Thursday, November 11, 2010

P is for "el pingüino"

It this illustration that Andrew made for our class, we see that el pingüino has a bowl of cheerios in front of him because he has an "O" at the end of his animal name.  And of course, his necktie tells us he's a masculine animal.  There is something special you may have noticed though about the word pingüino: there are two dots on top of the "u."  Normally when you see "gue" or "gui" in Spanish it means that the "G" is pronounced like the "G" in "Good" and the "U" is simply there as a silent protector so that the "E" or "I" won't influence the "G" and turn it into an "H" sound like we learned earlier.  However, if the "U" has two jobs, both protecting the "G" and making its own sound, then we must have the two dots on top.

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