Voices en Español

This is a guest post by polyglot blogger Ramses Oudt. Although he speaks multiple languages, he has a passion for Spanish and writes about learning Spanish through immersion at Spanish Only.

If you didn’t listen to a lot of Spanish before starting to speak the language, it’s likely you have an accent. It might be a slight accent, but an accent nonetheless. Even if you’ve listened to hundreds of hours of native Spanish speakers on TV, in movies, in your neighborhood, etc. it’s possible to have an accent. Some people don’t mind, but many do.

Luckily not all is lost. I am a native Dutch speaker and Spanish is my third language. I used to have a terrible accent when speaking Spanish but it has improved tremendously in the last year or so to the point where now most native Spanish speakers don’t even notice it.

How did I polish my Spanish accent? I had to put in a lot of work to get a better accent. And no, it wasn’t something that just clicked, I really had to work hard to get better. But it was definitely worth it because now my Spanish is at a level where I can relax a bit.

Here are 5 steps I made to improve my accent. I believe they can help anyone who has the same goal of speaking more fluent Spanish.

Step 1: Find your weak spots
You can say, “Yeah, I have a foreign accent“, but if you don’t know which part of your speech is bogged down with your gringo accent, you’re going nowhere. So analyze your speech. Record yourself reading the letters of the Spanish alphabet out loud and then choose a short text, like three paragraphs or less, and read that out loud as well.

Once you have this recording of your voice, ask one or two native Spanish speakers, whose accent you like, for feedback. This step is very important. Don’t ask: “How do I sound?” because often they’ll just say you sound great. Ask them to critique specific sounds like the vowels, the letters t and r, etc.

Also, you may find that many native Spanish speakers won’t be able to fully articulate what exactly you’re doing wrong. They know that it doesn’t sound native but they can’t necessarily guide you on how to correct it.

If that’s the case, get a recording of them using the correct sounds plus reading a basic text and use that as your baseline of pronunciation. Then you should imitate, imitate and imitate some more, and keep asking for feedback to see if you’re getting closer.

Step 2: Open your mouth
A common problem for English (and Dutch) speakers is that we don’t open our mouths enough. It’s almost possible to insert something between your lips and not have it fall out and still speak English, that’s how closed we keep our mouths. So open wide in the beginning. When you pratice, pretend like you are speaking to a person who is hard of hearing so that you pronounce words in an exaggeratedly slow manner.

Step 3: Stick to the vowel sounds
The rolled R can be a pain in the butt, but mispronouncing vowels can also contribute to you not sounding Spanish. Spanish only has five vowel sounds, so stick to them. I know English has many more sounds, but Spanish doesn’t. Even diphthongs in Spanish are just combinations of those vowel sounds, so they don’t create new sounds. Focus on learning the five vowel sounds by heart (a, e, i, o, u, el burro sabe más que tú).

Step 4: Practise
Now you know where your pronunciation weak points are and more or less know how to sound, you can start practising. First listen to the correct sound repeatedly to get the precise idea on how to sound. Next copy the sound and produce it yourself. For some sounds (like the trilled r) you may need additional training and guidance, but don’t give up. Keep at it.

Step 5: Use the correct intonation
Intonation is essentially the melody of speech. It’s the way a language rises and falls when spoken and for many of us learning Spanish, it’s the reason why we’re so drawn to the Spanish language. Spanish intonation differs from region to region (just like in English), so it can be quite difficult adopting one that is right for you.

My advice is to pick up intonation little by little. Often this comes naturally if you listen to a lot of Spanish, but sometimes you need to concentrate on one aspect of a region’s intonation. Find a Spanish-speaking region’s accent that you like and have that be your guide.

Enjoyed this post? Follow Ramses on Twitter @spanishonly or visit his blog Spanish Only.

Photo: Gringo by Pragmagrapher