Una pregunta para ellos que hablan español - A question (mainly) for the Spanish speaking people

• Nov 29, 2018 - 19:41

¡Hola!

Al primero, espero que me perdones mi mal español. Lo he estudiado solo 2 años. Mi pregunta no es de Musescore, pero es sobre un detalle de cómo escribir la letra para una canción en español. Me he dado cuenta como en algunas canciones españolas el final de una palabra se puede conectar al comienzo de la siguiente palabra (ver el parte circulado en la imagen ejemplo.jpg).

Me gustaría saber cuándo sucede esto. ¿Cuáles son las reglas para esto? ¿Conoces algún sitio web que lo explique? Esto no sucede para mi lengua materna fines, ni en otros idiomas que conozco.

Gracias de antemano.

Attachment Size
ejemplo.jpg 28.51 KB

Comments

Google translation:

The first, I hope you forgive me my bad Spanish. I have studied it only 2 years. My question is not from Musescore, but it is about a detail of how to write lyrics for a song in Spanish. I have noticed how in some Spanish songs the end of a word can be connected to the beginning of the next word (see the part circulated in the image example.jpg).

I would like to know when this happens. What are the rules for this? Do you know any website that explains it? This does not happen for my mother tongue purposes, nor in other languages ​​that I know.

You should really post this in the Spanish forum. There may be a native spanish speaker who will see it here, but it's more likely in the Spanish Forum.

https://musescore.org/es/forum

In reply to by Shoichi

@Shoichi, the question is when to do this in Spanish, rather than how. Since I'm not fluent in Spanish and speak it about as well as the person who posted the question, I suggested he put the question on the Spanish forum so he will be more likely to get a good answer. In English, I've never seen a melisma between two words in what appears to be an arbitrary location. Perhaps it's because of the diphthong (two vowels with one sound), but I wouldn't guarantee it. I know a Spanish speaker who says "tengo una" would turn the o and u into a diphthong rather than pronouncing the o then the u.

In reply to by Shoichi

Ah, I see, my mistake. Thank you, Shoichi! One detail, though. That explanation you referenced is completely in Spanish, which I believe Mike and Simmarama said they don't dominate very well. So, I hope they can still leverage on my explanation below, which is pretty much the same as what they mention in that link but explained in English. Thanks!

In reply to by Shoichi

Sorry for my double posting, I forgot the image.

As I explained, my question is nor about using Musescore but why and when this kind of writing is required in Spanish. So it is more of a linguistic problem, but I thought that using this forum I could get advice from both the Spanish speaking users and other people who knows about this thing.

In reply to by simmarama

Hi simmarama,

If I'm not mistaking, what you are talking about is called "Synalepha", "Elision slur" or "Lyrics slur".

We usually do that in Spanish when one is trying to fit two syllables into a single note. It should be mentioned that this can only be done when the ending of the first syllable is a vowel as well as the beginning of the second syllable. Otherwise this cannot (shouldn't) be done.

Here's an example:
"Tengo una pregunta" (Translation: "I have a question") adds up to a total of 7 syllables when read naturally:
"Ten - go - u - na - pre - gun - ta".

But let's say you have a melodic phrase that only has 6 notes and you still want to be able to fit this full sentence into that exact melodic phrase. You could accomplish this as follows:
"Ten - go‿u - na - pre - gun - ta".

As I mentioned, this should only be done when the concatenation between syllables is across two vowels ("go‿u") in order for it to continue sounding like a single syllable on a single note. If you do a concatenation that includes a consonant, there's no way to make it sound as a single note, but rather, it would sound as if you split the original note into two equal parts (i.e. splitting a quarter note into two eight notes, etc).

I'm not sure if this answers your question, but I could expand on it if this is not clear.
Let me know.

Cheers!

In reply to by sergeidave

Sounds like I was on the right track. You did turn the o and u into a diphthong. It's probably a strange word if you're not a native English speaker. It means that two vowels make one sound as you are describing. It sounds like the melisma in his picture would be more accurate if it were a Synalepha.

In reply to by underquark

The difference between your English examples and these Spanish examples is that "o'er" is a contraction while "tengo una" is two words. The ' is actually a proper part of the word in English and even appears in the American national anthem, the _ or synalepha is not part of the Spanish language.

Hello again

I have to thank you all for the enlightening of this concept. Now I can proceed with my first Spanish song. I must say that it is wonderful i that we have this kind of community where we can ask help and advice.

By the way, because of a missing picture I did a double posting at the beginning of this thread. I am sorry for that but was wondering if there could be a way for the user to delete the erroneous one?

In reply to by simmarama

Users can't delete erroneous posts and it's too late to edit it now. In the future you can click the 3 dots to the right of the title and add or change anything that needs to be changed for about 12 hours. You could have done that with the first post rather than making a second post. Don't worry about it, the redirect message will point anyone interested to this discussion.

I agree this community is great and that's why I hang out here so much. Feel free to post your final score in the Made with MuseScore forum here and/or on the Spanish forum so we can see the results.

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