] - I hope that if you're learning Spanish then you know what it is. (This sound is very similar to "y" in the word "yellow")
[w?] - roughly like "w", but lips opened wider.
If we assume that it's just hard for me to recognize the latter sound (i mean if we exclude combinations with "o") then it leaves us dealing only with combinations "a e" and "a y". And if "a" is non-syllabic in those cases then we may assume that it is elided there.
But all this is just my speculation. Only a native speaker can say for sure. I still hope that somebody will respond.
1 Answer
Bumping this up for a response.
