Curious

Question

El smoking es tan elegante como el frac.
I find this example strange, can you check the audio to ensure it matches? I am having trouble with "smoking" how would that be pronounced? Ess-mo-keng? I guess this word is just throwing me for a loop

Answer

Hi Lyndsey
I checked the audio. I changed the word "smoking" which is obviously the word we took from the English to describe this type of suit/jacket, and can be used with the English spelling, for the Spanish adaptation of it which is "esmoquin", which is also valid.
Just for your information, in Spain, generally, words that we adapt from the English and start with an s, (like this one) will be pronounced as "es". The reason for this is that in Spanish we find very difficult to pronounce words that have two consonants in the beginning, so we tend to add an "imaginary e".
Another example would be the word "stand". We do use this English word but you will generally hear it as "es-tand", for the same reason as above.
Saludos
Inma