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For Spanish speakers, a good example is the English /r/ sound, which is often substituted by either the tapped or trilled Spanish /r/ sounds. In my experience, students will get to grips with /r/ at the beginning of words at lower levels, but at higher levels they still have trouble with it in consonant clusters, such as /dr/ in “drink.”.
- Dropping consonant sounds at the end of words. When speaking English, Spanish speakers may drop consonants at the end of words. This is not a fatal mistake, but it is one that often falls through the net.
- Short and long vowel sounds often sound the same. If Spanish is your mother tongue, you may have difficulties with vowel sounds. This is because there are around twenty distinct vowel sounds in English, whereas in Spanish there are only five.
- The V and the B are pronounced the same. “Have you seen the Voice?” Or “Have you seen the boys?” Record yourself saying these sentences on your phone and play them back.
- Vowel sound added to words starting with ‘s’ and a consonant. Practise saying the word ‘Spain’ does it sound more like ‘Espain’? If so, then you’re guilty of this next one.
- Dropping final consonants at the end of words. 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).
- Substituting a final M with N. The M consonant sound exists in Spanish, but it never appears at the end of words. 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.
- Z is pronounced as an S. 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.
- The /y/ (as in ‘yes’) consonant sound and the /j/ (as in ‘job) switch places. 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’).
Second consonant (C 4): Always /s/ in native Spanish words. [102] Other consonants, except /ɲ/, /ʝ/ and /ʎ/, are tolerated as long as they are less sonorous than the first consonant in the coda, such as in York or the Catalan last name Brucart, but the final element is sometimes deleted in colloquial speech. [109]
- Vowels. Short and long vowel pairs. Perhaps the single biggest pronunciation problem for Spanish speakers is that their language does not have a distinction between short and long vowels.
- Consonants. Words written with “b” and “v” are mostly pronounced identically, making this perhaps the most common spelling mistake in Spanish. There is also no distinction between the first sounds in “yacht” and “jot” in Spanish and which of those two sounds is perceived by English speakers tends to depend on the variety of Spanish spoken (this being one of the easiest ways of spotting an Argentinean accent, for example).
- Number of syllables. Particularly when it comes to final consonant clusters in English, Spanish-speakers can suffer both from adding extra syllables (e.g.
- Word stress. Trying to make Latinate words in English match Spanish pronunciation is also true for word stress. There is also a more general problem that Spanish, unlike English, has a pretty regular system of word stress.
Worse yet, unvoiced final consonants and clusters can’t be heard by a Spanish speaker until they develop an ear for it (Don’t = Don). Two things to know: 1. Spanish only uses 5 final consonants: S, N, R, L, & D. The word snarled is a great way to remember this. 2. When Spanish uses a final consonant it usually carries heavy linguistic weight.
People also ask
Why do Spanish words have no consonant clusters?
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Why do Spanish words drop the last consonant sound?
There are five consonants used in word-final position:3: /l/, /s/, /d/, /n/, and /s/. Dialectal variations in Spanish phonology exist. It is important to recognize this when assessing a Spanish speaker. /ŋ/, /v/, /ð/, /θ/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /h/, /ʤ/, and /ɹ/. The Spanish vowel system is much smaller than that of English; they are similar to ...
