él and el

Recently I talked with four Spanish speakers about this (two native, two near-natives) after a Spanish teacher tried to rope me into a discussion about this. I'm not a native speaker and the native speaker wanted me on her "side"...

One teacher (non-native) makes a clear distinction.
One teacher (native) makes no distinction.
Another non-native (very good skills) no distinction
A native speaker (not sure)

If you are native or near-native to Spanish, do you:

1. Differentiate in SOUND between these words when you speak.

2. What examples would you give to beginning students if you make the distinction?

3. Please indicate the kind of Spanish you speak, if possible.

Thanks to all.

él = accusative. For example: A él no. Sin él no voy! Quien es él?
el = noun-article. For example: El habitacion. El cochecito. El hombre.

Many natives distinguish the -e- of él by stressing / emphasising on the accentuated e, however, both forms are intelligible but the passive pronunciation sounds lazy; when the emphasised one sounds forceful (like accusing someone) hence why the tilde is there.

El habitacion. El cochecito. El hombre Se dice la Habitacion
A él no= en este caso él no es acusativo sino dativo

There is no difference. Anyone who says there is is an idiot.

This is a linguistic example of Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking. The new phenome space is a sub group of the initial space !

Well, my hunch is that the two *in isolation* are not pronounced differently. But in a sentence, I suspect that "él" is likely to receive more stress than "el" is, because "el" is a function word and "él" is not.

- Kef

Él is a personal pronoun (=he) and el is an article (= the + singular noun/uncountable noun). Both are pronounced the same but él has an stressed vowel and el hasn't. They are almost undistinguishable in a normal conversation, but clearly can't be confussion because el is followed by a name always.

You mean a "noun", not a "name". A noun is often called a "nombre" in Spanish, but the two words aren't interchangeable in English. I think a good rule is that if you can call it a "sustantivo" in Spanish, you must call it a "noun" in English; otherwise, you must call it a "name".

- Kef

Sorry, I was aware of the difference, but somehow I can't avoid Spanish interferences when speaking in English.

Thanks to all who commented. It seems that some people aren't aware if they make a difference when they speak. Thanks for the easy examples. Apparently this was a point of contention between two teachers; one, a native speaker, hadn't thought about it and the non-native teacher wanted everything to be "correct" for the students. Since they co-teach the class, you can imagine...

they are both same to me. I don't see any stress differences between él and el in a conversation. él can be only distinguish my shouting it, but this would not be me

I do find a difference. "Él" is slightly stressed compared to "el" but I guess that in a normal paced conversation this difference is almost unperceivable. Anyway there is little rom to confussion because of the context, which clearly determines wether "Él" or "El" is used.

<<1. Differentiate in SOUND between these words when you speak. >>

My initial response was that I didn't. Then I gave some more thought to it and concluded that there is a slight but noticeable difference in length between the two.

2. What examples would you give to beginning students if you make the distinction?

I think that the difference can be illustrated by the fact that we make contractions of some prepositions + el (a el = al, de el = del) but such contractions are not possible when él is used:

Se lo daré al que me lo pida.
Se lo daré a él.

3. Please indicate the kind of Spanish you speak, if possible.

Rioplatense

1) When I use el I join it to the next word, especially if the next word begins with a vowel. Meanwhile I clearly separate él from the following word.

2) In writing it is generally straightforward to distinguish but the best rule, besides Gabriel's, is that el must always be followed by a noun and that you can replace él with a name and the sentence still makes sense. Or with ella.

Cómete el brócoli, el is followed by the noun brócoli.

Esto es para él, esto es para Juan, esto es para ella.

Orally they are difficult to distinguish, the only thing I can notice is that I attach el to the next word if it begins with a vowel. El árbol becomes /elárbol/, el auto becomes /eláuto/.

3) Colombian, Bogotá

Very good explanations. Thanks to both Gabriel and Rodrigo.