¿Qué me quieres, amor? ¿Ya no tenía
olvidado a Teodoro? ¿Qué me quieres?
Pero responderás que tú no eres
sino tu sombra, que detrás venía.¡Oh celos! ¿Qué no hará vuestra porfía?
Malos letrados sois con las mujeres,
pues jamás os pidieron pareceres
que pudiese el honor guardarse un día.Yo quiero a un hombre bien, mas se me acuerda
que yo soy mar y que él humilde barco,
y que es contra razón que el mar se pierda.En gran peligro, amor, el alma embarco,
mas si tanto el honor tira la cuerda,
por Dios, que temo que se rompa el arco.
A page in Spanish (with Wafa Akkouh)
Today we will write a page in Spanish. Spanish is a very important language in the world. It is spoken, in Spain of course, and also in almost all countries in central and south America (only Brazil, one of the Guyanas and some islands in the gulf of Mexico speak other languages).
For we, English speakers, Spanish phonetics is somewhat difficult, because its sounds are very strong, probably through the Arabic influence (Arabs dominated Spain for about seven centuries). For instance de sound 'R' is pronounced by closing and opening quickly the vocal tract with the tongue touching the palate. In that way the tongue vibrates: if it does it several times (two or three) the sound is the 'R double', and if only one it is the 'R simple'. The 'r double' is usually written with two letters 'r' and the 'simple' with only one. There is some exceptions: when the 'double' begins the word it is only written with one, but keeping its sound of 'double' of course. For example, the words rosa, Roma and radical have all a double 'r' as their first sound. And also the words that have an 'r' after an 's' or an 'n', write also a single 'r' but pronounces double, like Israel and Enrique, for instance.
Note that in other cases you write what you pronounce: if you write 'caro' you write and pronounce single, but if you write 'carro' you write and pronounce double. If you try 'm' you will not find any examples because in Spanish you write always 'r' n' when you have a nasal sound. the cases which have a exclusive sound are special because then the syllable includes the occlusive sounding 'pra', 'pre', 'tra', 'cri', 'gri', 'dro' and 'bru'. In those cases it is not clear if the 'r' is double or single, you need then some technical device to asses the question.
today will write a page in Spanish. Spanish is Having lost the former text of this page, due to not being careful, we will try today to recover it as much as possible. The theme, the subject of the page consists on describing how to utter correctly English sentences, that is, describe the prosody of the English language. Prosody rules two great areas: rhythm and intonation. The first, keeps syllables and stresses (accents) at regular intervals, running smoothly in time. This is like music, where notes occur within a measure occupying the same duration, or multiples and submultiples of a time unit what was called tempus primus in Latin music (read Aristides Quintiliano in his excellent treatise on Greek music, on which Latin was based). For that, poetry is excellent, because the regularity is greater, approaching speech even more to music. Let's remember a Spanish sonnet belonging to El Perro del Hortelano, an amusing play by Lope de Vega:
Or, similarly, coming back to English, the Shakespeare's sonnet:
Both sonnets follow the same rhythmical pattern, the same metre: the iambic pentameter, which sounds liketaWhen I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white;When lofty trees I see barren of leaves
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence*
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 ta tá ta ta ta tá ta ta ta tá ta ‒ When I do count the clock that tells the time ‒ ‒ ¿Qué me quie res, a mor? ¿Ya no te ní a ‒
Trying to recite in time, with regularity and without stopping, the previous four line we experience in one or other aspects difficulties and a errors of synchronicity. We try to reach the correction in this task by stroking with the hand synchronously with the syllables. To order all this actions we need to emphasises the main syllables in the iambic pentameter, which are 2, 6 and 10 (bigger and bold in the number line).
These problems mean and say to us that intellect alone is not able to perform in time because it is abstract and tasks in time belong to the kingdom of life. So neural connections, muscular reactions and flow of cerebral impulses are necessary to this temporal task, when we are able to combine all this processes we begin to understand what rhythm means and we can recite with clarity and beauty, a no menial accomplishment.
* having doubts about the pronunciation of this word we look in the Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language where we find 'e' and 'i' as correct choices for the first vowel. By the way let's write the list of English letters in the alphabetic order:
a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z.
which is slightly different of the Spanish one:
a, b, c, ch, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, ll, m, n, ñ, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z.
And only to compare let's try to remember the Arabic one:
alif, ba, ta, tha, gym, h.a, kha, dal, thal, ra, zay, sim, shim, s.ad, d.ad, t.a, z.a, 'ain, ghain, fa, qaf, kaf, lam, mim, nun, ha, waw, ya, (hamza).
So we count twenty-nine letters if we considered hamza, a glotal stop, like a letter. Arabic there for have many more sounds tha Spamish or English except vowels which are less: only three longs or shorts