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- Topic: Spanish >
- "La escena"
30 Comments
I'm not sure; we're seeing a few of these. Can you tell me what kind of exercise it was (just translation or something else?), and what kind of device you were using?
Thanks - it was choosing El or La in front of words. It tells you if you are correct but doesn't give a translation. It is a windows pc using xp.
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In those cases, I always go to the comment section where the translation will then be given at the top before the comments begin.
That's the problem: it was missing from both the exercise and the discussion. (We've figured out what the problem was, so this one is fixed, but there turn out to be lots of others like it in the tree, so it's going to take us a little while to find and fix them all. =) )
Perhaps to distinguish between la escena and el escenario. You can use la escena to mean stage, though it is more commonly "scene."
I think it's usually more like a movie scene (or it can also mean "stage"). "Esta escena es bonita" is a legitimate Spanish sentence, but I think it would usually be talking about a movie or theatrical scene.
On the other hand, if you're talking about outdoor scenery (the beautiful landscape, the great view, something like that), I'd go with "el paisaje."
It's OK, we pronounce the "C" as "S" if the next letter is E or I. We often mock the Spanish people with the fact that they pronounce both c and s as z lol
Spanish is usually phonetic. I wonder why the 'sc' in this word. Why not 'esena' or 'ecena'?
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To add to David, in Castilian Spanish 's' is pronounced like you know it, and 'c' in front of 'e' or 'i', as well as the letter 'z' are pronounced like the English voiceless 'th' (like in "thunder"). Speaking like that produces a nice lisp in the language which you can hear sometimes in Spanish media. That lisp is appropriately called ceceo ("thetheo").
So, yes, in the greater part of Spain, escena is pronounced "es-thena".
In Castilian Spanish the two letters are pronounced very differently. However, the word derives its origin from Latin and not because contemporary pronunciation recognizes two distinct sounds. The latter rationale would imply the word was adopted after the 15th century, since that is when distinción developed, but I doubt it took that long for the word to reach Spain.
I know, that's way more than you wanted to know, but I looked it up and felt compelled to share.
The word "escena" has much older history. The Romans "borrowed" it from the ancient Greek σκηνή (skēnē) where it originally meant "tent", then later it was the tent or hut where the actors changed costumes before coming out to perform . The acting area itself was the proskenion, a platform in front of the skene, and the "wings" were called the episkenion.
The Greeks in turn got the word skene from Asia Minor, probably the Phoenicians. And get this: Herodotus claims the first of these theatric tents set up in the Temple of Dionysus was loot- a purple dyed tent plundered from the fabulously weathy Persian king Xerxes.
Now, let's look up ode and odeon ....and what about orchestra and chorus
