How to Fix the Most Common Spanish Pronunciation Mistakes ♫ 44

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¡Bienvenidos! Welcome to the Learn Spanish con Salsa Podcast! The show for Spanish learners that love music, travel and culture. Close your grammar textbooks, shutdown the language apps and open your ears to how Spanish is spoken in the real world. Let us show you how to go from beginner to bilingual. Here is your host certified language coach Tammara Marie!

¡Hola y bienvenidos! In this episode, we're going to talk all about those pronunciation mistakes that are dead giveaways that we are not native Spanish speakers. And of course we're going to help you fix some of those mistakes so you can sound more like a native Spanish speaker. And to help me with this topic today, we have a member of the team of Spanish con salsa Andrea, and she is here to help us really learn how to correct some of those mistakes. So I want to welcome Andrea to the show¡Hola, Andrea!¿Cómo estás?

Hola Tamara, bien¿y tú?

Andrea,¿De dónde eres?

De Honduras.

De Honduras, y¿en cuál ciudad de Honduras vives?

Yo vivo en la ciudad de Tegucigalpa

Andrea, y¿Cómo aprendiste Inglés?

Yo aprendíInglés en la escuela. Desde que tengo cuatro años: Kinder hasta onceavo grado.

Y hubo un momento en que te sentías como"Ay, por fín yo soy, bilingüe, no estoy tratando de aprender Inglés pero de verdad ahora soy bilingüe?

Sí, me sentídespués de terminar el colegio. Ya cuando empecéa platicar o a hablar con muchas personas. Y me dícuenta que practicándolo me sentía más confiada y a gusto del Inglés como segundo idioma.

Entonces la clave es la práctica.

Exacto, sí: si no lo practico y sólo lo aprendo como de m emoria, No, para mí, no me sirve para nada, porque se olvida lo que memorizaste se olvidóy después quieres recordar cómo se decía y, como nunca practicaste, es más difícil. Pero si lo aprendes, y lo practicas, para mi pensar, se queda por siempre.

Entonces, bienvenida y vamos a cambiar al Inglés porque tenemos muchos que son principiantes en Español. So, now we're go ing t o s witch to English because I know a lot of you are beginners. But if you have any doubts about what we just talked about, no worries, the entire transcript of our conversation today will be available on our website an d y ou'll be able to access that in the show notes. So let's get into our conversation for today. So Andrea, you've been working with some of the members in Spanish Con Salsa and you've also been teaching Spanish for quite some time on your own as well. What are some of the mistakes that you've no ticed t hat English speakers tend to make when speaking Spanish?

It will be pronouncing the letter"h" in words: That is a common mistake. Also, the double"l"and the"y", that's something that is kind of a challenge for people. And the letter"l".

So, let's take those one by one. When pronouncing the letter"h": in Spanish the"h" is always silent, correct?

That is correct, always.

And I think sometimes, as English speakers when we see the"h", we might get a little tripped up and we may forget that we're not supposed to pronounce it. I think most of us know" hola" and we don't usually say"hola".

That is correct.

But there's so many other words that have the her"h" and we sometimes just forget that it's not supposed to be pronounced. So that can be a dead giveaway if you are trying to sound more like a native speaker. And you may be reading something in Spanish and you see the"h". Just Remember that no matter where the" h" is in the word, you do not pronounce it. And I think one common mistake that English speakers make, is with names, right? So there's a very popular figure in Latin America, and we usually say, from t he U S, Hugo Chávez, right? We usually, abandon all of our Spanish knowledge when we see names for some reason. So, A n drea tell us how we would correctly pronounce that name.

It will be Hugo Chávez.

So, Hugo without the"h". Not, Hugo, Okay? And Chávez. So the"ch" sound, I think a lot of us sometimes say"Shavez", like a[ʃ] sound in English instead of[tʃə] like Chávez.

That's correct.

So that name I think really highlights a lot of mistakes that English speakers make because you have first the"h" righ? Which is not pronounced. Then you have the letter"u", which sometimes, we would say Hugo. So it's"Hugo" and then Chavez, we have that,"ch", which is never the[ʃ] sound. It's always like[tʃ]"choo choo train". So that's another thing to remember. And the last thing in that name is actually the"z" at the end. Andrea, how is the"z" pronounced in Spanish? And I know this cou ld be a little bit different depending on Spanish from Spain or Spanish from Latin American.

The way we pronounce that is like an S.

So the" Z" is always a[s] sound. So, it wouldn't be Chavez, it would be Chavez.

That is correct. In Spain it will be Hugo Chavez. They can pronounce the Z in a different way. But in general, most of the Latin American countries, it's just an"s".

So the"z" is generally pronounced like an"s", but if you run into any Spanish speakers from Spain, it'll sound more like a lisp or it'll be like the"th" sound in English. So it'd sound like[tʃʌveθ] or like the[θ] in the word thought something like that. Which I think is a little weird actually. I a ctually prefer the Latin American accent to me it sounds like a lisp.

For me it's better and I think it's easier sometimes.

It's definitely much easier when you see the"z". Just think of it as an"s". so no sort of hard English[Z] sound. It's always[s]. So we talked about a couple of different things just with that one name he talks about, not pronouncing the"h", we talked about the letter"u" always being the[u:] sound. We talked about"ch" being the[tʃ] sound. I'm going to talk about"z" being the[s] sound. And another, letter actually in the same name(I think we could do a whole episode just on Hugo Chavez) Is the letter"b" in English. Can you explain a little bit about the difference between what we call an English, the"b" versus the"v" in Spanish.

"b" and"v" sound the same; like in"botar" and"votar", like"botar" with a"b" will be like"to throw something away" like"throw that to the garbage" Like" botar a la basura" y también" v otar" with a" v" will be like" v ote":"I'm going to go vote for a ne w p resident".

So explain: How do you spell the" botar" that means"to throw something away" versus the" votar" that means"to go vote"?

"botar" to throw something away will b e B-O-T-A-R and" v otar""to vote" will be V-O-T- A- R.

Those ones pretty much sound the same. And I think from an English speaker's perspective, this can kind of throw us off a little bit because we're used to pronouncing the"v" in English, which has a much stronger sound. And when people tell us:"Oh, the bee"b"and the" v" are the same, I think sometimes we can hear that there's a slight difference. But as English speakers we tend to overemphasize that letter"v". So, what's the names of the letter"b"and letter"v' in Spanish?

"b" will be"be" and" v" will be" uve".

And do you have any tips on how to pronounce those letters? Because I think that, even the way that we pronounced the" b" in Spanish, which is a little bit stronger than a native speaker. So just reading this sort of, as a native English speaker, I might look at it and say[ voʊtɜ:ʳ] so explain how that's wrong and how we can fix it, so we don't sound like we have a really strong accent. It will be[boʊtɜ:ʳ] that just like the same, flow in the letters. You don't need to emphasize the"v" or the"t" or the"a" it will be"botar" that. It's like the same flow with both of them. So, I think in general that the" b" in Spanish is a little bit softer than the"b" in English. So we're used to sound sort of"v" and we really pressed o ur lips together, kind of with more force, whereas the" v" in Spanish is more of a soft sound. So, y ou touch your lips together, but you don't press them together. S o, hard. So it's[bɔ:tɜ:ʳ] instead of[boʊtɜ:ʳ]. B ut just to illustrate the point, that's kind of what you're doing with your lips. It's a soft touch. And I think in general as English speakers, what would really fix our accent a lot is just being a little bit softer with most of the letters because I think, just in general, English tends to have stronger sounds, especially for some of the continents. So even when we look at the letters and we say:-Oh,"b" in Spanish, the same as"b" in English. And then we listen to a native speaker and we go, but why don't I sound like them? Well it's because the letter really isn't exactly the same, even though we might recognize it because we're using a very similar alphabet, the sound is really very different when we pay attention. So that[b] sound in English is really[b]; it's a much softer than in Spanish. Yeah, that's just a good general tip if you're trying to improve your pronunciation. So I think we've talked about every letter in the name Hugo Chávez. So let's move on to another mistake that you mentioned earlier. And this is with what we call an English, a double"l" and the"y". So, can you explain a little bit about first, what do we call those letters in Spanish and then explain how we pronounce them correctly. Because I think as English speakers we tend to think of both of these letters like the English letter"y". So we would tend to pronounce it more like[i:eɪ]. Which I think is incorrect. So can you explain a little bit about how to pronounce the double"l" a nd the"y"?

Yeah, it will be the double"l"" doble ele" and the"y" will be" i griega" o"ye'.

And are there certain countries where they call it"ye" versus" i griega" or are both just correct?

Both are correct. That's a good question cause I don't know if in some country that it's just, they just call it sort of way, but, both are correct. It will be"ye" or" i griega".

This letter can also be confusing, because I know in different regions the pronunciation can be a little bit different. But if you can just give us the most, neutral approach to how we would pronounce the" doble ele" and the" ye".

"Doble ele", for example, en" calle":" c alle", is C-A-L-L-E.(And I'm just talking English and Spanish now) C-A-L-L-E. so it will be" c alle" the Y for example"Yo". It sounds the same, but if we a re using it in the word"voy", it sounds like a n"i". So it depends on what words using it makes a difference on t hat pronunciation. Because the"y" can be like a"double L", but in some words i t can be like an" i".

You mentioned the word"voy" and you said that"ye" sounds more like the letter"i" in the, in the word"voy". But can you give us some examples of where it sounds more like"doble ele"

"Yo","yoyo"," yegua"" yerno".

So let's take the most common word that I think most people already would use day to day and that's"yo". So I think as English speakers we would have the tendency to pronounce this,[joʊ] We would simply say[jɔ:], so help us with that: How do we correct that pronunciation to get it from[i:oʊ] which is how we would say it in English t o say i t the way a Spanish speaker would say it, the way I've heard it explained before is like the"j" in t h e word"jeans".

It's like say" jeans" and then say" yo":"jeans"-"yo". It's like a" j" in English.

So using the letter"j" in the word"jeans" will get us a little bit closer to sounding more like a native Spanish speaker. So, does that also go for the"doble ele" as well is it the same sound?

Yes, it will be the same like" calle" that means"street" and also the word" l luvia", that means"rain". It sounds the same.

So anytime you see the" doble ele" or the"ye" or"i griega", just think about the letter"j" and the word"jeans" and you'll be a lot closer in your pronunciation t han using the English"y" sound. Okay, and the other example that you mentioned, Andrea, is the letter"l", so I noticed in English that, even though, again, this i s one of those letters that we look at and we think that: Hey, that's the exact same as it is in English! I know how to pronounce that! We really don't pronounce the"l" t he same way. I think it can be a dead giveaway when we go to greet someone and we say,[oʊlɑ:]. A nd the reason why is because we're not pronouncing the"l" the same way a native Spanish speaker would. So Andrea, can you pronounce that word f or u s so we can hear the difference between how a native Spanish speaker would say it and s aying"hola"?.

Instead of[oʊlɑ:] w ill be[ɔ:lɑ:].

How do we make that sound? Can you explain sort of what's the position of your tongue in your mouth? How i s it different than saying[oʊlɑ:]

Instead of[oʊlɑ:] w ill be[ɔ:lɑ:] like"lola","libro". So you put your t ongue on the roof of your mouth just for a second; don't live it there to make it like,[ɔ:lɑ:] just like"cola" if you do it fast. Okay.

So it's a much quicker sound than I think i n English. And it's also like you mentioned, your tongue g oes a little more on the roof of your mouth instead of in English. I think our tongue tends to be more relaxed when we say t he, the lette"r" and it's a longer sound. So just kind of switching your tongue position and shortening the sound, you can go from sounding like a"gringo" saying[oʊlɑ:] to saying,[ɔ:lɑ:] and you also open up your mouth a little bit more when you say that, be ca use it really allows you to get your tongue in the correct position. So think about kind of smiling as you say"hello". That might also help you get your tongue where it needs to be. And just remember it's a quicker sound. So don't drag it out, make it a quicker sound, and just that one little tiny tweak will mak e your pronunciation sound a lot more natural. So, I hope that these tips helped you improve your pronunciation just a bit. I want to thank Andrea for joining us to give us a native Spanish speaker's pers pective on how to pronounce some of these letters that give us trouble. So gracias, Andrea.

De nada, Tamara, un gusto.

I hope you found this conversation helpful. It can be very difficult to keep in mind all o f the things that we need to remember when we're learning Spanish, but just with some of the small tweaks that we talked about in this episode, you can really begin to improve your accent. If you want to get deeper into this and really work on focusing on improving your Spanish pronunciation, you can enroll in the Spanish pronunciation mastery course. Now, this is a video course that goes letter by letter, sound by sound, through t he entire Spanish alphabet, and it gives you tips on how to pronounce each consonant and vowel properly. We also get into some of the pronunciation rules as it relates to syllables, connecting words together, accent. So we really go letter by letter through the alphabet, and we also h elp you have different letter combinations so you know exactly how to pronounce any word that y ou come across in Spanish and pronounce it properly. And one of the great things about this course is not only do we give you practice drills, but we also give you personalized feedback so you're able to record yourself and send it to our team of Spanish coaches and we will give you feedback on how to improve your pronunciation and also tell you what you're doing right. Now, this is critical because oftentimes when we're talking to our friends that speak Spanish or in a language exchange or even talking to a tutor, they generally don't give us this type of feedback. Mainly because they're usually focusing on our grammar or vocabulary or word usage, but they're really not focused on the particulars of our pronunciation. And usually it's because they just accept that we're going to have an accent because we're native English speakers. But you can improve your accent if you focus on it. We make it super easy in the Spanish pronunciation mastery course because we give you specific exercises to practice for each sound in the Spanish language.

And as you know, I'm always looking out for the listeners of the Learn Spanish Con Salsa podcast. So if you go to the show note's page, you'll get a special discount that's only available to podcast listeners. Just go to learnspanishconsalsa.com/fixmyaccent that's learnspanishconsalsa.com/fixmyaccent, and you'll be able to get a special discount code for the Spanish pronunciation mastery course. I'd love to hear your feedback about this episode. Feel free to leave a comment on the show note's page, or you can reach us on Instagram@learnspanishconsalsa. I really hope you learned something in this episode that will take you one step further from being a Spanish beginner to bilingual. Adios.

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