Have you ever wanted to use the sound that in Spanish is spelled with a J? I do a lot, as a result of studying Spanish, and I just don't know how to spell it so that people will pronounce it right. What do you suggest?

In Spanish in which dialect? The way I pronounce Spanish, I'd either just use an H, or make it clear that the local dialect in the story is pronounced like Spanish and use a J.

There's always the possibility of a pronunciation guide, which is often useful for fantasy names. The problem with said pronunciation guide is that people don't always look at those. Thought I'd throw out that idea.

Thanks guys!

Yeah, I try and put a pronunciation right after the word the first time it's said, but my problem is that there's no letter that can represent that sound unless it's a Spanish 'j', which...since some people don't speak Spanish, causes them to mispronounce it...so in a pronunciation key, if I want to represent that sound, the best I can do is put in 'gh'. Are there any other letter combinations that represent that better?

From what I use of South American Spanish I'd just use an H. I.e. hahl e PEEN yo.

That's all very good and well, but what happens when you have a word that ends in the Spanish 'J' sound? For example, Gerinogh (spelled with the 'gh' as you can see). I'm not sure it would work very well with just the 'h'.

I think we're talking past each other here ... in my (admittedly limited) experience with Spanish, the "Spanish 'j' sound" is precisely an aspirated 'h' sound. (For example, "rojo" is pronounced "ro-ho".) There's no *consonant* there at all, and I can't imagine how you would *pronounce* a word that somehow ended with that sound (the equivalent letter in English is, like I said, 'h', and in English words that end with that letter, the 'h' is silent), so for me *spelling* its pronunciation would be impossible.

Haha...

Okay, so I don't know what aspirated means...I'm not a language expert.

Ugh...how can I say this right...? How about a recording of pronunciation to illustrate the sound I mean, for lack of a better way?

That would work.
What dialect of Spanish do you speak? Maybe that would help. I'm sure you could find a sound byte somewhere on the internet of the sound you want.

I happen to have a dictionary to hand ; the definition it gives for "aspirate" is


The example that leaps to my mind right now is the contrast between the words "tee" and "thee": "tee" is not aspirated, while "thee" is.

Neither am I . As with most subjects, I dabble. The sum total of even remotely formal language education (other than "language arts" i.e. "English") that I've had is three years of high school Spanish, a semester of (300-level, which was a mistake, and I'm still not sure how I passed) Spanish in college, and three semesters of Latin in college. But with parents who got a more-or-less solid background in various languages and still dabble, and my brother having taken French rather than Spanish in high school, I've managed to pick up bits and pieces here and there.

And, actually, the term "aspirate" was something I picked up in choir; we're always being instructed to aspirate words beginning with "h" even more than we were, because most concert halls tend to eat consonants, especially soft ones like "h" or "f".


There is a supposedly-standard syntax for writing out pronunciations, called the International Phonetic Alphabet. (And there's a variant designed for cases like this, where you can't change to the IPA font.) Unfortunately, it's more or less opaque nonsense to amateurs, and to the best of my knowledge I have yet to meet anyone who can actually read it.

Maybe... But, I don't know what dialect/version I'm learning...


Uh, yeah...I don't know how to read those things.

Thanks for you're help, guys! I'll see how it all works out.

Here is a link to the IPA; each letter has its own page, and most of those have a recording of the sound being pronounced:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA

Hehe, thanks, Tsa!

In the dialect I speak (fairly cosmopolitan, I think, but my teacher is Guatemalan, so to the extent that I speak a local dialect, that will be it), the jota is pronounced not like an english H, but like a Scottish Ch or Greek Chi. Think of the word "Loch," as in "Loch Ness" or "Loch Lomond." Hence the Spanish word reloj, meaning watch or clock, is perfectly pronounceable. I have this sound in one of my languages, and write it as Ch, if that helps any.

Thanks, Samstarrett!