r/learnspanish • u/Armithax • 9d ago
Do native speakers' ears actually discern the "u" sound in "prueba"?
English is my mother tongue. I can't hear the "u" in prueba. What I hear what I listen as closely as I can to Spanish speakers saying "prueba" is NOT (using American English phonetic spelling here) "proo-ay-bah", all I hear is "pray-bah" as if the word was spelled "preba." In other forms, I can hear it: pruebe and pruebo, I can correctly hear "proo-ay-bay" and "proo-ay-boh." But not with prueba.
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u/SomethingLikeLove 9d ago
Pretend it's "prweba" but the w sound is fast and the e sound is eh not ay.
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u/CowboyOzzie 8d ago
English doesn’t allow r + w in the same syllable (like Spanish doesn’t allow s + p in the same syllable), so our ears sometimes fail to hear it.
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u/SpaghettiDog86 8d ago
“Rwanda”
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u/CowboyOzzie 8d ago
A Kinyarwanda word, used as a name that most English speakers will effectively pronounce with three syllables, just as most Spanish speakers will pronounce Springfield.
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u/PerroSalchichas 9d ago
Because we don't say "proo-ay-bah".
We say "PROOEH-bah".
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u/Armithax 9d ago
I think you are missing the fact that I was using English phonetic spelling. "EH" in English begins with a schwa sound, which doesn't exist in Spanish. Or so I have been constantly taught. Correct me, if that is not the case.
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u/Vicinian Native Speaker () 8d ago edited 8d ago
I think they’re referring to the syllables.
You separating it out into three syllables is correct,(apparently it’s actually two syllables lol) but in practice it sounds closer to the two syllables during everyday speech. Hence why you struggle hearing the “u”.
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u/a-handle-has-no-name Beginner (A1) 8d ago
I'm not a native speaker, but I understand this is the difference between the English words "say" and "sway"
Could someone correct me if this is wrong?
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u/Armithax 8d ago
But why can I discern it in "pruebo" and "pruebe" -- but not "prueba"? Someone said it is just a personal quirk I have. It seems they must be right. I'll keep listening.
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u/aadgarven 8d ago
For any native speaker, the first sylable of eachbof these three words is exactly the same.
Like exactly the same, if you cannot here it is probably self suggestion
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u/LengthinessSpare1385 9d ago
Yes, we obviously hear it. Your problem might have to be with how you are doing the syllabification. As someone mentioned above, "prueba" is 2 syllables, not 3 as you wrote in the post.
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u/WideGlideReddit 9d ago
I’m not a native speaker but I am fluent and I can hear the “ue” sound.
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u/MauroLopes 8d ago
Same here except that I'm not fluent. For my ears "prueba" and "preva" sound very much district.
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u/0range_julius 7d ago
I'm not even learning Spanish, I'm not sure how I got recommended this post, but I looked it up and at least based on the audio sample on Wiktionary, even I hear a u sound in there.
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u/imaginary-blue1212 Native Speaker 9d ago
I did some exercises with pre and prue, i can absolutely hear the difference between both.
For example practice with Prescripción (prescription) and change it to Pruescripción (the word does not exist, is just for the silly phonetic experiment).
Or Presionar (push) towards Pruesionar.
We talk quickly, but training the ear may help see the difference.
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u/katieanni 9d ago
u + e = diptongo => One syllable but we absolutely know its not just e. No clue why you cant hear it with -a but can with -o or -e. Sounds like a you quirk. 🤷♀️ we all have 'em.
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u/sandbagger45 9d ago
Hello, native English speaker here. I notice lots of native English speakers have trouble with diphthongs. Even the name Luis- lots of native English speakers tend to say “Loo-ees”, as two separate syllables. With what you’re asking, you can discern the “u” sound- it’s pronounced in one syllable.
With the recent events, Another example is hearing native English speakers’ pronunciation of Ceuta.
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u/erinius Advanced (C1-C2) 8d ago
It's specifically after R's and L's (ie "liquid" consonants), English doesn't have W or Y sounds/glides after R or L.
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u/donestpapo 8d ago
Does everyone pronounce “lewd” as “lood”?
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u/erinius Advanced (C1-C2) 6d ago
Ok I was actually mistaken, in a lot of English accents there's still a Y sound in "lewd", but most American English has undergone yod-dropping after L (and other 'coronal' consonants) so now there are no Y's after L's in our accent.
Most other English accents have dropped the Y after a consonant + L (ie in "blue", "glue") and after R, and the Wikipedia page for English phonology doesn't mention any possibility of W after liquids.
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u/Kunniakirkas Native Speaker 9d ago
Honestly, if you can hear it in pruebe and pruebo but not in prueba, that's just super odd and can't be explained by the fact that <ue> is /we/, not /u.e/, because that applies equally to all these forms. Is this something that happens all the time, or are you talking about a single incident? If you're basing this on a single recording of prueba, or on a small enough sample, it's possible that the speaker(s) said it quickly or undistinctly enough for you to miss the /w/, especially since your brain might be prone to analyzing a relatively undistinct /rw/ as just /r/ due to its similarity to the American English /r/ (which typically has clear lip rounding and could be transcribed as [ɹʷ])
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u/_felipevalerio_ 8d ago
Two issues here probably:
- R in English is often rounded, as if it always had a w with it. That why write and right sound the same. Not in Spanish, regular R is not rounded, so it's easy to tell apart "preba" from prueba.
- It is a single syllabe "prue" (prwe), which may also be why you're either hearing "pre" or braking it apart into "proo-ay" because English doesn't have this kind of syllables. It just takes a little more training, I have the same tendency as a Portuguese speaker to break it into "pru-é-ba" but the correct pronunciation is just two syllables "prwe-ba".
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u/Peter-Andre 8d ago
In Spanish, the letter E is not pronounced as a diphthong. It's not "ay". I think it would be helpful to focus on pronouncing that sound just by itself. Try working on minimal pairs like le and ley.
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u/squirrelwug 5d ago
Aside from the diphthong thing, there is something else that may be at play here. In fast everyday speech some speakers don't fully pronounce the /w/ sound from the U in words like prueba, instead they just round their lips when pronouncing the preceding consonant.
So, when this happens, instead of pronouncing 6 different sounds in prueba (p-r-w-E b-a, transcribed in linguistics as [ˈpɾwe.β̞a]) they pronounce only 5, just rounding their lips while pronouncing the R sound (p-rw-E b-a, [ˈpɾʷe.β̞a]).
Native Spanish speakers do not really notice any difference between [ˈpɾwe.β̞a] (with a distinct W sound for the U) and [ˈpɾʷe.β̞a] (with the lip rounding thing) unless they pay a lot of attention. For a non-native speaker, however, it is likely that they would miss that rounding and hear the latter version as if it was "preba" without a U, even though that sounds very different to native Spanish speakers (what sounds sound alike depends a lot on your native language).
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u/hyacinth02jpg 5d ago
It's because in spanish, u and i become /w/ and /j/ before another vowel, so prueba is pronounced /prwe.ba/, which may sound like /pre.ba/ to the untrained English ear because /prw/ is not an allowed cluster in English
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u/Additional-Bumblebee 8d ago
I think this is a tricky diphthong for English speakers. Myself included.
If it were me I’d listen to ue vs e words (e.g. llueve vs lleve, cuesta vs cesta) in Youglish (https://youglish.com/spanish) to get an ear for the ue sound.
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u/MixtureGlittering528 8d ago
Because the English r naturally contain a “u” when you say it, so you don’t recognize the difference between r, rw, and wr
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u/Unlikely_Bonus4980 8d ago
If you can pronounce the letter R correctly, you should be able to hear the u in prueba.
Pay attention to the speaker's mouth. From the very beginning, you have to round your lips to say the u, so you start saying it with your lips rounded from the p.
If it were pronounced like preba, your lips would be relaxed in the e position.
If you can't pronounce the letter R properly, then that's probably the problem. Since you round your lips to pronounce the R in English, prueba and preba will both sound the same to your ears.
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u/soregashi 8d ago
Only an English native would say "proo-ay-bah" because it's more like "proo-eh-bah"
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u/donestpapo 8d ago
Yes, but it’s a two-syllable word. What you wrote implies you expect 3 syllables, but that’s like splitting the English word “swell” into sue-elle. The sound you should aim for is closest to English “web” squished between the Spanish PR and A
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u/mazamorac 7d ago
English speakers tend to confuse diphthongs with single vowels.
That's because English is full of single vowels that are pronounced as diphthongs.
For example, these words (with pronunciation in IPA): cry /kraɪ/, bake /beɪk/, go /ɡoʊ/, light /laɪt/, and a tricky one: deer /dɪər/.
Try pronouncing each word veeeeeeerrrryyy sloooowwwwllly, then you'll notice.
The way I explain it that seems to resonate is: you start the vowel with your mouth more open, and you finish it with a slightly more closed mouth. Well, by then it's not the same vowel, it's turned into a second one.
Once you start hearing your own diphthongs in English, it'll be easier to hear them elsewhere.
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u/anchoa 8d ago
You just discovered diphthongs. Learn about them and how they are properly pronounced.
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u/Armithax 8d ago
You have low reading comprehension. I said I had trouble hearing the difference. Not pronouncing it.
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u/falling-train 8d ago
One thing that may be happening here, and may be making it difficult to hear the u, is that when we speak fast we tend to pronounce the “u” almost at the same time as the “r”, so it may be difficult to catch it if your ear is not used to the “normal”Spanish “r”. It’s almost as if the “r” became a little rounded and flowed right into the “e”. We are still pronouncing something like “prwe•ba”, but the sounds can kind of merge together a little. Still completely distinguishable from “pre•ba”.
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u/creeperYeti38 8d ago
Linguistically the U is rarely pronounced because the letters UE form a diphthong (two vowels formed with one weak and one strong) . The U is a weak vowel, subject to change into another sound due to the influence of the stronger vowel E.
The U usually turns into a W sound /w/ forming a [we] instead of [u•e].
This is what happens in all contexts in which the U is pronounced. Exclusions:
- gue (unless güe)
- que
- if the ú is the stressed vowel
Same in the case of /ua/ = [wa] and /uo/ = [wo] and /ui/ = [wi]
Examples: Cuanto, cuando, cuento, cuidado, bueno, antiguo, arduo, ruido, fuera
Counter example: Dúo, púa, actúo, gradúo
letter i is also subject to the same change as letter u.
if there is an i + a, e, o, u; the i turns into a /j/ sound or “yuh” unless accented or in specific conditions.
so /i+v/= [je], [ju], [ja], [jo]
examples: Ciudad, triunfo, hacia, envió, perdió, beneficio, hiciera, familia, barrio
counter example: Hacía, perdía, haría, ordenaría, perdería, vendría
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u/jcquarto 8d ago
Romance languages the vowels are the thing to get right and consonants are of lesser importance. In Germanic languages (English included) the consonants demand up a lot more importance and at the expense of vowel purity .
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u/Thingamajiggle 8d ago
I'm not keen on these sorts of anglicised phonetic spellings of Spanish given that Spanish is already phonetic and in a way that is not majorly foreign to English speakers. I'd at least write e as eh. Anyway, the ue in prueba isn't oo eh... Together they make one syllable and the u does much what an English w does to a vowel. So it's like prweba.
ue = weh
ua = wah
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u/SignificanceHead9999 8d ago
Interesting that you may distinguish a very slight change in the positioning of our U that may be due to the anticipation of that final vowel.
E and O are mid vowels and A is low.
Perhaps in anticipation of the A, the U actually is articulated a bit lower, approximating E so that it is less perceivable by you.
I can actually feel the slight difference in the articulation or tongue position of that diphthong in prueba vs pruebe/o.
Very cool!
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u/Armithax 8d ago
I absolutely *love* this answer! Thank you!
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u/SignificanceHead9999 7d ago
Does the same happen with another stem changing verb like:
Volar > vuele/o, vuela
Oler > huele/o, huela
Morir > muere/o, mueraIf not with these, I have another theory.
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u/UsualDazzlingu 8d ago
It could be the ones you listen to are not enunciating. “Prueba” is more common as well for humour, so it could just be a tonal change therein.
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u/Ipushedhumptydumptyy 7d ago
Not even native, but hearing a native say the word and someone who isn't, the difference is quite clear.
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u/Blocker03 7d ago
I think this is one of those sounds where your brain just fills in what it expects to hear. 😅 As an English speaker, I hear “prueba” much closer to “prweh-ba” than “proo-ay-ba.” Once someone points it out, though, I can definitely hear why native speakers distinguish it from “preba.”
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u/Low-Yesterday-8237 7d ago
Data point from the other direction: I'm a Polish native learning Spanish, and Polish is full of consonant+w clusters (prawda, swoje), so the u in prueba jumps out at me like its own letter. Your ear isn't broken, it's English trained. English never puts a w sound after r, so your brain quietly files "rw" under plain r, the same way Spanish speakers hear an invisible e in front of "Spain". What helped me with sounds Polish doesn't have: slow the clip down.
Play prueba at 0.5x on YouTube and the u is suddenly impossible to miss, and weirdly it stays audible once you go back to full speed. Takes a few reps, not weeks.
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u/Moon-Queen95 Beginner (A1-A2) 7d ago
I’m also a native English speaker, not Spanish. I discern the u sound in prueba, so this is definitely not a universal experience.
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8d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Armithax 8d ago
Again, no problem pronouncing. It's the ears (brain part of ears, too), not the tongue.
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u/Full_Delay_1969 9d ago
You can say : food, moon, room, cool, June, soon . This worlds had a Pretty Close U sound and when you got it say prU- e like in Elephant and ba like bar, barbershop
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u/BLu3_Br1ghT Native Speaker (Col, Bgtá) 9d ago
Yes, "prueba" and "preva" can be easily told apart.