The Vowels Before the Alphabet

The very first thing any English speaker learning Spanish should learn is the proper pronunciation of the vowels in Spanish.  If you don't know this, you can't even learn to say the other letters of the alphabet properly because they combine with the vowel sounds!  We have a little story for learning the Spanish vowels, which are always pronounced the same way unlike in English.  Our story is as follows:

Awwww!!! says the egg, skiing over blue ooz.

(translation:)

(¡aaah! diga el huevo cuando esquia sobro algo azul.)

Don't worry about the translation to start with.  Just make sure you know the English pronunciation of "A" as in saw, "E" as in egg, "I" as in ski, "O" as in over, and "U" as in blue.  That is how the vowels are ALWAYS pronounced in Spanish.  He's Bailey's drawing from Spanish class to illustrate this basic association: