Are you fairly proficient, or even fluent, in Spanish but find that people have a hard time understanding your accent? Or, perhaps you’re a beginner and when you speak the response you get is a pained look of confusion? There are many details in our pronunciation that we may not notice but impact how we sound to a native speaker’s ears. Examining these details can truly improve your Spanish accent.
When we begin learning a language, everything is new, different, and exciting! The tendency is to focus primarily on the major differences. This is natural of course, however, if we don’t take the time to examine the less obvious differences in pronunciation, we’re likely to carry these “non-native habits” of pronunciation well into advanced stages where it becomes more difficult to unlearn.
While most of the time Spanish learners are bombarded by the difficulty of producing the rolled “r”, they often neglect the letters that are similar to their English counterparts, but slightly different. For example, take a look at the following consonants: p, t, c, k. Most students were probably taught that they are “just like in English” and then giving more instruction on rolling their “r’s”. But, we’re going to take a closer look at them.
What do these seemingly random mix of letters have in common? They share the property of being aspirated in English. What is aspiration you ask? Basically, it means a puff of air emanates from your mouth when you begin to pronounce the letter. You can test this for yourself by first placing the palm of your hand a couple inches away from the front of your mouth. Now say the following words: pill, tall, corn, kill
Notice that for all the words you should feel a little blast of air coming from your mouth at the beginning of the word. That’s aspiration! The problem is that in Spanish, none of these consonants are ever aspirated. So, what does an un-aspirated version of these consonants sound like? Well, in English we do have these un-aspirated versions of p, t, hard c, and k. However, they only occur when the letters follow a consonant. So, let’s try this next set of words and again put your hand in front of your mouth as you do this.
