Spanish Pronunciation Tips

Native English speakers can usually make out different accents due to the way certain letters and phrases are pronounced. The same applies with native Spanish speakers, in fact, when Spanish is spoken by a native English speaker it can sound harsh to locals. To improve your Spanish pronunciation, you need to adopt a smoother and softer sound. Here are some tips to improve pronunciation to sound more like the locals, taken from an english perspective:

• The “b” and “v” in Spanish both sound very similar except when the word starts with “b” but even then the sound is softer than English. So any time you see “b” within a word, pronounce with the softer “v” sound.
• The “d” sound in Spanish should be pronounced with the tongue just touching your front teeth, similar to the English “th” sound, eg. “nada” should sound more like “natha”.
• The “c” sound when spoken in Spain sounds like the English “th”, eg. “Barcelona” sounds more like “Barthelona”.  However, when spoken in Latin America, the “c” sound is pronounced as in the English “s”, eg. “Barcelona” in Latin America sounds like “Barselona”
• Don’t forget to pronounce the “r” sound whenever you see it.  English speakers usually don’t sound the “r” in “ar” “or” and “er” combinations, but in Spanish the “r” is always pronounced.  You can often hear this when saying please – if you don’t pronounce both r’s in “porfavor” you will immediately give yourself away.
• The “ñ” sound is pronounced like the English “ny” as in the word “canyon”, eg. “niño” sounds like “ninyo”.
• The “ll” sound in Spanish should be pronounced like the English “ly” but can be a bit of a tongue twister sometimes – the easiest way to deal with this situation is by pronouncing like the English “y” sound, in fact, in some words the “y” sound is preferred, eg. “amarillo” sounds fine as  “amariyo”
• In English, the “qu” combination is pronounced “kw”, as in quick.  However, in Spanish the “u” in this case is silent, eg. “queso” is pronounced “keso” not “kweso”.