Spanish word for comments download#

Sheep-ship, reach-rich, leave- live ( watch a video tutorial about the sheep-ship vowel pair) Since most Spanish speakers are not familiar or comfortable with the pronunciation of vowels in English, they tend to merge similar vowels into the closest vowel sound in Spanish.Įxample of different words that are usually pronounced the same: In Spanish, there are 5 vowels (a, e, i, o, u) while in English there are about 16 none of them really correspond with the English sounds. Oftentimes, Spanish speakers may pronounce the /y/ consonant sound as in ‘yes’ ‘years’ and ‘yellow’ as a /j/ sound, pronouncing it as jes, jears, and jello (by the way, this is not the same /j/ as in ‘jalapeno’).Īlso, quite often the substitution will be reversed too.Ī word that begins with ‘j’ will be pronounced with a /y/ĭifferent vowels are pronounced the same: The /y/ (as in ‘yes’) consonant sound and the /j/ (as in ‘job) switch places.

Spanish word for comments download#

To practice words with Z scroll down download the free American accent audio guide. That creates an additional challenge and confusion related to how the word should sound (unfortunately, most speakers learn English by reading and writing first and their listening skills are compromised). In Spanish, the letter ‘s’ always represents an S sound. Since English, unlike Spanish, is not a phonetic language, many times the Z sound is represented by the letter ‘s’. This is also a result of the orthography (the way words are written and the spelling). It’s very easy to make this mistake since both sounds look and feel the same, except for the vibrations of the vocal cords. Basically, they are pronounced the same, except that for the fact that with the Z sound, the vocal cords are vibrating. The Z is the voiced pair of the S consonant sound. Since there’s no Z (as in zoo) in Spanish, the Z sound is often misplaced with an S, especially when it appears in the middle or end of words. This substitution usually happens subconsciously, and awareness is the number one factor in improving this pronunciation challenge. Spanish speakers may substitute it with the closest sound available that does show up at the end of words in Spanish – N (or NG). This is why when a word ends with M in English (some, ham, cream) Therefore, while it’s not at all difficult for Spanish speakers to pronounce the M alone, it can be quite challenging for them to pronounce it at the end of words. The M consonant sound exists in Spanish, but it never appears at the end of words. Work instead of worked (pronounced workt) Therefore, it is very likely for Spanish speakers to unintentionally drop one or two consonant sounds if they are part of a final consonant sequence in order to bring the pronunciation closer to what’s possible in Spanish – a single consonant.

While clusters may appear at the beginning or middle of words in Spanish (español, hombre, crédito) they never appear at the end of words and are almost impossible for Spanish speakers to pronounce. In Spanish, words never end in a consonant cluster (when two or more consonants are pronounced together with no vowels between them, for example, strength, loved, texts). Of course, not every Spanish speaker will make all of these mistakes (it depends on the background, dialect, and many other things), and these are not ALL the possible pronunciation challenges Spanish speakers face, but rather, the most common ones.ĭropping final consonants at the end of words Get a FREE list of the 10 most common pronunciation mistakes, words for practice and audio! Download the American accent guide for Spanish speakers