PRELIMINARY NOTE.
For readers unacquainted with the Spanish language, it may be perhaps most advisable, in this place, to affix a few short instructions for the proper pronunciation of such names and words as are to be found in the following pages.
1. The vowels in Spanish have each invariably their peculiar sound; not as in English, where each has two or more sounds, making them in fact so distinct as strictly requiring to be designated by different characters, or after the manner of the Hebrew points. Thus a has always the broad open sound found in the English words arm, arrack.
- e, long or short, as in the English words ere, ever.
- i and y, as in machine, syntax.
- o, long or short, as in ore, host, hostage.
- u has uniformly the sound of oo in food. The Celtic sound of this vowel, preserved in France and Portugal, is unknown in Spain, and also in the Basque or Biscayan language.
2. Of the consonants, b has a softer sound than in English, and approaches to v, which again is made to sound like b. Thus the city of the Havana is, in Spanish spelling, La Habana, and the river Bidasoa is written Vidasoa.
- c, before a, o, u, is to be pronounced hard, as in English; before e or i, it is to be sounded like th in thin, though in the provinces
