Dialogue

Vocabulary

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Lesson Transcript

INTRODUCTION
In today’s lesson, we’ll introduce you to another phrase that will provide you with another tool to learn from the people around. Today, we’re going to work on improving our reading and pronunciation. When you come across a word that you can’t read, you can use this phrase to get your answer.
GRAMMAR POINT
In Spanish, “How do you read this?” is ¿Cómo se lee esto?
¿Cómo se lee esto?
Let’s break it down by syllable: ¿Có-mo se le-e es-to?
Now, let’s hear it once again, ¿Cómo se lee esto?
The first word, cómo means “how.”
Let’s break down this word and hear it one more time, cómo.
And cómo.
This is followed by se, which in Spanish is a pronoun.
se
Then we have lee, which in Spanish is “it reads.”
Let’s break it down by syllable: le-e.
And one more time, lee.
So, to recap here, we have - Cómo se lee…
This means “How is it read…”
You could use the phrase just in this way, if it’s clear which words you are referring to.
If you need to clarify the exact phrase you’re asking about, then you can point to and add esto, which means “this.”
esto
esto
So, all together, we have ¿Cómo se lee esto?
Literally, this means “How is this read?”
In Spanish, how do you pronounce this is - ¿Cómo se pronuncia esto?
¿Cómo se pronuncia esto?
Let’s break it down by syllable: ¿Cómo se pronuncia esto?
And now, let’s hear it once again, ¿Cómo se pronuncia esto?
The first word, cómo means “how.”
Let’s break down this word and hear it one more time: có-mo.
cómo
This is followed by se, which in Spanish is a pronoun.
se
Then we have pronuncia, which in Spanish is “it pronounces.”
Let’s break it down by syllable: pro-nun-cia.
And one more time, pronuncia.
So, to recap here, we have - Cómo se pronuncia…
Literally, this means “How is it pronounced…”
You could use the phrase just in this way, if it’s clear which word that you’re referring to.
If you to clarify the exact phrase you’re asking about, then you can point to it and add esto, which means “this.”
esto
esto
So, all together, we have ¿Cómo se pronuncia esto?
Literally, this means “How is this pronounced?”
Once you get the reading, you can follow this up with “What does it mean?”
In Spanish, “What does it mean?” is ¿Qué significa?
¿Qué significa?
Let’s break it down by syllable: ¿Qué sig-ni-fi-ca?
Now, let’s hear it once again, ¿Qué significa?
The first word qué means “what.”
Let’s hear it one more time, qué.
This is followed by significa, which in Spanish is “it means.”
significa
And one more time, significa.
So, we have ¿Qué significa?
Literally, this means “What does it mean?”
While part of Spanish may be a bit hard to learn, such as conjugated verbs, pronunciation is relatively easy and a little effort is rewarded quickly.
Let’s go over the basic rule. The five vowels are always pronounced in the same way wherever you see them. The five vowels in Spanish are a, e, i, o, u.
One more time, a, e, i, o, u.
The only exception regarding this is, as we learned in some lessons ago, accentuated vowels, which are pronounced a bit louder and longer.
Let’s look at a couple of examples, comparing with English words.
“Bus” in Spanish is autobús.
autobús
Notice that vowel u is pronounced in the same way, but the second ú has a tilde and is accentuated and pronounced a bit louder.
autobús
“Bush” in Spanish is arbusto.
arbusto
Notice that unlike English, even with the same vowel “u” is pronounced different; bus - bush.
In Spanish, the vowel u has been pronounced the same oftentimes.
autobús - arbusto

Outro

Okay, to close out today’s lesson, we'd like for you to practice what you've just learned. I'll provide you with the English equivalent of the phrase and you are responsible for saying it aloud. You’ll have a few seconds before I give you the answer, so buena suerte, that means “good luck” in Spanish.
Okay, here we go!
“How do you read this?” - ¿Cómo se lee esto?
¿Cómo se lee esto?
¿Cómo se lee esto?
“How do you pronounce this?” - ¿Cómo se pronuncia esto?
¿Cómo se pronuncia esto?
¿Cómo se pronuncia esto?
“What does it mean?” - ¿Qué significa?
¿Qué significa?
¿Qué significa?

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