mei market note no. 110 - energia| energy consultants€¦ · mei market note no. 110.2 houston,...

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MEXICO ENERGY INTELLIGENCE® (MEI) is a commercial and policy advisory service offered by BAKER & ASSOCIATES, ENERGY CONSULTANTS, a management consultancy based in Houston. MEI reports cover topics typically not discussed in Mexico. They are intended to facilitate two‐way communication between Mexican public and private institutions and the global environment. Our reports examine policy, institutional and cultural issues as they affect the operating environment, energy regulation, and government and private investment in Mexico’s energy sector. Reports are distributed principally on a subscription basis.

MEXICO ENERGY INTELLIGENCE® ISSN 2380‐6400

MEI Market Note No. 110.2 Houston, November 26, 2012; Rev. Sept. 4, 2013, Rev. Aug. 10, 2017

NE OF THE ENERGY REFORM’S COLLATERAL EFFECTS is in relation to second‐language acquisition.

English‐speaking companies from around the world who are new to the Mexico market bring with

them employees who face the challenges of learning Spanish. This report offers those employees

ideas about how to recognize and eliminate characteristics of the accent of a native English speaker. If put

into practice, there will soon be an improvement in one’s ability to hear, understand and speak Spanish.

We should start by asking: What is hard about learning

Spanish? The universal complaint of second‐language

students is that native speakers speak “too fast.” The real

problem, however, is not so much one of speed but one of a

misunderstanding of how sound is organized in the second

language, that is, its phonological system. Without

understanding its unique system, the non‐native speaker will

unknowingly export features of his or her native language,

thus creating the characteristic American, French or Chinese

accent in Spanish.

The English speaker who approaches Spanish is tripped up

by two initial difficulties: with just a few exceptions, the two

languages are spelled with the same Latin letters, creating a

horrible confusion regarding pronunciation. The letter ‘r’ in

Spanish may refer to either one of two consonants, neither

of which is found in English. A deeper problem yet is neurological in its roots: the ears of the speaker of

another language filter spoken Spanish by phonological rules of that language, thereby obscuring the fine

details of pronunciation and syllabification.

This report was prepared in line with our view that commerce and policy are advanced by incremental

progress in bilingual proficiency. It is meant for the English speaker who has conversational ability in Spanish,

elementary or otherwise. A close study will also benefit the Spanish‐speaking student of English.

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[email protected] of 18

MEI Market Note No. 110.2

Houston, August. 10, 2017


INTRODUCTION

The audience and scope of this report

HIS REPORT ADDRESSSES many of the challenges in gaining proficiency in relation to hearing and

pronouncing Spanish that are faced by anyone for whom English—American, Canadian, Australian

or otherwise—is his or her native language. The difficulties herein identified and the solutions

proposed will also be instructive for the English‐speaking professional of any language—including

Spanish itself.

For speakers of other Latin languages, there will be no difficulty in relation to how syllables are formed.

They will have to learn that the letter ‘r’ in their language will not match the two pronunciations of the

same letter in Spanish. For the native speaker of Japanese, the vowel system of Spanish will come easily;

but the pronunciation of ‘r’ and ‘l’ in Spanish will be difficult.

The report does not address lexical and grammatical difficulties, such as the use of the subjective form

of the verb and the several ways to describe events in the past. These difficulties will gradually disappear

as Spanish pronunciation and speech patterns are heard more clearly and as the tongue is able to free

itself of the phonological habits of another language.

One English‐speaker’s journey into Spanish

Sitting outside at breakfast on a fair Saturday morning in November 2012, in San

Antonio, after a two‐day conference in the twentieth anniversary of the signing

of NAFTA, my companion, a regular reader of MEI reports, asked “How did you

get your Spanish so good?”

The discussion that followed from that question extended breakfast by an hour, but there was no hurry

on either side. It was cool, but sunny, and there was plenty of time and coffee.

I did not have a prepared text, but I recall that my first point was about attitude. “In my workshops held

in Mexico earlier this year,” I began, ”I emphasized the need to go beyond what I called a ‘transactional’

attitude toward English. ‘English,’ I told the students (all professionals in government service) ‘is not

T





only a language in which to ask and receive documents and information; it is a language in which to

relax, tell jokes, flirt and—why not—fall in love.’”

I mentioned that in one of the workshops, the one that had been held in two sessions, morning and

afternoon, I asked those present to come back after lunch ready to stand up and tell a joke in English. It

turned out to be a very difficult assignment, and most of the students could not complete it.

“In my case,” I continued, I discovered what I came to call “the Mexican sense of humor” early on in my

career. When I lived in Mexico City for two years in the 1970s I discovered that much of Mexican humor

depends on the second and third meaning of an everyday word. With the incentive of understanding

Mexican jokes and humor in general, I furiously expanded my vocabulary of these secondary meanings.

“There was also the matter of homophones, words that are different but sound the same (which means,

in Spanish, that they are also spelled the same). I recall distinctly asking a university colleague whom I

was dating, Takako Sudo (QEPD), ‘What is the verb for ‘to taste’ in Spanish?’ She replied, ‘Saber.’

Surprised, I said “You’re kidding? ‘Saber,’ the same verb as ‘to know’?”

“After a while, I was able to tell jokes in Spanish. Everyone usually got a good laugh from my jokes, but I

now suppose that the humor lay less in the merit of the joke itself and more in the fact that it was a

gringo who was

telling it in

Spanish. Today, I have a mental archive of Mexican jokes that stretch back 30 years—even a couple from

the presidency of Luis Echeverría (1970‐76).1 The director of one of the government agencies, where in

2012 I gave a workshop on Advanced English Pronunciation, afterwards took note of my “Mexican sense

of humor” (see insert).

BACKGROUND

How another Western language informs us about Spanish

EFORE CONSIDERATION of any specific language other than one’s native tongue, it will be useful

to widen the scope of inquiry to ask about what we know about other languages in general. Here

are some observations:

1) We know that much of the vocabulary of Western languages is shared; so for any given word in

English or Spanish (or French, German, Farsi and Hindi, and a dozen other languages), there is a

certain probability of finding a linguistic cousin, or cognate, in any of the others.

2) Not only are words shared in Western languages, so also are morphological elements, such as

the ‘s’ to indicate plurality in nouns (Italian is an exception).

1 A scholarly discussion of Mexican political humor may be found in the works of Samuel Schmidt, a Mexican

political scientist. See http://www.elitelore.org/Capitulos/cap13_elitelore.pdf

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3) We also know that linguistic cousins (words with the same etymological grandparents, so to

say), may convey quite different meanings today than they may have conveyed generations

back. (Such pairs are called “false cognates.”)

4) In a general way, we know that some non‐Western languages, such as those of the Chinese

family of languages, employ principles of articulation and word‐formation that are unknown in

the main Western languages. The syllable in a Chinese language may have one of four or more

tones, or inflection patterns: rising, falling, flat, arc up, and arc down. Because meaning of a

word is conveyed by tone as well as by the permutations of vowels and consonants, a separate

speech particle is needed at the end of a sentence to express a question. Thus, “You are going to

the store,” vs. “You are going to the store, ma [吗].”2

5) When encountering a word in a non‐Western language that is familiar to a word in a Western

language, our first impulse is to dismiss the similarity of pronunciation and meaning as a matter

of statistical randomality. There are exceptions; perhaps the most well‐known is the Japanese

word for bread: pan. In the 16th century, Portuguese missionaries came to Japan and brought

with them wheat bread, which was unknown to this rice‐eating society. A researcher in the field

of historical linguistics who lacked the information about the Portuguese missionaries might

guess that here was another random coincidence. That guess, as we see, would be wrong.

6) This example invites us to consider the possibility that there may be linguistic cousins in

Western languages, knowledge of whose common ancestry has been lost. Let’s consider three

words that mean the same and that are taken from three languages: Wasser (German), “water”

(English) and agua (Spanish). The English and German words start with the letters ‘wa,’ and the

stressed accent3 is on the first syllable.4 In Spanish, the letters ‘gua’ are also pronounced

something close to /wa/.

Without looking at any etymological dictionary, we may surmise that these three words have

some common origin in an ancient language that is either known or yet unknown. Changes

happened over time, but the root syllable /wa/ has been preserved.5

7) Another example of how we can relate to words in other Western languages may be seen in the

comparison of er (German) and él (Spanish). Both words mean “he” or “it.” In Western

2 There is a well‐known sentence in Chinese known to foreign students: Ma, ma, ma, ma, ma? Each word has its

own tone, and the sentence roughly means “Did Mother scold the horse?”

3 In Spanish, the syllable that is pronounced with a greater intensity is called the sílaba tónica. In these two words, the first syllable of each has the sílaba tónica (or tonic accent in English).

4 Pronunciation today is different as the German ‘w’ is pronounced like a /v/, giving /vasser/.

5 Another example of a common phonological past is Wann (German) and Cuando (Spanish). Both mean “when” and both preserve /an/ with a tonic accent.





languages, the consonant sounds (consonant phonemes) /r/ and /l/ operate as a pair in

dynamic, semantic tension: “ray” means something different from “lay.” In Japanese, in

contrast, this phonological pairing does not exist; and at first it is impossible for the ear of a

native Japanese speaker to distinguish between “collect the papers” and “correct the papers.”

To summarize: the native speaker of a Western language has built‐in advantages in learning any other

Western language. Further, compared to the situation of a native speaker of an African language, or of

an indigenous language of the Americas, the speaker of a

Western language has an advantage in relation to the

languages of Buddhist countries of East and Southeast

Asia. The spread of Buddhism over centuries carried words

and sounds and parts of speech (lexemes6 and phonemes and morphemes) by means of its liturgical

languages, Sanskrit and Pali (both Western, or Indo‐European, languages).

And Spanish speakers might wonder about how it is that the five Spanish vowel sounds are identical, or

nearly so, to the ones found in Japanese.

It should be clear now that the native Spanish speaker who approaches English already knows a great

deal about English even before learning to say “How are you?” And the reverse is equally true. As we

shall see, however, getting the pronunciation right of ¿Cómo está usted? may take years of practice.

Getting clear about the sounds, or phonemes, in Spanish

A phoneme is a basic sound in a language that is used to distinguish one word from another. Spanish has

24 phonemes: 5 vowels and 19 consonants.7 In addition, there are several allophones in Spanish, that is,

sounds that may be phonemes in another language but occur simply as a variation in certain phonetic

environments in the first language.

To distinguish the reference to a phoneme from a reference to the letter, diagonal slash marks, or bars,

are used: /t/ is a phoneme, while ‘t’ is the letter. The phoneme /t/ contrasts with /d/, giving us the

difference between “try” and “die.”8

In Western languages, the relationship between the written and spoken language is always messy. In

Spanish, ‘c’ may refer to /s/ (cinta) or /k/ (cómo). The letter ‘c’ in a pair (cc) is articulated as /ks/

(lección) in the Americas or /kθ/ in Spain (lek‐θión).

The letter ‘g’ followed by ‘a’ or ‘o’ means one thing (as in gato) but it means another thing if followed by 9‘e’ or ‘i’ (as in gerente). Each occurrence of the letter ‘g’ in gigante refers to a distinct consonant. The

6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexeme The term “lexeme” refers to a basic unit of lexical meaning, regardless of

the inflections that a word might have: Forms of the lexeme RUN are run, runs, ran and running,

7 http://www.fahs.surrey.ac.uk/languages/spanish‐phonetics/advanced‐phonetics‐7‐2/spanish‐phonemes.htm

8 /t/ and /d/ are said to be in “phonemic contrast,” unlike (in Spanish) /s/ and /z/.

A native English speaker has a lot of

built‐in knowledge of Spanish.





letters ‘b’ and ‘v’ refer to a sound that is unfamiliar to the English ear and is one that does not require

the use the lower lip (as in the English “victory).”

In the same vein, we may consider /z/, which is a phoneme in English but an allophone of /s/ in Spanish,

as in isla and mismo, which are pronounced as /izla/ and /mizmo/.10 A more familiar example may be

seen in the difference between the peninsular and American Spanish pronunciation of ‘z’: whereas in

the Americas a native Spanish speaker says “una vez” (where the ‘z’ is pronounced as /s/), a Spaniard

says /una veθ/ (where /θ/ is pronounced as the ‘th’ of “thought’). The one is an allophone of the other.

The letter ‘h’ is always silent, as is ‘u’ when preceded by ‘q’ as in que /ke/. A dieresis on ‘u’ means that it

is to be pronounced, as in güero.

Compared to English, such oddities in Spanish regarding how spelling corresponds to sound are easy to

master.

It may be puzzling to a student of Spanish to discover in a Spanish dictionary that words beginning with

‘ch’ are grouped separately from words beginning with ‘c’. The classification, intentionally or not,

recognizes that /ch/ is a phoneme, one that is symbolized in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA),

as tʃ.

The IPA helps us get clear about how the same vowel or consonant can appear in multiple languages,

also how, in Western languages, the same letter in one language may refer to different sounds

(phonemes) in another language. For students of Spanish, the most important use of the IPA is to

distinguish three varieties of ‘r’: the short, flapped ‘r’ of pero (ɾ), the trilled ‘r’ of perro (R) and what we

call the “American nasal r” (ɹ) of “row, row, row your boat.” This phoneme may occur at the beginning

or end of a word or syllable. The use of the /ɹ/ is the primary clue, or give‐away, that it is an American

speaker, as in Puedo hablaɹ español. There are a half‐dozen IPA symbols that are immediately useful for

the student of Spanish (Table A).

9 The ‘g’ of “George” is unknown in Spanish.

10 Slash marks before and after a word refer to its pronunciation. In English, /z/ is a phoneme that contracts with /s/, as between “Zoo” and “Sue.” There is no such contrast in Spanish.




MEXICO ENERGY INTELLIGENCE® ISSN 2380‐6400 [email protected] of 18




A speaker at from Pemex Procurement International, Inc., told the audience that Pemex was focusing its

efforts only on assets and projects that were /pro‐FIT‐able/. If profitability is the goal, what message

does it send that “prófitable” is mispronounced?

Additional insights about Spanish phonology17 and orthography18 may be found in technical articles

posted on Wikipedia.org. The only drawback is that the articles seem to be meant for the professional

linguist, not for readers whose interests lie in matters related to commerce, regulation and policy.

CONCLUSIONS

HERE IS A GREAT DEAL OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION that must be set aside in order to speak

anything like what is called Spanish. Our view is that improvement comes first in the MIND, with

a better understanding of one’s own language, then the EAR mysteriously begins to hear Spanish

as it is actually spoken (and not through the filters of the phonology of one’s native language). Finally,

the TONGUE gives voice to new sounds and patterns syllabification. Mind‐ Ear‐Tongue, that’s the

sequence.

In this way, the starting point for improving one’s ability to speak Spanish is to be found in English, with

the task of getting one’s mind around real facts about how one hears and speaks English.

In parallel, there is a great deal to be learned in paying attention to the accent in English of the native

Spanish speaker. These are the hard‐to‐get‐rid‐of idiosyncrasies of Spanish that an English‐speaking

student wants to learn. Ask yourself, what is it that the native Spanish speaker is carrying into English,

and why is it so hard to let go? It’s this very hard‐to‐let‐go‐of feature of Spanish that you want to learn;

and anyone who works in an office with a native Spanish speaker has a “language lab” in the next

cubicle. Why, after years living in the United States, would a native Spanish speaker say /es‐treet/ and

/es‐top/?

Finally, as was pointed out in the beginning, it would be good to learn to tell some jokes in Spanish, as

both your confidence and vocabulary would benefit.19

This same logic applies to the native Spanish speaker who seeks to advance his or her proficiency in

English. Listen for the mistakes of native English speakers. Those mistakes offer important lessons in

English.

George Baker Publisher

17 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_phonology

18 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_orthography

19 To get started, here is a simple, bilingual riddle: Question: ¿Cuál es el color más frío? Answer: Yellow.

T

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2017

100110.2 415Aug 10, 17 Overcoming the American accent in Spanish

This report is a major “workover” (in drilling terms) of an earlier report issued in 2012.The arrival in Mexico of upwards of 50 operators from around the world since 2015created a new requirement for bilingual skills in Spanish. The report focuses onidentifying and correcting the errors of misplaced expectations that follow fromassuming that the linguistic habits of one’s native language have a place in Spanishpronunciation. Table A introduces symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabetthat let us distinguish between sounds in different languages that is represented bythe same letter; an example is the letter ‘r’ which refers to two consonants sounds(phonemes) in Spanish that are not found in English or French. Tips are given forbetter listening.

2016

100219 39Aug 18, 16 Advancing English Proficiency: What is possible in 75 minutes?

This report is a preview of material to be presented at an introductory workshop onEnglish proficiency at an agency of the Mexican federal government. The initial goalwill be to convince attendees that they are not actually hearing English as spoken;instead, they are hearing English through the filter of their Spanish phonologicalexpectations. A second goal will be to briefly present selected concepts in linguisticsthat illuminate previously-unnoticed aspects of English pronunciation. A third goal willbe to motivate participants to undertake a new effort to advance their proficiency inEnglish.

2015

100205 46Apr 30, 15 Overcoming the Mexican Accent in English (Part IV)

Mexico’s first bid round presents not only legal and commercial challenges forMexican authorities, academics and business people, but also phonological ones. Itturns out that “bid” is a difficult word for native Spanish speakers to pronouncecorrectly. How so? The vowel of “bid” does not exist in Spanish. This report, drawingon earlier reports on applied linguistic theory, offers guidance on how to pronouncejust five words: bid, law, knowledge, regulatory and Paula. The explanations arepresented in greater detail in our Advanced English Proficiency Workshop.

MEXICO ENERGY INTELLIGENCE® (MEI) is a commercial and policy research and advisory service offered by BAKER &ASSOCIATES, ENERGY CONSULTANTS, a management consultancy based in Houston. MEI reports facilitate two-waycommunication between Mexican public and private institutions and the global environment. Our reports examine policy,institutional and cultural issues as they affect the operating environment, energy regulation, and government and privateinvestment in Mexico's energy sector. Reports are distributed principally on a subscription basis. Energia.com contains reports,title lists, calendar postings and interviews with stakeholders and observers that are made available as a public service.


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To see the outline of many of these reports, simply enter the File # in the search window. Otherwise, contact us: [email protected].

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Year

2014

100032 010Aug 21, 14 Petróleos Mexicanos vs. the English Language: Incorporating the newvocabulary of the 2014 Energy Reform

This updated report of March 26, 2010, examines the principal terms used in theenergy sector of Mexico and provides suggestions for standard English translations ofsome 20 common terms used in Mexican government and energy circles. Most ofthese terms cannot receive a direct, literal translation. This update (No. 9) begins theprocess of identifying and translating the new vocabulary of the 2014 Energy Reform.

100181 36Feb 03, 14 Mexico City English in Houston: The Dialect of Energy Reformese

This report builds on earlier reports on Mexico’s energy reform and on English as asecond language. These two topics came together in seminars in Houston inJanuary, 2104, on the topic of Mexican energy reform. Speakers from Mexicopresented their views of the purpose and desired outcomes of energy reform. Thepanelists did not agree on core issues: One panelist argued that the purpose ofRound Zero was to strengthen Mexico’s NOC, and that it should be exclusivelyresponsible for the selection of third parties without the interference of CNH orSENER. The report also touches on matters of linguistics.

2013

100163 310May 20, 13 Overcoming the Mexican Accent in English (Part III)

This report is a continuation of our reporting on how to increase the proficiency ofsecond-langage energy professionals in English. The present report focuses on thematter of the stress of multi-syllable words and phrases. The report gives practicaladvice as to how to figure out the stressed syllable in any given two- or three syllableword. For this, elements of linguistic theory are provided as tools. Applying thesetools, you can understand the stress in words such as “probable,” “about,” “accent,”“access” and “assess.” (stresss in bold).

2012

100110 411Nov 25, 12 Overcoming the American Accent in Spanish

Drawing on linguistic concepts that were introduced in earlier reports, this discussionfocuses on the habits of speech in English that the native English speaker willunconsciously incorporate into his spoken Spanish. A particularly messy area issyllabification: the native English speaker will read Spanish words by English rules ofspelling and phonology, saying doming-go, instead of domin-go. This report wasreissued with additional discussion on April 2, 2013.

100117 613Feb 16, 12 Overcoming the Mexican Accent in English (Part II)

This report builds on Market Note 109, which presents the basic concepts oflinguistics that are needed to have a clear understanding of the challenges that facethe native Spanish speaker who is already competent in English. In this report wefocus on the "enemies within" that make it difficult to listen to the ways that English isactually spoken.


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Year

2011

100109 623Nov 22, 11 Overcoming the Mexican Accent in English (Part I)

This report examines, with the aid of linguistics, the differences in the phonologicalsystems of English and Spanish. By this route the native Spanish speaker comes tosee the linguistic baggage that he will automatically want to bring with him as hecrosses the border into English. The report describes the most common Mexicanaccent in English, and offers a long-term vision for achieving English mastery. Thereport will also be useful for the native English speaker who wants to go beyond basiccompentency in Spanish.

2006

711 117Jun 26, 06 English, culture and leadership in Mexico’s oil sector, 2006-12

This report identifies, as key issues for the new government, the topics of English,culture and leadership in Mexico's petroleum industry. The report discusseslittle-examined features of Mexico's oil sector that have limited the ability of the stateoil company to keep abreast technologically, replace reserves and operate indeepwater. The report suggests ideas for requirements to be used in executiverecruitment in the oil sector.

2003

622 16Mar 07, 03 Why can’t Mexico communicate in English?

This report offers reflections on the closing on December 31, 2002, of two MexicoCity newspapers, Novedades and The News. In the case of The News, its politicalfunction was to promote Mexico’s image to English-speaking tourists and businessvisitors.

2002

620 16Dec 26, 02 Blunders, faux pas and booby traps in English-Mexican Spanish translation

This report notes difficulties both sides have with the problem of false cognates intranslating from Mexican Spanish into English and from English into MexicanSpanish. Consider the adequacy of “subsided organism” as an English translation oforganismo subsidiario. In some cases, translation errors may pass into blunders ofstrategy or public relations.


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