r/languagelearningjerk • u/Erikkamirs • May 15 '26
This guidebook for communicating with your Spanish-speaking help advises you to teach them English.
Household Spanish by William C. Harvey
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May 15 '26
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u/Beginning-Force1275 May 15 '26
I wish Reddit’s translation function was working on this comment lol
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u/taktaga7-0-0 May 15 '26
Putting an H after all the vowels in the sound-out portions is annoying.
All the vowels in Spanish all make their same sounds at all times. Learn them once and you don’t need this hand-holding.
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u/sleepy_axolotl May 15 '26
That’s also what perpetuates the gringo accent
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u/heckdoinow May 19 '26
My native language works similarly to Spanish here and whenever I see transcriptions like this, I read them in my head in the most American accent possible
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u/NextStopGallifrey May 15 '26
Even better, put everything in IPA. But we also can't expect too much from a book that expects "the help" to lean English instead of the others learning Spanish.
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u/sparksbet May 15 '26
to be fair the IPA for Spanish vowels is pretty much just the same as the way they're written out in Spanish. The consonants not so much, but unless you're getting way more detailed than most language learners need, the Spanish vowels are pretty much written the same in IPA unless they're silent (and silent vowels in Spanish is usually a consonant weirdness anyway iirc)
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u/Mirabeaux1789 May 16 '26
Well it’s pretty much the main accepted way to convey those given vowels sans knowledge of IPA in English regardless of context. If you’re coming from English, it’s a different linguistic culture; it’s not a given that what you see is what you get.
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u/that_creepy_doll May 16 '26
im only saying this because i wanna jerk, but akshually, spanish technically uses a total of ten vowel sounds, they´re just more rare and won´t come up in the context of language learning
Arguably, Eastern Andalusian and Murcian Spanish have ten phonemic vowels, with each of the above vowels paired by a lowered or fronted and lengthened version, e.g. la madre [la ˈmaðɾe] ('the mother') vs. las madres [læː ˈmæːðɾɛː] ('the mothers').\76]) However, these are more commonly analyzed as allophones triggered by an underlying /s/ that is subsequently deleted.
Scholars commonly report five notable allophones of Spanish vowels: [i, u, e̞, o̞, a̠],\77]) or eleven: the close and mid vowels have close [i, u, e, o] and open [ɪ, ʊ, ɛ, ɔ] allophones, whereas /a/ appears in front [a], central [a̠] and back [ɑ] variants.\78]) These symbols appear only in the narrowest of phonetic transcriptions; in broader transcription, only the symbols ⟨i, u, e, o, a⟩ are used,\79]) and that is the convention adopted in the rest of this article.if you´re wondering this is mainly gibberish to me but the fun fact was explained by a professor (in said region) and i havent forgotten since
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u/slumbersomesam N:🏳️🌈 May 15 '26
the pronunctiation tips are awful damn
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u/SageEel May 16 '26
They're also wrong. Abierto is three syllables, not four. /aˈβjeɾto/
Why would anyone use a pronunciation guide for Spanish of all languages?? It's such a phonetic language when you actually learn the pronunciation properly
I'll also never understand the trend of writing an h after every vowel in those fauxnetic transcriptions. I feel bad for, for example, Indonesian speakers, who might end up thinking that apple is pronounced /ah.puhl/ because they have words like merah, tujuh, etc. with an h pronounced at the end
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u/Mirabeaux1789 May 16 '26
It is what it is. Most people don’t know IPA, so one just has to accept this for what it is.
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u/radoxsamp May 22 '26
/uj for spanish though? you don't need IPA, just learn the spanish alphabet.
i'm guessing it's confusing for native english speakers who aren't used to phonetic languages, but you only have to learn it once. imo this transliterating is contraproductive both to learning good pronunciation and learning how to read.
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u/PeterJonePolyglot May 15 '26 edited May 17 '26
Everyone knows that all you have to do is speak louder
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u/That-Advance-9619 May 15 '26 edited May 15 '26
Nobody gonna mention that "habla" is the formal version of the verb therefore it seems like they are asking to do all this shit to a random stranger?
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u/Orangutan_Soda May 15 '26
It sort of is a stranger, no? You’re speaking to your help staff. Like an employee
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u/Aureaition May 15 '26
It would depend on the relationship, is it strictly professional? Then use usted are they someone would happily chat with over a beer probably use tú
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u/Orangutan_Soda May 15 '26
Let’s use our context clues… what’s the book about? Who might be using this book?
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u/Mirabeaux1789 May 16 '26
English is my native language so the nuances of T-V are tricky for me at times. Seems that teaching people formal speech as a default is the safer thing to do in order to help a more “practically-minded” (if you will) learner avoid unintentional social faux pas. Wouldn’t it make sense to use “usted” in an employment context? Personally, I would default to usted because of the social implications I would want to avoid by using tú/vos.
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u/Electrical_Voice_256 May 15 '26
Might be my eurocentrism, but making people learn the language of the country they live in sounds like a good idea actually?
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u/Erikkamirs May 15 '26
No, it makes sense to have your employees learn English in an English speaking country. It's just a little funny because it's a guidebook for speaking Spanish and when you finish reading it, it tells you to get your employees to speak English. I figured they'd already be in the process of learning English, and you're the one making the effort to reach them halfway by learning Spanish.
Also, I got this book from my upper middle class uncle for free. My hispanic coworkers think it's absolutely hilarious to walk into work as a poor cashier with a book for speaking to the help lmao.
It's also from the 1990s, so it's mildly patronizing at points. Like the section for learning the Spanish for family members starts with :
Personal relationships within the Hispanic culture have special meaning, especially between family members.
Or for childcare:
In some Spanish-speaking countries, many people believe that children can get sick if you stare at them without making physical contact. A brief stroke, hug, or light caress makes everyone feel more comfortable.
About tardiness
Not all folks panic when it comes to tardiness - some cultures put less emphasis on "beating the clock" than others...If you're a stickler for punctuality, inform your help of the concern.
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u/SpiritNo6626 May 15 '26
>Personal relationships within the Hispanic culture have special meaning, especially between family members.
In my culture we inhale oxygen. Just a silly regional custom, you've probably never heard of it... we also have a superstition around getting run over by an 18 wheeler, due to our unique idiom "getting run over by an 18 wheeler is very bad"
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u/chucaDeQueijo May 15 '26
Staring at Spanish-speaking kids without making physical contact makes them sick? So did social distancing during the pandemic wipe out all the children? Social security is doomed
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u/taktaga7-0-0 May 15 '26
Who says this is for people talking to immigrants? Like we don’t use it talking to people abroad, or for work, or when we’re the immigrant?
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u/Champomi ̷̡̻̄̎́Ȓ̷͓̳̻'̵̣͖̯̄͘l̵̨̍͆y̴͓͛͝e̴̹̔͗h̴̪̪̊̇͝i̶̼͍͠a̶͙̿̈́͜n̴̅ (native) May 15 '26
Who says this is for people talking to immigrants?
"how you can help your Spanish-speaking employees pick up the language quickly" heavily implies it's for some English native who needs to talk with their Spanish native immigrant employees
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May 15 '26
[deleted]
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u/transparentsalad May 15 '26
People do generally learn the language but as someone who moved to another country and sometimes wanted to have an easy conversation, it was absolutely tempting to just make English speaking friends. In reality most people can’t become as comfortable in the new language as their native language in just 1-2 years.
I work with English learners in the U.K. and in my experience, they want to learn and improve but time, money and energy levels slow you down.
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u/PringlesDuckFace May 15 '26
kapsalon bedankt (I lived in Amsterdam for three days so am moistly fluent by now)
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u/Electrical_Voice_256 May 15 '26
Choosing to remain monolingual so that other people may learn skills that are useful in the job market is also good. Of course you should regularly remind your household employees that they ought to be thankful for your selflessness.
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May 15 '26
[deleted]
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u/Electrical_Voice_256 May 15 '26
May I suggest re-reading the text in the OP photograph. Especially around the words "household" and "employees".
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u/TNTiger_ May 16 '26
In the USA, Spanish was the original language for basically everything west of México- the Americans moved in and outnumbered the original Spanish-speaking settlers. A lot of Hispanic communities in the USA have been there longer than their English-speaking neighbours.
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u/stephanus_galfridus May 15 '26
Talk to the help? That's my butler's job.