Life in Culebrón

The rolled R is essential to pronouncing Spanish well. I have trouble rolling Rs. I told you how I paid good money to a speech therapist to try and fix my problem. Nowadays, when I remember, I can make a sound that's good enough to pass muster as a rolled R but it's not a part of my normal everyday speech, it's not something I do without thinking. That's because most of the time I speak English. I have no problem with my British R and I don't have to think about how to pronounce it. I was talking to a couple of friends, one is Scottish and one sounds Scottish, so they both roll their Rs easily enough. They were telling a story though about making an appointment. There had been confusion between an appointment at 2pm (dos) and 12pm (doce). The pronunciation of dos is a bit like the English doss - a nice wide open o - like in bother or otter rather than the o in hello. There is a tendency for we Brits to pronounce it more like dose. The pronunciation of 12, doce, ...

One of the films we've seen recently is called Legado en los huesos , Legacy in the bones. It's a Spanish film, the second in a series of three based on trilogy of crime books set in Navarre with a woman detective, from the regional police force, as the key character. Our nearest cinemas are just metres apart in Petrer about 25kms from Culebrón. In the Cinesmax we tend to go and see Spanish language films and films which have been dubbed into Spanish from languages other than English; French, Brazilian, Chinese etc. In the Yelmo, where, for the past couple of years they've had one performance of films every Tuesday (and some Thursdays), in their original language with subs in Spanish, we usually see English language films. Hearing Ian McKellen or Margot Robbie (and legions of others) sound like themselves rather than some dubbing actor from Pozuelo de Alarcón is a joy. Now back with Legado de los huesos ; I heard the principal actor from the film, Marta Etura, talking...