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SPELLING SPANISH WORDS: 5 LANGUAGE MISTAKES THAT EVEN NATIVES MAKE

BY: WWW.SPEAKINGLATINO.COM

+1. Switching up “V” and “B”

The “V” in Spanish is pronounced basically exactly like the B. In fact, when spelling things out, many people say b larga and v corta or uve to distinguish between the two.

It’s common for native speakers to use V instead of B such as huviera instead of hubiera or vendito instead of bendito.

Be careful of some V/B situations, like the verbs andar and estar which have conjugations where the word is written with B and other conjugations written with V.

+2. “Y” and “LL”

In Spanish, the double L (ll pronounced elle) is pronounced just like the Y, so this is the same situation as with the V and B.

Due to the fact that they are pronounced the same, it is not uncommon to words written incorrectly such as alluda instead of ayuda or lla instead of ya.

You will see that there are more rules for the use of Y than for the LL.

+3. Leaving out the “H”

Since the H is silent in Spanish, many natives simply omit it when writing.

This is not a big deal for words like abía instead of había, but it can occasionally change the meaning. For example, hola means “hello” while ola means “wave”. Of course, context will usually clear up any confusion.

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4. “C”, “S” and “Z” Latin American pronunciation is distinguished by the

seseo, or the pronunciation of C (before e or i), S and Z as S.

As in other letter sets, these three letters may have the same pronunciation, as in necesito or casar/cazar.

The result is common misspellings such as nesecito or cazar when the word casar is meant.

The most common mistakes occur with the pair C and S when C is combined with vowels E or I (when the vowels A, O and U combine with C the sound is a hard C sound, like a K). With the seseo, the sound -ce- and -ci- are the same as -se- and -si- and this is when the confusion comes in.

+5. “G” and “J”

In this example from Colombia the word almojábana is misspelled almogábana.

Since G and J can be the same sound (as in jalea and gelatina), the two are often juxtaposed when writing out words.

In this example from Costa Rica, the word naranja is misspelled naranga.

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Read the full article here:http://www.speakinglatino.com/5-common-spanish-spelling-mix-ups/