El Toro

Pedro Alvarez, taken by Peter Diana from the Post-Gazette

One reason I may not be blogging as often is because I'm too busy watching the Pittsburgh Pirates having an excellent season. I would enjoy blogging a bit about baseball, but it really doesn't fit into the linguistic theme of this blog. However, as I was watching the game last night (an unfortunate extra innings loss to the St. Louis Cardinals), I came up with something I could talk about. One of their players, the third baseman Pedro Alvarez, is nicknamed "El Toro," which is of course Spanish for "The Bull," and as I watching last night's game, and I heard them say this nickname, it reminded me of when I was learning Spanish and the correct pronunciation of the letter "r."

Most people are probably aware that the letter "r" is frequently trilled in Spanish, but when it is intervocalic (a fancy word meaning between two vowels) it is actually pronounced as an alveolar flap (also sometimes called a tap). We make this sound in English too. For many people, it's the sound they make in the word "latter." It should sound a little bit like a "d," only quicker without any air built up behind it. 

Now, this distinction is important because what an English speaker likely hears as a "d" a Spanish speaker will hear as an "r." This can cause (and in my case did cause) confusion, particularly with the minimal pair toro(bull) and todo(everything). If you pronounce todo like you would in English (sounding similar to "toe dough") a Spanish speaker will likely hear the word toro.

To make it a little bit clearer, I'll use the international phonetic alphabet (or IPA). An alveolar flap is represented in IPA as [ɾ]. The correct pronunciation for the letter "d" in Spanish is actually a voiced dental fricative, which in English is the sound "th" makes in the word "this." In IPA it's represented with the old English letter [ð]. So put it all together, and here is the difference:

toro [toɾo] - bull
todo [toðo] - everything (sounds like "toe though") 

Also, let's go Bucs!