Introduction To Spanish - Introduction Writing

Tutorial Transcript

hi welcome to introduction to Spanish my name is Alicia and I'm joined by hi everyone I'm Lea in this lesson you'll learn the basics of Spanish writing just like English Spanish uses Roman letters in its writing unlike English the Spanish alphabet has one additional letter called ng which appears after the letter N and before the letter O this letter looks like a regular n but with a tilde on top it sounds like a combination between an N and a y sound like in the word Canyon yeah espanol Nino mañana other than this one extra letter the Spanish alphabet is essentially written the same as the English alphabet for the most part punctuation in Spanish is similar to English a period marks the end of a sentence and a comma indicates a pause exclamation and question marks however are a different story in English we place an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence to denote that it's exclamatory we do the same thing for question marks to denote that the sentence is a question in Spanish however exclamation marks and question marks must be placed at the end and at the beginning of this calamity rephrase your question Ola Ola the inverted marks must be placed whenever a new exclamatory or question phrases form even if it is within the same sentence or lie witness notice notice how this only applies to the phrase and not to the entire sentence itself one along the vas on the other hand the ending marks still go at the end of the sentence regardless of whether the words are part of the question or not along they've asked one to indicate a sentence that is both a question and an exclamation use both marks ensure that you're being consistent with which marks go on the inside and which go on the outside - quinta grass gary's e - quinta grace Cara's compared to English Spanish doesn't capitalize as many words as English does let's go over a few cases where English capitalizes words when a Spanish does not the days of the week in the months of the year are not capitalized in Spanish for example oh yes we're Spain to dress Doctore seasons of the year are also not capitalized el invierno say circa personal titles are not capitalized unless they are abbreviations Senor senorita look put titles such as those of a movie or book capitalize the first word only every other word in the title is written in lowercase hary poter la Piedra philosophy names of countries and cities are capitalized but names of languages are not rain O'Neal Estados Unidos hablo English finally we come to the Spanish accent mark Spanish uses a mark called the acute accent it looks like a diagonal line which starts from the bottom left and rises towards the upper right this accent mark appears above the letter more specifically accents will only appear over the five vowels in Spanish the Spanish accent is used to indicate that the syllable which has the accent must be stressed so always stress the syllable which has the accent male equal compro some words are spelled the same and sound the same but have different meanings in Spanish and in these situations the accent is used to differentiate the two words so it's clear exactly which word we're referring to mas mas okay so we've covered the main accent mark in Spanish but what about these ones don't be fooled by the first example even though it might look like an accent it's just a little Enya in Spanish the second example is an accent marker and it's used to indicate that the you should be pronounced this is because the letter U is usually silent when it comes after the letter G consider the following examples Guerra guerilla valenza Pinguino notice how the U is silent in the first two examples Guerra garea but pronounced in the last two but a wenzer pinguino keep in mind though that this accent only occurs in a few words that have the letters G and you together in this lesson you learn that Spanish uses Roman letters like English with one additional letter exclamation and question marks appear inverted at the beginning of the phrase and upright at the end of the sentence days months and seasons aren't capitalized in Spanish and the acute accent is used in Spanish mainly to indicate stress in the next lesson you'll be entering Spanish bootcamp where you'll learn useful beginner phrases to get you speaking Spanish right away see you in the next lesson bye bye you