Welcome to Sounds of Spanish!

We couldn’t find a free resource out there that really went in-depth into training people the sounds of Spanish – from individual sounds, to full sentences. So we made it.

The purpose of this course is to tune your mouth and ears to the sounds of Spanish.

What exactly does that mean?

Well, by the end, you’ll be able to…

• say every Spanish sound perfectly
• read a Spanish word and say it correctly, without a gringo accent
• saying words in Spanish, with a correct accent, will be as effortless as speaking in English. You won’t have to think about your pronunciation, ever – it will just roll off your tongue correctly
• understand people much more easily, as your ear will be able to recognize the differences in sounds
• understand people better when they slur words together when speaking quickly

These are all very important to get down early on. Unlike grammar, pronunciation habits are hard to un-learn.

When you have perfect pronunciation one of the obvious benefits is that you speak correctly. But there are a few hidden benefits that I didn’t realize until after a few weeks:

• Your confidence is higher because you never have to repeat things to people. You could say something perfectly on paper, but if the pronunciation is wrong, you’ll likely have to repeat it – introducing doubt into your mind and hindering your confidence.
  
  It’s also higher because when you know your pronunciation and accent are good, you suddenly are more apt to speak and have one less thing to worry about.
• You learn vocab faster. Good pronunciation means that you remember vocab words correctly, meaning you start recognizing and using the word in real life faster, which accelerates the process of learning a specific word.
• When you have perfect pronunciation (the sound aspect), there are only two things that hold you back from understanding people when they talk fast: slurring (covered in the next chapter) and the words/grammar not being second nature (covered before). Pronunciation is more than fifty percent of this equation. If you want to improve your listening comprehension getting perfect pronunciation is the biggest win and a prerequisite for the other two factors to help. 
• Less mental headache. Early on, speaking Spanish is a lot of mental work. If you train your mouth to handle the pronunciation part on autopilot, there’s a huge drop in mental work. 
• People will switch back to English with you less (this is impossible to avoid completely if you are in the US). The main reason people do this is because when you have a terrible accent, it’s sort of painful to listen to you, so they will switch to English if they speak it. It also makes people think your Spanish is bad even if it isn’t.

The Steps

OK, so what is actually involved here?

We’ll be going through three main phases:

1. Individual Sounds (the alphabet)
2. Individual Words
3. Full Sentences

At each step, you’ll be learning how to say something, and then once you have a native speaker’s approval that you are saying it perfectly, you do many repetitions to build muscle memory.

You’ll inevitably say things wrong as you progress, without being able to hear the difference. When you get corrections on these mistakes, you’ll tune your ear to the sounds of Spanish.

You can read through the course if you’d like to get an idea of what is involved, but you won’t get any value out of this unless you actually do the exercises. They may seem like a lot of work, but it will save you from having to worry about this ever again – no wasting time in lessons fixing pronunciation and no asking people to repeat things because you didn’t understand them.

Let’s get started.

The first thing you’ll want to do is learn the Spanish alphabet. This covers almost every syllable you’ll use in Spanish. We’ll also cover some common letter combinations (e.g. -ción) that act as common syllables, too.

Here’s what to do to learn this. It may seem like overkill, but it will actually save you a TON of time in the long run of constantly having to fix little issues.

For each syllable:

1. Listen to the sound recording or watch the video (included for more difficult and important sounds)
2. Practice making the sound until you think you have it perfect
3. Record yourself saying it (the syllable, not the practice words)
4. Compare your recording to one of a native. If it sounds the same to you, then…
5. Have your teacher listen (click here if you don’t have one)
6. If they say it’s perfect (don’t take “close enough”), then practice the hell out of it. Sound is a muscle movement, and the more you practice it, the easier it will become to make that sound, which means you won’t slur, stumble, or stutter in the middle of a conversation. I recommend at least a hundred times for each vowel and two hundred for the two r’s. The rest of the sounds are used in English and you can get by with thirty or so at this stage.

A quick warning: if you skip the part where a native says you got it perfect, don’t do the repetitions. You will do nothing but be creating a muscle memory for the wrong sounds, which is counterproductive.

If you are using Internet Explorer, please change browsers to something like Chrome or Firefox. The sound files will not work.

A

The Spanish A is a bit different than in English. Here are the common mistakes native English speakers make:

• Too closed. When making the Spanish A, your mouth needs to be more open. To hear this yourself, make the A sound and go from completely wide open to closed. You’ll need to consciously watch yourself with this letter to make sure you don’t slip back into it being like in English.
• Making non-stressed A’s into an “uh”. For instance, say Ana in a normal English accent. Notice how it sounds like “A-nuh”. In Spanish, the A’s never turn into an “uh”, they just get quieter.

Practice words:

• Aprender
• Allá
• Ahora
• Más
• Día
• Amigo
• Papaya

B

C

Practice words:

• Casa
• Carne
• Caballo
• Coco
• Cabeza
• Calle

D

E

The Spanish “e” is sort of halfway between the English word “hey” and the word “bed”. Say these two words over and over and find a medium.

Some common mistakes native English speakers make:

• Dipthonging with an “i” sound. You’ll need to watch the video (see 0:50) to hear this, but it’s when an “i” sort sound gets rolled onto the end of the “e” sound.
• Making it into an “ee” sound. The Spanish “e” is always the exact same sound. Unlike English, it never has an “ee” sound. The letter with the “ee” sound is “i”.

Practice words:

• Entonces
• Ser
• Ver
• Tener
• Desde
• De
• Éste

F

G

Practice words:

• Agua
• Igual
• Gordo
• Grande
• Gato
• Gigante

H

The “h” in Spanish is ALWAYS silent, no matter where in a word it is. Actively fight your English tendency to make this have a sound.

Practice words:

• Hotel
• Huerta
• Hijo
• Hipopótamo
• Habitación
• Ahora

I

“I” is the easiest Spanish vowel. It always sounds exactly like “ee” in English, except that it’s a tad shorter. So if you say “see”, just faster than you normally would in English, you’ve got the Spanish “i” sound.

Make sure you don’t turn this into an “eh” sound (like “it” in English, or the “i” in English).

Practice words:

• Hijo
• Idea
• Intentar
• Imagen
• Mismo
• Italia

J

The “j” in Spanish sounds like our “h” in English.

Practice words:

• Jugo
• Jugar
• Jueves
• Jarra
• Hoja
• Ojo

K

L

M

N

O

The “o” in Spanish isn’t too tough, but there a two common mistakes:

• Rounding. Say the word “no”. Notice how your lips form a circle that gets smaller until they are almost closed? You are rounding the “o”. Now make sure your lips remain loose and don’t close down. Notice the difference? In Spanish, the “o” is never rounded. Watch the video to hear this.
• Dipthonging with the “u” sound. Again, you’ll need to watch the video to hear this (1:05), but it’s when you roll a little bit of an “u” sound to the end of the “o”.

Practice words:

• Otro
• Solo
• Todos
• No
• Yo
• Son
• Nosotros
• Ojos
• Con

P

Q

R

This is one of the most challenging sounds for English speakers to make, as we don’t have this in English. It’s also very important to get right as it’s one of the most common sounds in Spanish, and using an “English r” is a dead-giveaway of a gringo accent.

Luckily there are a few ways to learn how to make this sound, as the movement with your mouth and tongue you do to make this is something we do in English, just not as quickly.

What’s happening here is something called an “alveolar tap”. Use your tongue now and feel behind your top teeth, where they meet your gums. That’s called the “alveolar ridge”. To make the “r” sound in Spanish, we hit this spot with our tongues quickly.

Make the sound “d” in English. Feel where your tongue starts? That’s the alveolar ridge. What we are doing in Spanish to make an “r” sound is just hitting that very quickly.

The best way to learn how to make this sound is to say the letter “d” in English progressively faster. Try it – say “d” over and over again, faster and faster and faster. Eventually it won’t sound like a “d”, but a Spanish “r”.

For instance, take this fast “d” sound and say the word “caro” in Spanish. If you say the “d” fast enough, you’ve just said “caro” with a correct Spanish “r”.

This is one of the sounds where you really need to drill it hundreds of times, over and over, until it comes out naturally, because as I said – it’s one of the most common sounds in Spanish. By practicing it over and over, it will become muscle memory, and you won’t trip over your tongue while speaking.

Practice words:

• Caro
• Pero
• Quiero
• Perú
• Hermano
• Muro

RR

OK, now for the sound that many learners simply “can’t make”. First, the good news: if you truly can’t make it (you can, it just takes lots of practice), using a single “r” sound is still much better than using and English “r”, and for most situations it’s actually fine (example situation where it’s not: carro vs. caro. Car vs. expensive, where the only difference is the rolling “rr”).

This sound is relatively infrequent, so even as you are learning to make it, it shouldn’t trip you up that much.

This sound is called an “alveolar trill”. It’s the same as the tap, except you are hitting the spot rapidly a few times. You do this by doing a tap but using airflow to make your tongue vibrate/bounce on the spot. It will take some time to find the sweet spot of how to do this if you haven’t done it before.

Put your tongue in position and then try to just vibrate it while it’s there using airflow. If it sounds like a low hum, you need more movement.

Another way to train this is to say a “d” then Spanish “r” back to make in rapid succession. This will cause a double-tap, which is plenty! Some people find this much easier than just the “vibrate” technique.

Practice words:

• Carro
• Perro
• Cerrar
• Terraza
• Tierra
• Arroz

S

T

U

The “u” in Spanish is like the “oo” sound in English. Say the English word “zoo” to hear this sound.

The common mistake is rounding the “u”. Just like the “o” sound, we have a tendency to round the “u” sound, where our lips come together at the end of the sound, changing the tone. See the video (0:36) to hear this.

Practice words:

• Uso
• Usualmente
• Uva
• Tú
• Azul
• Punto

V

You may notice that in some Spanish accents, the “v” sound sounds like a “b”. Indeed, with Spanish, these sounds are very close (so close that you can ask for a “baso de agua” with no misunderstanding at all, and some lesser educated Spanish speakers will actually spell some words with a “b” instead of a “v”). Some words you can pretty much use a “b” sound just like a “v” (vaso, vaca), but some you need to make sure it’s a “v”, not “b” (vivir, viernes).

Don’t let this confuse you – just use a “v” sound for everything, as that’s correct. But know that sometimes when people speak to you, you’ll hear a “b”, not a “v” for some words.

The difference is, with a “b”, your lips come together, and with a “v”, your bottom lip touches your top teeth instead.

Practice words:

• Vaca
• Aventura
• Verde
• Viernes
• Vivir

W

X

The “x” in Spanish is just like in English.

Practice words:

• Éxito
• Extremo
• Experiencia
• Experto
• Extensión
• Píxel

Y / LL

The “ll” and “y” sounds are the same in Spanish. Depending on what country you are in, this could have a “y” sound (e.g. Spain), “j” sound (e.g. Colombia), or “sh” (Argentina only). Most of Latin America uses a “j” sound, which is what we teach with BaseLang.

Practice words:

Playa

Yo

Ayer

Ayuda

Apoyo

Ensayo

Practice words:

• Talla
• Lluvia
• Toalla
• Llaves
• Amarillo

Z

The “z” in Spanish has the same sound as an “s”, always. There’s no “z” sound in Spanish like we do in English.

Practice words:

• Zorro
• Pereza
• Raza
• Taza
• Feliz
• Veloz
• Nariz

CIÓN

Quick vocab hack: if a word ends in “-tion” in English, 95% of the time it’s the exact same in Spanish, but with “-cion”. Boom! Now you have a few hundred words. Just look at the words below – even someone with zero Spanish knowledge will know what most mean!

Practice words:

• Traducción
• Comunicación
• Información
• Pronunciación
• Educación

GUI / GUE

You’ll want to watch the video for this sound as, while not hard, is difficult to explain in words.

Practice words:

• Siguiente
• Guerra
• Seguir

IO

This is an “ee-o” sound. Pretty easy!

Practice words:

• Interior
• Idioma
• Socios
• Amplio
• Estudio
• Río

UA

Practice words:

• Aguardiente (Mexico has tequila, Colombia has aguardiente!)
• Agua
• Cuando
• Cuatro
• Suave
• Igual

UE

Practice words:

• Cuerpo
• Muerta
• Puerta
• Pueblo
• Bueno

Practice Now

OK, you’ve seen all of the sounds.

Now, you need to actually do the practice. I recommend covering a few sounds a day (depending how difficult each is). This will be a multiple-day process, so don’t worry if you can’t do it all at once (in fact, that’s a bad idea).

Here’s what you need to do, again:

For each syllable:

1. Listen to the sound recording or watch the video (included for more difficult and important sounds)
2. Practice making the sound until you think you have it perfect
3. Record yourself saying it (the syllable, not the practice words)
4. Compare your recording to one of a native. If it sounds the same to you, then…
5. Have your teacher listen (click here if you don’t have one)
6. If they say it’s perfect (don’t take “close enough”), then practice the hell out of it. Sound is a muscle movement, and the more you practice it, the easier it will become to make that sound, which means you won’t slur, stumble, or stutter in the middle of a conversation. I recommend at least a hundred times for each vowel and two hundred for the two r’s. The rest of the sounds are used in English and you can get by with thirty or so at this stage.

Don’t move onto the next section until you’ve done this for every syllable! Otherwise, you’ll just be reinforcing bad habits and you’ll just make things harder on yourself. Do it right once and it’ll set you up for the rest of your Spanish speaking career.

OK, now we’re going to do the above process all over again with full words. I’ve hand-picked the words used in the resource to cover the most important sounds and progressively get harder.

For each word:

1. Starting from the first word, listen to the sound recording
2. Practice saying the word until you think you have it perfect
3. Record yourself saying it
4. Compare your recording to one of a native. If it sounds the same to you, then…
5. Have your teacher listen
6. If they say it’s perfect (don’t take “close enough”), then practice the hell out of it. Again – sound is a muscle movement, and the more you practice it, the easier it will become to make that sound, which means you won’t slur, stumble, or stutter in the middle of a conversation. For each word, once you have it right, say it fifty times that day, and fifty the next day.

Hijo

ee-ho

Remember, the “h” is silent.

Llaves

ja-vehs

This one is pretty easy, just practice your “a” and “e”.

Pregunta

preh-goon-tah

Our first “r”. This is a tap, you should barely hear the “r”. Also practiced here is the “u” and “a” again.

Raro

ra-ro

Both a trill and tap are OK for the first “r” here, but the second one is a tap. If you can get this, your “r” tap game is strong!

Reloj

reh-lo-h

This one tripped me up for awhile. The “r” is a tap, and don’t forget the breathy “h” at the end. Pay attention to your “e”.

Carro

cah-rro

Time to drill that trilled “r”.

Amanecer

ah-mah-neh-ser

Be careful to not turn the second “a” into an “uh”.

Here we go again, with the same process. This time, it’s going to get a lot harder. I’m going to start with easier sentences, and then it will get faster and harder. This step will help you a lot with understanding people when the talk fast.

It’s going to be even more work, but by the end, you’ll have rock-solid pronunciation and will reap the benefits of it for the rest of your life.

For each sentence:

1. Listen to the sentence a few times, and see if you can mimic it on your first try
2. Practice saying the sentence until you think you have it perfect
3. Record yourself saying it
4. Compare your recording to one of a native. If it sounds the same to you, then…
5. Have your teacher listen
6. If they say it’s perfect (don’t take “close enough”), then practice the hell out of it. This is the most important step. Fifty times each sentence minimum. I recommend 100-200 for full effect.

Tú estás aprendiendo ingles.

Let’s start nice and easy. You should be able to get this quickly.

Esa amiga tuya era bastante dadivosa.

Vowel soup. Double check all your vowels on this one, especially that last word!

Es imperativo reparar el refrigerador.

Watch the first “i” in “imperativo”. You may fallback to English habits and say “ih” instead of “ee”. Then, plenty of practice for your r’s later on.

Sus palabras están llenas de ambigüedad.

Last word can be a bit tricky. Again, check your vowels. They are the easiest to get wrong without realizing it.

El jengibre tiene muchas facultades curativas.

“jengibre” can be tricky here. Once you think you have it slow, try speeding it up and force your tongue to keep up, as this can be a mild tongue twister.

De hecho, la carrocería del carro se oxidó.

“De hecho” often gets slurred together into “decho” with a slight hiccup on the “e”. Jeison (the voice behind these) is going a bit easy on you here for that :) In the middle he speeds up. Get those rolled r’s down, and remember to put the stress on the last “o” in oxidó.

That’s it!

If you’ve done all the practice, at this point, your accent should be very solid.

Congrats!

In the next (bonus) lesson, I’ll talk about how I use music to learn, which is a fun way to supplement all of this.

I’ll admit it.

I learned how the word “recuerdo” (I remember) is pronounced from J Balvin’s runaway reggaeton hit, “6 AM”.

In fact, I learned a LOT about pronunciation and the rhythm of the Spanish language from music. I happened to use primarily reggaeton (which is basically latin rap music), but you could use any music in Spanish, whether that’s salsa, bachata (which I also used), or something else.

There’s really no system here. Find a genre of music in Spanish that you like, download a bunch of your favorite songs (or an hour long mix from YouTube, like I did), and then listen to them over and over again, while singing along.

You will still get some benefit (other than the enjoyment of the music) from just listening, but for this to help your pronunciation, you need to sing along. If you don’t usually do that, go somewhere where you are alone, put in headphones so you don’t even hear yourself, and loosen up a little.

It’s a lot of fun, and it will help add some spice to the structured exercises.

Now, once you’ve sung along to some songs, and you’ve finished every syllable, word, and now sentence, all with your teacher’s stamp of “perfect” approval – you have perfect Spanish pronunciation.

Congrats! That will come in handy when it comes to understanding people when they talk fast.