# fuego, luego (pronunciation) - ue > o



## Arrius

Frequently when I hear standard Castilian being spoken by educated Spaniards, it seems to my Anglo-saxon ears that for "fuego" and "luego", they are saying /fogo/ and /logo/ with the first O as in "los" and "dos". To what extent is this impression correct?


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## Garahad

I'm not sure, since I'm chilean, not spaniard, but at least on TV they sound perfectly normal to me...I hear "fuego" as "fuego and "luego" as "luego"....

maybe it's a matter of time...you have to get used to that..I guess


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## juanperu

I´m peruvian and I live in Spain. Long before it was kind of a problem for me when they say, for example, "hasta luego", but I used to understand "hasta logo", don´t worry, is just a matter of time.


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## Arrius

A Garahad:
No me he expresado con suficiente claridad: a veces oigo "fuego" y "luego" pronunciados como se escriben, pero también y a menudo /fogo/ y /logo/ incluso a la tele y a la radio.

*A *juanperu
Me agrada que un hispanófono se haya notado este fenómeno también y pueda confirmar su existencia (lo que el otro hispanoamericano niega). Pero sigo sin saber si los españoles dicen verdaderamente /fogo/ y /logo/ o si mis oídos me están engañando como antes con la F imaginaria de "magia".

Gracias a los dos amigos. A propósito, a pesar de no haber estado nunca en América del Sur, entiendo los acentos hispanoamericanos con mucho más facilidad que, por ejemplo, los madrileños, especialmente cuando las españolas de cualquier provincia charlan con una rapidez incréible entre sí, como si les diese igual ser comprendidas o no. ¡Es una maravilla muscular!


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## Filis Cañí

In "lazy Spanish" many times you omit vowels or do things like turning atonic e´s into i´s and ch´s into sh´s, but fogo and logo for fuego and luego is something completely unheard of to these Trianese ears.


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## jess oh seven

Yeah, sometimes they're said a bit like that if you're speaking quickly or lazily. It's not a complete transformation from "luego" to "logo", though, it's somewhere in the middle. "fogo" and "logo" are the Portuguese equivalents to the same words and they're definitely not pronounced like that.


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## lamartus

I say sometimes: "Hasta logo"... but never "fogo"
I'm a lazy Spaniard! )


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## Arrius

So it is agreed that there is something in what I say. I realised that the Portuguese forms were distinct, though the first O there is also an open one. It seems as if these Spanish words are going back to their Latin origins, focus and locus, though probably through careless speech. I am now satisfied and shall press the matter no further, Many thanks to you all. (Just love your shrunken vampire's head, lamartus!).


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## ajohan

Oh yes, I noticed it as soon as I came here many moons ago. But only in the expression "hasta luego", not when I heard "luego" in other sentences.


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## jinete_ingles

Me parece a menudo que el diptongo "ue" en el castellano de España suena más como "o" o "uo" así que "hasta luego" es "hasta luogo" o algo parecido. ¿Alguién puede confirmar esto y es también el caso en el castellano de latinoamérica?

Nota del moderador: Este hilo ha sido fusionado con otro anterior, de ahí la posible superposición de preguntas.


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## Handsome Dan

Tienes razón.  
No lo he oído en Latinoamérica, para decirte la verdad.


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## perikita

En México no... aqui suena tal como se lee -ue-, nunca he hablado con alguien de España así que no te puedo asegurar nada pero quizás sea el oido que no lo alcaza a captar bien... no lo sé... a mi me pasa a veces con el inglés


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## Valvs

I have noticed that sometimes native Spanish speakers pronounce the "o" sound instead of "ue". Thus, I have heard speakers from at least two different countries pronounce "P*ue*rto Rico" as "P*o*rto Rico." And on one occasion, an actor (who I believe was Mexican or Mexican American) said "He *volto* a Los Ángeles" instead of "He vuelto." I listened to that phrase several times, thinking that I must have just misheard it the first time, and I am positive now that he says "v*o*lto."
Is that a common phenomena? Does it happen all over the Spanish-speaking world in rapid speech, or is it something peculiar to specific countries and/or dialects?

Eh, there is a typo in the subject. Should be "pronounced" rather then "pronounces."


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## Argónida

I've never heard such a thing. Are you sure the people that said that were native Spanish-speakers?


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## Black tulip

hi Valvs, I´m also from Anadalucía and I´m afraid we don´t pronounce the ¨ue¨ as ¨o¨  in Spanish...That sounds more like Portuguese or maybe Catalan. I´ve seen people from Cataluña in the forum, I hope they can help you. 

Good luck!


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## Outsider

There have been threads about this phenomenon previously in the forums. Here are a couple:

portorriqueño o puertorriqueño
Pronunciaton of fuego & luego


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## Poca Cosa

I've noticed that, too.  Most especially when people say the word, "puedo."  I think it usually happens when they are speaking quickly.


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## Valvs

Outsider said:


> There have been threads about this phenomenon previously in the forums. Here are a couple:
> 
> portorriqueño o puertorriqueño
> Pronunciaton of fuego & luego



Thanks, Outsider! So I wasn't hearing things, after all .


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## Valvs

Poca Cosa said:


> I think it usually happens when they are speaking quickly.


 Yes, that's what I think too.


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## zelan

Black tulip said:


> hi Valvs, I´m also from Anadalucía and I´m afraid we don´t pronounce the ¨ue¨ as ¨o¨  in Spanish...That sounds more like Portuguese or maybe Catalan. I´ve seen people from Cataluña in the forum, I hope they can help you.
> 
> Good luck!


We say it fast and maybe it sounds more like "podo" if you are expecting us to say pu-e-do. "Ue" are joined wovels, is a diptongo and maybe it sounds a bit different . In poetry you separate syllables like this pue- do( well, not only in poetry , the word has just two syllables ).
Could be that the reason why the spanish natives are sure that they  clearly say "puedo" and other people hear "podo"?


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## ampurdan

Hola, yo me he sorprendido muchas veces a mí mismo decir "¡hasta logo!", pero no es exactamente una "o" lo que digo, creo, es simplemente un sonido oscuro a medio camino entre "ue" y "o".

Me parece normal que a los mexicanos no les pase eso, porque me parece que su acento pone más fuerza en pronunciar cada sílaba. A mis oídos, "hasta luego" dicho por un mexicano suena con la "e" alargada: "hasta lueego".


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## candy-man

Sí,es natural. Realmente ahora que lo has dicho, me doy cuenta de que a mí me sale igual.


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## Mari Yagami

Me parece que en el español de Argentina se da lo mismo que notas en el de México. Aquí el sonido "ue" suena bien claro.


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## Arrius

Many people hear but do not notice this phenomenon: one often thinks one hears what one expects to hear. Some more liberal Bavarians used to greet people during the Nazi period with "Drei Liter!" (_three litres (of beer))_ instead of the regulation "Heil Hitler!" without party members noticing. 
Btw, I myself, who started one of these threads, am not aware of ever having heard _yo podo_ for _yo puedo._


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## Black tulip

Valvs said:


> Thanks, Outsider! So I wasn't hearing things, after all .



Hi Valvs and Zelan,

Maybe non-native speakers hear an ¨o¨ when native speakers say ¨ue¨. But it´s also possible that they actually said ¨he volto¨ instead of ¨he vuelto¨... but never mind, I think what you wanted to know was whether it is generally used or not. I´m just saying that no matter what you hear, the correct way of writing it (and pronouncing it) is¨ue¨.

For non-native speakers can be a bit confusing because in some verbs like ¨poder¨, which is irregular, the ¨o¨ of the infinitive changes to ¨ue¨ as we conjugate it, except for the 1st and 2nd person plural: Puedo, puedes, puede, podemos, podéis, pueden. But in words like ¨luego¨ there´s no confusion, or at least I thought so...

Now, that´s confusing I hope it helped...


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## stultus

Yo también descubrí hace tiempo que (al menos) los españoles tienden a pronunciar el "ue" en palabras como "luego" y "juego" como [oː] ("o" muy largo). Pero también es verdad que esto se ocurre en solo contadas palabras y que las demás sí se pronucian como "ue" normal.

Lo que es interesante (gracioso, quizás) es que esto me parece un regreso al pronunción latín vulgar anterior, ya que el introdución de los diptongos en primer lugar fue en las consonantes enfatizadas de algunos conjunciones de verbos:
*jugar*: _*yo jogo _-> yo juego


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## zelan

Yo creo que el diptongo se pronuncia distinto, "puedo" solo tiene dos sílabas.


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## urbanra5cal

I agree that in fast & informal Spanish UE can sound like O, native speaker or not.

I always hear fOgo & pOdo pronounced by Brazilians trying to speak castellano, even when spoken slow.


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## jmx

Arrius said:


> ... one often thinks one hears what one expects to hear.


In fact, all human languages rely heavily on this fact, because the phonetic utterance of any word from any speaker is never exactly the same. ;-)

In relaxed speech, probably the final part of a "ue" diphthong can be a little more central, and maybe the initial part a little more central too, so it's up to anyone to hear [we], [wo] or [o:].


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## ManPaisa

I think many Spaniards use an *open e* (not the standard Spanish *closed e*) when saying words like *luego*.  The sound of* u+open e* does sound a lot like an o.


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## ampurdan

ManPaisa said:


> I think many Spaniards use an *open e* (not the standard Spanish *closed e*) when saying words like *luego*.  The sound of* u+open e* does sound a lot like an o.



To my ears (Catalan distinguishes between open "e" and closed "e"), Mexican "e" in "luego" is more closed than Spanish "e" in "luego", but I'd say that Argentinian "e" in "luego" is even more open. I don't have a mental sound of a Colombian "luego", so I don't know which resembles more. Judging by what you say, probably Mexican. I don't think there is an international standard pronunciation of "luego".


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## Istriano

To my ear, many Spanish (if not all?!) reduce this [we] to [o] even tho' they're not aware of this pronunciation.  It's everythere, from 24 horas newscasts to Spanish tv series like El barco. It really sounds like Portuguese close o: ô and not like ue [we], the clear diphthong I hear in Mexican, Colombian and Argentinian soap operas (in which actors never reduce it to an [o]).

In  Spain, you can find it even in very informal writing (chats, dating sites): _pos klaro, hasta logo..._


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## duvija

ok, yes, you were not dreaming up sounds. And yes again: in fast speech we do collapse the diphthongs quite a bit (this fenomenon is less known than the creation of diphth. changing a mid vowel e/o into a glide i/u).

(Not only that, but you figured out part of the reasons for which Jewish people say joives,,goivos, boino). 

It's partly perception and partly production.
I mean, it's entirely reasonable that Sp. speakers will claim they never pronounce 'ue' as '' o'. No one listens to one self. And when we listen to other native people, we hear what we expect to hear and not what it's said. It  happens in all languages. ((Never use a native speaker for sounds,,,) Use phonologists or phoneticians.


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## Wandering JJ

Hi!
I thought I was alone in hearing something different. A Spanish colleague of mine (from Madrid) says /asta luogo/ in unguarded speach. She's finally come to recognise that the 'luego' part sounds more like /luogo/ and her logic is that the mouth is preparing itself for the final /o/ sound.


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## caniho

Arrius said:


> Frequently when I hear standard Castilian being spoken by educated Spaniards, it seems to my Anglo-saxon ears that for "fuego" and "luego", they are saying /fogo/ and /logo/ with the first O as in "los" and "dos". To what extent is this impression correct?
> Similarly, I sometimes used to hear "mafia" when "magia" was obviously what was being said, but my ears (by no means deaf) can now detect that subtle distinction, though I have despaired of ever saying the G in exactly the same manner.



No one I know speaks "standard Castillian" arround here, so I suppose that explains why I was totally unaware of that phenomenon. With the exception of "pues", clearly pronounced 'poh", that doesn't happen in the South: there's no way to confuse puedo/podo, luego/logo, vuelo/bolo, trueno/trono, hueso/oso, muela/mola, Rueda/Roda, etc.


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## Istriano

I'd say the merger between  puedo/podo is in *production *(the way it sounds to outsiders) and not in *perception *(the way the native speakers claim they pronounce and hear those sounds).

[But, I've already met Spaniards who claimed that _barón _and _varón _are pronounced differently just like _caza and _casa are  ]



This is similar to _Dawn/Don_ merger in American English (many Midwestern Americans claim they have different vowels in these words, but they pronounce them exactly the same. ).

That's why mergers are classified like this:

_1. merger in production
2. merger in perception
3. merger in production or perception
4. merger in production and perception_


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## talassalum

The matter of the lazy Spaniard, to begin with is something not very accurate linguistically speaking. I mean that every type and dialect of Spanish is different and not better or worse. The reason why some Spanish speakers in the North of Spain pronounce the diphthong ue as it were an o is that in their vocabulary these words keep the Latin pronunciation (as in Portuguese). While the rest of the regions have fully developed the phonemic change from the vowel o to the diphthong ue in Spanish (e.g. Ovus>huevo), they still keep some words pronounced in the "old way". I hope it is clear.


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## duvija

talassalum said:


> While the rest of the regions have fully developed the phonemic change from the vowel o to the diphthong ue in Spanish (e.g. Ovus>huevo), they still keep some words pronounced in the "old way". I hope it is clear.


 
Of course it's not laziness. I/m not sure your analysis is 100% true. 
The monophthongization may happen after the other sound change took place.

In 'perception and production, we don't know for sure who's perceiving and who's producing. 
Istriano: check what you just said:
_ I'd say the merger between puedo/podo is in *production *(the way it sounds to outsiders) and not in *perception *(the way the native speakers claim they pronounce and hear those sounds)_.

Production should be from the speaker and perception from the listener, and not the other way around. Unless you define them in the opposite way, and therefore you interpret them...
It's not an easy solution.


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## Istriano

There is a weather forecast presenter on Spanish Canal 24horas which consistently says bye with _* /asta logo/.*_  And her speech is not fast at all, it's borderline _allegro_-style at best.


This reminds me of this article on pronunciation:
*How you speak and how you think you speak*


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## Masood

I've also definitely heard "logo" for 'luego' from Spaniards. 

The Spanish "go" sound at the end of a word is very different (to my ears, at least) to the way in which we pronounce "go" in English. The Spanish version is like a guttaral "gh" (like the Arabic letter 'ghayn', if you're familiar with Arabic).


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## Antonia30

caniho said:


> No one I know speaks "standard Castillian" arround here, so I suppose that explains why I was totally unaware of that phenomenon. With the exception of "pues", clearly pronounced 'poh", that doesn't happen in the South: there's no way to confuse puedo/podo, luego/logo, vuelo/bolo, trueno/trono, hueso/oso, muela/mola, Rueda/Roda, etc.




I am from Murcia and I completely agree with this... 
there is NO WAY to confuse PUEDO and PODO because PUEDO is I can, and PODO is I trim

or VUELO and BOLO, those two are completely different things...

When we say "hasta luego", we say that very quickly, actually when I think of it I say " 'ta luego"  I don't pronounce the "has" at the beginning, and the UE in luego are pronounced very very quickly, so it gives the impression itis O, but it is...something int he middle


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## Arrius

Masood said:


> I've also definitely heard "logo" for 'luego' from Spaniards.
> 
> The Spanish "go" sound at the end of a word is very different (to my ears, at least) to the way in which we pronounce "go" in English. The Spanish version is like a guttaral "gh" (like the Arabic letter 'ghayn', if you're familiar with Arabic).


 This discussion is not about the vowel at the end of luego/logo but about the first vowel in the word and how the diphthong is sometimes distorted into a pure vowel. However, both Os of logo sound the same and are somewhere between the closed O of English _home_ and the open vowel of _got_. As for the G, it may be slightly gutt*u*ral but nowhere near as much as Arabic ghayn as in ghurfa, lugha or yablagh.


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## Istriano

"Hasta luogo" 


> No, no es un error tipográfico. Los madrileños dicen así, "hasta luOgo".  Lo dicen con un tono especial, como cantando. Yo sabía que las des  finales de las palabras las pronuncian como zetas (libertaz, Madriz), y  que les cuesta la conjunción _tl_, por eso en vez de decir "atletismo" dicen "aletismo". Pero lo del _hasta luogo_ me sorprendió.



http://ladodealla.blogspot.com/2007/10/hasta-luogo.html


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## macame

Es cierto, a veces, cuando imito la forma de hablar pija además del consabido "o sea" también digo "hasta luogo" (no es exactamente una o, pero al exagerar el -go la e casi desaparece).


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## More od Solzi

> Es                     muy importante evitar en la pronunciación de las secuencias                     vocálicas la pérdida de cualquiera de sus elementos.
> Asimismo, no se debe pronunciar [we] como [o]:                      *_pos_ por _pues_,                     *_logo_ por _luego_.



http://www.uned.es/451059/451059d.htm


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## wendyshad

Wow, can't believe I found such a post. This is a Chinese who recently moved to Chile, having spent the past decade in the US. 
I do notice (or imagine) people around pronouncing "puerto" like "porto". Just been to Región de Los Lagos, and every time I struggled to pronounce the /uer/ they would smile and repeat /or/. I guessed it is some sort of collapse but was not sure if it is universal; now it seems so. 
One outsider's proof: in Chinese "Puerto Rico" is transliterated into 波多黎各 in which Puerto sounds like /porto/.


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## Rondivu

Antonia30 said:


> I am from Murcia and I completely agree with this...
> there is NO WAY to confuse PUEDO and PODO because PUEDO is I can, and PODO is I trim
> 
> or VUELO and BOLO, those two are completely different things...
> 
> When we say "hasta luego", we say that very quickly, actually when I think of it I say " 'ta luego"  I don't pronounce the "has" at the beginning, and the UE in luego are pronounced very very quickly, so it gives the impression itis O, but it is...something int he middle



Totalmente de acuerdo contigo.


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## Penyafort

Honestly, I think it probably has to do with either a foreign perception of the diphthong or unawareness of the -g- sound. An English speaker expects the words _luego_ and _fuego_ to be three-syllable words [lu.e.go, fu.e.go], instead of being like -we-, as well as a -g- that sounds exactly the same as an initial g-. But that g is different and has no equivalent in English. A g between vowels is such a soft sound in Spanish that in relaxed or fast pronunciation it can easily disappear, even in educated speech. Considering both things, in a sequence of -we- + -o, the _-o_ can slightly affect the _e_ and turn it to an _o_, so that it could sound to some people as [wo.o]. The old language even had some stages of hesitation between _fuego/luego_ and _fuogo/luogo_ before it stabilised. But unlike in Galician-Portuguese or Catalan, the diphthong is there, because Spanish lost distinction between open and closed e's/o's. So it always preserves the diphthong. I have never heard it without a diphthong in stressed position. 

Unstressed position is a whole different thing because reduction tends to happen there in almost all languages, Spanish included. A monosyllable like _pues_ is often pronounced as [pos] in unstressed position, but never in stressed one. That is, in a dialogue like

- ¿No lo has visto *pues*?
- Pues no, no lo he visto.​the _pues _in bold would never be reduced to [pos], while many would reduce the other one in fast speech.


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## Doraemon-

Penyafort is right. Historically the "ue" diphthong in Spanish is an evolution of the long "o" from Latin. It only happened on stressed syllables, that's why it happens on "cuento" (stressed syllable) but not in "contar" (unstressed syllable).
The inverse reduction from "ue" to an "o" also happens in fast speaking but only in unstressed syllables ("pues"->"pos"), according to this trend, and it is never reduced on stressed syllables, although the pronounciation of the "ue" diphthong is in general not as clear as one could always expect, and it may be still between a clear "ue" and a long "o" in fast speaking, but never undistinguishable from an "o".


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## jmx

Doraemon- said:


> Historically the "ue" diphthong in Spanish is an evolution of the long "o" from Latin.


Small correction: from the _short_ Latin 'o', that evolved into a mid-open back vowel in several Romance languages.


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## PabLoLA

This thread goes a long way back.  It's funny that many Spanish speakers swear that this doesn't happen.  I've noticed it not just in Spanish speakers from Spain, but throughout Latin America as well.  I especially notice it in words like Puerto Vallarta or Puerto Rico or other place names where Puerto is emphasized less than the word that follows.  The ue in Puerto seems to become very weak and changes to something like Porto or Puorto.   I've even Interrupted native speakers after they say it, and ask them to repeat.  Without fail, when they concentrate on what they are saying, they change to Puerto with and exaggerated 'e' and then they swear that it is never pronounce like o or uo.  One of the many things that people don't seem to be aware of in their own mother tongue.   It is also common with the word Nuevo where the next word is emphasized and speech is rapid. I just heard it on a news report on the television where the reporter said "el Novo presidente".  I backed up and slowed down the speech.  Without a doubt he says novo or nuovo and not Nuevo.   Funny thing is that I've read several books on Spanish phonetics and I've never seen it addressed.


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## Sprache

I must agree that I hear it very often from native speakers. Just the other day I noticed that a woman pronounced “puedo” something like “puo” in fast speech. I’m sure if you pointed it out to them, they wouldn’t notice or maybe even hear it that way. I cannot count how many times I’ve heard someone say _ata logo_.


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## duvija

OK, old thread. And yes, in fast or relaxed speech we do strange stuff, particularly with diphthongs. (and also with b/d/g in certain positions in the word). There is plenty of lit. on this (some even by me). Check 'fast speech' or something like that, and you'll find something relevant. It also happens with Spanish as a second language, when pronounced by speakers of specific languages. Many of these essays are part of a longer stuff, so I'm not sure how much you'll find on the web. But you are totally right.


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