Chapter 2: Structure
of Spanish
Teaching Reading Sourcebook
2nd Edition
Spanish Letter/Sound System
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In Spanish spoken in the Americas, there is a nearly
one-to-one correspondence between the 22
phonemes and the 29 letters that represent these
sounds.
The phonetic variations of Spanish consonants are
a challenge for most beginning readers.
Spanish readers are taught the vowel letters and
sounds before consonant letters and sounds.
Spanish is a syllabic language: the spoken language
is built on a small number of syllables and the
printed language is easily decoded syllable by
syllable.
English/ Spanish Differences
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The five Spanish vowel sounds are relatively
consistent.
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a represents the short-o sound in spa
e represents the long-a sound in eight
i represents the long-e sound in machine
o represents the long-o sound in old
u represents the long-u sound in tube
English/Spanish Differences
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In Spanish, the letter v is pronounced /b/.
The sound for z is pronounced /s/.
Spanish words do not usually end with final
consonant blends.
The sh and th digraphs do not exist in
Spanish; the ch digraph is taught as part of
the alphabet.
The rr is a consonant digraph that is
pronounced with the forcibly rolled /rr/; the ll
is pronounced /y/.
English/ Spanish Differences
continued
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The g before e or i and j represent a strong
guttural sound /x/ similar to /h/ in English.
The only silent letter in Spanish is h.
In Spanish the letters k, w, and the digraph
wh are only found in words of foreign origin.
Que or qui in Spanish are pronounced /k/ not
/kw/.
There are no Spanish words that begin with
s-blends.
English/Spanish Cognates
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Cognates are words in two languages that share a
similar spelling, pronunciation, and meaning.
Children can often draw on their knowledge of words
in their first language to figure out the meanings of
cognates in English.
English and Spanish share a large number of
cognate pairs because of their common Latin and
Greek roots.
Cognates can be spelled identically or nearly the
same, pronounced nearly the same, or be false
cognates. False cognates are words spelled
identically or nearly the same in both languages but
do not have the same meaning.