Pronunciation influenced by native language

[eido]

There is probably an easy answer to this. In fact, I can almost predict the answer I'm going to get. But I'll write my problem here and see if I get anything other than what I expect.

I pronounce Spanish like a native English-speaking American does, when I'm not thinking. Spanish has very simple vowels, but I turn them into anglicized equivalents when I speak. I turn the pure I into a short I and can't round my mouth to make the O or U. It just won't do it. I'm sure some of you can picture a stereotypical American tourist in Mexico.

I don't want to have a perfect accent, but I don't want to be saying things wrong.

Are there any threads you can link me to about improving how you sound? Any new advice?

Thank you if you help out.

[reineke]

Fossilization

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =14&t=5689

Pronunciation - a delicate skill

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =14&t=6659

Is pronunciation a function of intelligence?

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =14&t=4930

[eido]

I believe I've read some of those discussions before I realized I was doing things incorrectly. Thanks for finding them in the sea that is the forum.

I particularly like this post. I also like the discussion on a so-called 'interlanguage'. I think that's what I have going on.

I mostly don't practice saying the words out loud. I subvocalize them, and that may be where part of the problem comes in. That is how I remember stuff though, as most people do. Reading the word always helps because you see its spelling and you subvocalize, but it might not be so helpful because you create those fossilized errors.

I've read that singing helps fix your errors. I'm not sure. Although I can't be too unsure, because I only dedicated about two months of my life as a teenager to memorizing Disney song lyrics and singing them.

[Axon]

Morgana has linked to exactly what I was going to link to, so thanks for that!

Something I'd like to add is that simply recording yourself while reading aloud really can be eye-opening.

Read a short passage silently, a few paragraphs at the most. Then record yourself reading it aloud. Then listen to it and take note of some mistakes. Then read aloud, record again, and review the new recording. A friend of mine also had a pretty heavy gringo accent when he started doing this, and about eight weeks later it's significantly better.

This isn't nearly as good a solution as intensive pronunciation study or shadowing, but it's a very low-effort way to get your accent from bad to decent in a short time. You definitely know what native Spanish is supposed to sound like, so when you listen to your recordings you can apply that same critical ear and slowly bend your accent into shape.

[eido]

So what I'm gathering from the posts on this site (I haven't read the research paper/guide yet) is just drill it. That's about what I expected. I guess when I want to stop using the short I with words that begin with an I (imaginar, idiota, inminente), I will. When I want to stop making that bastardized O sound (half something like a schwa and the rest something like an actual Spanish O), I will.

Thanks for the posts, guys.

[Cainntear]

I try to take to let my whole body be part of the accent. Different languages usually come along with different physical attitudes, and if I'm physically feeling Spanish, the Spanish accent comes easier.

Also, if you're training your muscles to produce new sounds, exaggerate. If you go to a martial arts class or a dance class, you'll see people walking through all the moves slowly, and when they speed it up, they don't move as far, and they round off all the edges. In the same way, you need to train your tongue and lips to move further than they need to, so that they go to where you need them to in real use.

[eido]

I try to take to let my whole body be part of the accent. Different languages usually come along with different physical attitudes, and if I'm physically feeling Spanish, the Spanish accent comes easier.

Also, if you're training your muscles to produce new sounds, exaggerate. If you go to a martial arts class or a dance class, you'll see people walking through all the moves slowly, and when they speed it up, they don't move as far, and they round off all the edges. In the same way, you need to train your tongue and lips to move further than they need to, so that they go to where you need them to in real use.

I'm trying to imagine the attitude of Spanish, and the song "Que Duro Es Ser Diedad" comes to mind. I've been playing it a lot these past few days. I don't know if I can get into the feeling, though. The way they end their words and roll their Rs. That's Spanish to me, and even if I sing along, I can't do the same, haha.

I tried singing the lyrics to "Cero a Héroe", one part in particular. It goes something like "Hércules triunfó". I just couldn't get it. I did it slow. I'd still mess up. I couldn't get the accent in the guy's name, and I kept pronouncing the last 'e' like I do in English. I think that's because of the next 'i' in the second word, which is pronounced the same in Spanish as it is in English. I can do it okay now if I think about it.

I can do individual sounds okay, aside from the problem I mentioned where I cut vowels short. It's just combining them into words that makes it tough. I don't want to end up sounding like my Spanish teacher though, who exaggerates them still. "¿Cuántooooohs añooooohs tieneeeeys túúúúú?" It may be because I'm in college Spanish 101, but Lord help her if she speaks like that all the time.

I like your analogy though. Thanks for contributing.

[PeterMollenburg]

I know you said you did it slowly, but then you say you don’t want to sound like a Spanish teacher.

My advice still, would be slow down. If you’re having trouble with vowels in succession, speak like you’re speaking in slow motion so that each vowel in succession gets pronounced correctly. However if you are unsure of how the sounds are meant to sound, also ensure you know what sound you should be producing when you see a given letter/letter combination/diphthong. It seems like you need to do a course that focuses predominantly on phonetics of Spanish.

For me, with French, I would work a sound I was having trouble with, then enunciate it very carefully and learn to recognize it’s different written forms. I eventually became comfortable with all French sounds, then I sped up, naturally, once comfortable. And to speed up, your vocabulary and grammar need to improve too, since how you can say things half confidently if you don’t know the meaning of many of the words and the associated grammatical constructs - that’s going to slow you down. Sure you can pronounce words you don’t know the meaning of, but the point there is that you speech will slow down anyway if you’re coming across unfamiliar words you’re attempting to speak out loud. If you try to sound native off the bat at full speed, or even at half speed, you’re going to likely butcher sounds. At least that’s my take on it.

Work on problematic sounds one by one until you master them. Eventually you can speed up your pace once you are comfortable and confident with all phonemes at various speeds in various combinations. Some people don’t have the patience though, and other times I have heard people say they have done everything advised to them to rid themselves from native accent interference without success. Still, how are you going to know you can’t accomplish a very decent Spanish accent if you don’t try.

So, give it a shot - find a really good course focusing on the sounds of Spanish either as the main focus of the course, or a strong component of it, and pay attention to every detail they advise - tongue position, lips, teeth, etc, sound associations e.g. sounds like such and such in English.

Be flexible to correcting your pronunciation as you go, since you’re not going to be perfect from day one. Always self reflect and adjust if you feel you’ve discovered new flaws in your accent you hadn’t noticed before. Remain diligent, meaning that once you are working on a certain sound, from then on, you will aim to produce it correctly every time you utter it - so don’t get lazy!

And don’t be shy or egocentric! That means forgot about how you sound in your native language, you are now a Spanish speaker from country X and you sound like one of them (I don’t care if you’re embarrassed to sound ‘foreign’ - you are foreign! you are Spanish!). You could even imagine you’ve come out of a coma and have to re-learn your own language. Let go of your ego - which means let go of your native language - the sounds in the new language (Spanish) are going to sound Spanish, not a divergence from an English sound, or an English sound with Spanish tone. No, it’s Spanish, you are Spanish/Mexican/Cuban (whatever you choose) and that’s how you should sound - you’re not an English speaker learning Spanish!! Still you can associate Spanish sounds by comparing them to English in the beginning, but soon after, let go of that and get the sounds burned into your memory without the reliance on English (or your native language if it’s not English).

Edit:
Other things that help-

*Imitate audio as closely as possible - shadow and do so slowly in the beginning so you don't lie to yourself by skipping over syllables/sounds quickly - sound out each and every sound correctly! Then when you speed up eventually, you'll be saying things just like the natives (or close). If you have access to Pimsleur, it's quite clear and such a course is good for imitating/shadowing while you're driving for example. Imitate as close as you can what you hear, and you could approach it as I did, that is, don't move on to the next lesson until you can imitate it all without pausing and sounding exactly like the recording (depends on how high you want to set the bar - some will argue that perfectionism can be a real barrier to moving forward, so learn to find the right balance there in case you have a tendency to want to over perfect things - remember you also need to move on. Still for me, I would not allow myself to be sloppy. I think there's a difference between getting close to perfect pronunciation and moving on and wanting to take short cuts to just move on.)

*If you learn about tongue, lips, teeth position, mouth shape etc, you'll come to understand why the Spanish sounds sound like they do. Example - the French R is in the back of the throat, the French L has the tongue in much of a flatter position than the English one... say these sounds with English tongue position such as the L with the tongue curled, or the R at the front of the mouth, chances are you'll not produce a French sound, but a mix somewhere in the middle. Same for Spanish (i'm not as familiar with Spanish, so forgive my French examples).

*read out loud - and be on the lookout for your own mistakes.

* look at yourself in the mirror - does your mouth appear as it should when Spanish speakers pronounce the same sounds/words?

* you could learn IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet), but with Spanish I'd argue (compared to French for example), it's not as important, but it's still somewhat useful. To make it easy, you could just learn the IPA representation of each Spanish sound as you learn it, then when you look up words in a dictionary with IPA next to each word (such dictionaries aren't as common in Spanish), you'll increase your accuracy, but confirming or correcting the sounds that you thought you were hearing with the sounds/phonemes that represent make up that word. If you want to learn other languages aside from Spanish, becoming familiar with IPA now will hold you in good stead with the phonetics of other languages too.

*take notes reminding you of how to produce certain sounds - whatever will serve you well as reminders on how to correctly produce such sounds.

[eido]

I know you said you did it slowly, but then you say you don’t want to sound like a Spanish teacher.

...

And don’t be shy or egocentric! That means forgot about how you sound in your native language, you are now a Spanish speaker from country X and you sound like one of them (I don’t care if you’re embarrassed to sound ‘foreign’ - you are foreign! you are Spanish!). You could even imagine you’ve come out of a coma and have to re-learn your own language. Let go of your ego - which means let go of your native language - the sounds in the new language (Spanish) are going to sound Spanish, not a divergence from an English sound, or an English sound with Spanish tone. No, it’s Spanish, you are Spanish/Mexican/Cuban (whatever you choose) and that’s how you should sound - you’re not an English speaker learning Spanish!! Still you can associate Spanish sounds by comparing them to English in the beginning, but soon after, let go of that and get the sounds burned into your memory without the reliance on English (or your native language if it’s not English).

It's not that she goes slow that drives me nuts. It's the way she says it. It doesn't sound right. And that's probably hypocritical of me, someone who sounds awful. But I'm saying it.

I have Pimsleur. My dad got it some time ago. I actually bought the Spanish Frozen CD to replace it with since it drives me nuts. I like to sing to myself in the car. But I don't think it's a good idea, because as you say, I should go slow. My listening skills are such that I still need lyrics to go over before I can fully enjoy the song. Maybe I'll try the second Level 3 Pimsleur CD sometime in the coming weeks.

I could try the detailed way of doing it. I have a hard time replicating what I see in regards to tongue position and stuff like that. Don't think I haven't tried it at least cursorily.

Somewhat on topic: I've been told the way I pronounce the Spanish R actually sounds like the French one. Or Portuguese. Whoops.

Thank you for the detailed reply. Now I just have to figure out how I can make myself do these things.

[tarvos]

Intonation first, stress and rhythm second, sounds later