Why «C» doesn’t not get on well with «E» and «I» (Ep. 26)

Bienvenido o bienvenida, my dear beginner!

In this podcast, we are going to face with a new problematic sound in Spanish. And, again, it happens because of this two troublemaker vowels «E» and «I».

We go back again to SESEO.

As you listened to in the podcast 23 with the consonant «G», the consonant «C» also doesn’t get well with these two vowels.

Download
Suscribe it

• Letter C always as CAT in English. Some words in Spanish with this sound are CASA (house), COSA (thing) o CUADRO (picture).
• But when letter C meets with E and I vowels it sounds completely different. If you are a seseante speaker from America or South Spain, you will pronounce it as «S». CIEN>/SIEN/ (one hundred) CENA>/SENA/ (dinner). But if you are from the north of Spain, you will pronounced as an interdental sound, similar to the THING sound in English: CIEN or CENA.

But, to make it more difficult, you can pronouncs the sound CAT also with «E» and «I» but you will have to make an ortographic distinction and to change the C letter for the QU letter. For example, QUESO (cheese) is written with QU+E instead of C+E because if not it would be /CESO/ (that doesn’t mean anything). That also happen with «I» vowell: QUIERO (I want) written with QU+I and not /CIERO/ written with C+I.

Well my dear beginner, now you have a new problematic letter and sound in your Spanish bag. As I recommended you in the podcast número 23, take a short text in Spanish and try to find those words that are writen with C+A+O+U (that sounds KA, KO,KU) and those that are writen with C+E+I (CE,CI or SE,SI). And also, if you dare, you can also do the same with those that contain QU+E QU+I (that sound QUE, QUI).