Good morning , I’m on lesson 6 and really enjoying the lessons . I just wanted to check with you the pronouncation of hacienda , specifically the c followed by the i , all three of you appear to be pronouncing it as ‘see’’’ . Looking through my pronunciation guide it says c followed by i or e should be pronounced as a ‘th’ sound as in thin .
So I’d be grateful if you could tell me , does it matter which way you say it or are both acceptable ? Thank you
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Hi Gilli - this is a regional variation kind of thing - most standard courses will tell you to say ‘th’, but you’ll hear plenty of people who say it ‘s’ - pick the one you like most, and in due course you’ll end up using whichever you hear most often from the people you talk to most often… 
Aran has beaten me to it, but I’ve started this comment, so I’ll finish.
I’m a total beginner with the Spanish, but I know there is a thing called Castilian Spanish, which some people regard as the “best” Spanish. This is based on the pronunciation around Castile. However, in Latin America and other regions of Spain, they don’t do the lisping pronunciation of the “s” and “z”.
If I were planning to live in Spain, I would find out what variant they speak there and learn it. (I learned North Wales Welsh because that’s where I live.) However, as I only plan to go to Spain on short holidays, I’ll stick with the SSiS pronunciation as I’m sure the natives will understand it.
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Thank you both very much for your advice . I think that’s what I’ll do, just choose the one /way I like best and hopefully when I start talking to people in Spanish I can decide if that’s the way I want to stick with .
Incidentally Margaret I learnt Welsh with the SSIW (the North Wales version) too, because that’s where I spend quite a bit of time 
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My old Catalan tutor told me that in Castilian (ie Spanish as opposed to Catalan) they pronounce -z- as ‘th’ in one part of Andalusia, and ‘s’ in the other. The then Spanish Prime Minister, Felipe González, came from Andalusia, and called himself Gonssaless: the BBC religiously insisted on calling him Gonthaleth.
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