Spanish Review (with video)

Okay, so I realize (because I was recently reminded) that pronouncing/speaking other languages is sometimes the hardest part of learning a language, so I'm hoping to begin including some audio or video with these posts to help those of you who've never learned and/or heard much Spanish.

I thought this might be a good time to stop, take a review (for those of you who are actually trying to learn along with us), and add in a video for the first two weeks of Spanish.

Here is a review of the vocabulary we've already learned:

• the duck   ->   el pato
• the ball    ->   la pelota
• Are you playing?   ->   ¿Estás jugando?
• Are you talking?   ->   ¿Estás hablando?
• the shirt   ->   la camisa
• the shorts   ->    los pantalones cortos
• the socks   ->    los calcetines
• the cap   ->    la tapa
• squash (the vegetable)   ->   la calabaza 

Here is a video to help you pronounce the words:

One other learning point that I didn't address in the video is that the "stressed" syllable is always the next to last syllable in the word UNLESS there is an accent mark.  If the word has an accent mark, allow the accented syllable to be the stressed one.  For example, the capital letter represents the stressed syllable:  "jugAndo"  "camIsa"   "pAto"   "pantalOnes cOrtos"   "estÁs"  (in estás, the A is stressed because of the accent mark)

A few things I pointed out in the video regarding other pronunciation tricks:

• the "j" in "jugando" is silent (and sounds slightly like an "h" sound)
• the "h" in "hablando" is silent
• the "z" in "calabaza" sounds more like an "s"