My wife laughed at the way I said telephone in Spanish.

I say tah-lay-fa-no

She says tell-eeee-phone--oh

Who is right??

Tell-ay-fono, IIRC. Its how I said it in Costa Rica, and talk with my cooks....

Long A, pronounced the way you say the letter "a" not the word (ahh).

But I'm sure that dialects change it, etc. You think thats bad, listen to Northern and Southern Italians talk. Its a different language! :D

I think it varies because the long eeee sounds right to me, but a good deal of my exposure to spanish was spain spanish.

no no I take that back. the more I say it, the more ay sounds right...

The letter e in spanish is always pronounced like "eh" in "hey". It's tell-eh-foh-noh with the accent on the second syllable-- tel-EH-foh-no. :) The spanish language is easy like that-- everything is pronounced exactly how it's spelled about 99.999999999% of the time. :D

i just say phone and make the hand sign.. that seems to work fine :lol:

:lol: And just keep saying tel-e-phone louder and slower, along with hand signals you can't go wrong.

Thats one option! :lol:

But I think it depends on how they pronounce it themselves in different regions of Spain. Just like in the UK it's all different pronounciations all over the place!

If in doubt, just keep repeating it in all of the different ways!!! Plus the hand signals too! They will catch your drift at some point!

SV is right, it's "teléfono", therefore its really easy to pronounce, dont add anything, just say it like you write it. The ·E· in Spanish is like ·E·lephant.... and the ·O· like in t·O·p or fOnt.

well Im glad to see everyone has different ways to say it. I am from Minnesota so we do talk a litte different. yah ya betch ya

Haha I'm from Buenos Aires, Argentina... but in all forms of Spanish "teléfono" is pretty much the same... pronunciation varies in letters like S, C, Z, Y, LL, R, RR... so teléfono is a safe bet.. hehe. Also some pronunce it like with a question mark "teléfono?" hahah dont know why... but thats like differet English pronunciations.

Hey now, thats the tried and true stupid American method of dealing with someone that doesn't speak English. Say it purposely louder and drawn out, and miraculously the person will understand!! :doh:

^^ LOL so true!
But I guess we all do that out of instinct... Yesterday I caught up with the German FEZ (Foreig Exchange Student for those non That 70s Show fans) (only she's a girl), and I realised i was talking to her really slowly and keepig eye contact and always facing her way when I spoke and then I realised... "she's not deaf you idiot! she gets it all the same!!"
:doh:

Just be careful that people don't start seeing you as E.T:

"E.T-phone-home" :lol:
http://victoria.isheahan.com/content...ome%20copy.jpg

Hahah. Nice.

You forgot about the CH and the infamous Ñ! In spanish Telephone has 4 syllables therefore the diff from it in English that has 3. I guess that's one of the things that make it seem so familiar yet so diff. Something that mkade me laugh a bit is that even with the word "no" you can tell if the person is saying it in Spanish or in English.

Actually in Spanish the Ñ is pronounced the same in every Spanish speaking country, and so is the CH.

Funny you should mention that, my finish friend always said that my "no" sounds funny... and I don't say it like in Spanish "n·o" in English i say something like "nou"....

Dude the ñ tends to vary the finish of the word depending of the accent sometimes it varies to a "gn" and the Ch also tends to have a lentgh issue depending of the region. also the tz as for example.

:blink2:

Name ONE word in Spanish that is spelled with T followed by a Z.

Itziar, Aritz