You Say Tomato, I Say Tomato

My C.P. and I were talking about the differences between consonants and vowels in our respective languages. When my conversation partner began learning English she had a hard time pronouncing certain words simply because in English we like to not say everything that is in the word, where in Spanish she pointed out that they do read everything the way that it is written.

I asked her to read the word ‘vote’ as if she were reading it in Spanish. She read: botē (long E). (The Spanish V is pronounced as a B sound, V is also called ‘beh chica’.) She mentioned how it was odd to her not to pronounce the E at the end of the word “vote”. My naturally trained English mind automatically thinks, “Oh well the E is being pronounced, but in a round about way by supporting the O and giving it a different sound.” But to someone coming into the language who is used to saying everything as it is seen would run into votē (once again long E).