Monday, August 20, 2007

Talking Smart: Foreign Names, Letter "Z"

Zanetti (Arg./It.)
Italian surname of a famous Argentinean, as we already mentioned, may be read either in Spanish [sanetti] or in Italian [dzanetti]. The latter is more preferable.

Zа́rate (Span.)
This wide-spread Spanish surname has a stress over the first syllable.

Zubeldía (Span.)
Another surname with "-ia" suffix, which we already discussed. The stress should be put over "i".

Zuñiga (Span.)
In this surname they usually make two mistakes. First, Spanish "z" is always unvoiced and always sounds as [s]. And second, the tilda sign is often omitted. So, [sun-yi-ga].

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