The root of all pronunciation
problems in this topic is that the pronunciation of the British plural and the North
American singular for the noun ‘hombre’ are very similar. This is further
complicated with the irregularity found in the pronunciation of the plural and
singular for ‘mujer’.
Unfortunately, for the learner,
the English language brain can usually tell the difference between the pronunciation
of the British word ‘men’ and the North American word ‘man’.
The first thing is for the
Spanish brain to remember that there is a difference between pronunciations
between the English plural and singular word of ‘hombre’. That is to say that
these words are irregular nouns because the plural form does not take the
letter ‘-s’ or ‘-es’. From here, remember that ‘man’ is singular and ‘men’ is
plural, look at the chart below to see the definition and pronunciation guides.
For the uses of ‘mujer’ and ‘mujeres’,
just add ‘wo-’ before the English ‘hombre(s)’. So, if ‘hombre / hombres’ in
English is ‘man / men’, then ‘mujer / mujeres’ must be ‘woman / women’.
Finally, the pronunciation is
obvious for ‘man / men / woman’ but not for ‘women’, the latter is pronounced
as ‘wimen’.
Please note that the letter in
parenthesis ‘( )’ are almost silent, however, you may pronounce them as you are
learning them.
