7 Common Spanish pronunciation mistakes Sometimes Spanish students keep making the same pronunciation mistake, not because they want to, or they forget the right way to say the word, or the specific letter, but because they do not they are making a mistake.

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Some Spanish students have a pronunciation pattern, and nobody have told them they were pronouncing wrong, so they assume, as people understand them, that they got the right way to say it. So in today’s blog I am going to list 7 common pronunciation mistake in Spanish, so you can identify if you are making them.

 

I hope this blog will help you if you are starting out to hit the ground running, and avoiding this common mistakes from the gate, and if you have been studying Spanish for a while, hopefully you can identify if you are making any of those mistake and pay attention to them in your Spanish conversations until you master them.

 

Before we dive in in these mistakes, if you are not very confident when speaking in Spanish I would love to invite you to sign up for my FREE 4 day Spanish pronunciation challenge, where we will be exploring the Spanish pronunciation, it is going to be so helpful, and it will boost your confidence speaking in Spanish.  It starts the 19th of March. You can sign up here.

 

 

 

7 Common pronunciation mistakes in Spanish

 

We are going to see two kind of pronunciation mistakes, and we are dividing them in “vowel mistakes” and “consonant” mistakes.

1-“vowel” mistakes:

 

1.1.Buenohhhhhhhh, tengohhhhh,

The Spanish words are bueno and tengo.

 

Spaniards keep the vowels short and crisp so no enlarging the word endings.

In English it is quite popular to slide the “o” sound towards an “u” , or the “e” sound to the “I”, at the end of a word. When you are speaking in Spanish you need to try avoiding that sliding motion.

 

1.2.Uh- buela, ehhm-posible

Spanish words: abuela, imposible.

 

The “uh” and “ehm” often used in English words such as about (in American English) does not have an equivalent in Spanish. If we will have to chose that “ehm” sound I would say that it is more common in Spanish words starting with “em” than with “im”. Embalse and impresionante start with very different sound.-while in English the pronunciation of “I” and “e” is often the same, -try saying “emission” and “important” and pay attention to their first sound- in Spanish they are two totally different sounds.

To avoid this avoid following English pronunciation patterns and isolate the pronunciation of the vowels instead.

 

1.3.You-sar, you-til

Spanish words: usar, útil

 

In English is quite common to curl the lips when you say the “u” sound. You will say the English word utilize starting with the you sound. The Spanish equivalent, utilizar starts isolating the vowel “u”, kind of a “oo” sound.

 

 

2 “consonant” mistakes:

 

2.1-hole-a, hah, blo

Spanish words: hola, hablo.

 

I would say that one of the  most popular pronunciation mistakes in Spanish is to pronounce the letter “h” as you would in English. Never pronounce the “h” in Spanish when it is at the beginning of words.

 

2.2-roh-sah, rah-zon.

Spanish words: rosa, razón.

 

Do not pronounce the “r” at the beginning of a word as an English “r”, try to roll that “r”.

 

2.3-lah-moh, siluh

Spanish words: llamo, silla.

 

The sound for the double “l” in Spanish is the same like the “ll” sound in the animal “llama”.

“ll” sound in Spanish never sounds like an English single “l”.

 

2.4-informashun, participashun

Spanish words: información, participación.

Words ending in “ión” are very common in Spanish, in English you will pronounce it as “shun”, avoid doing that in Spanish, instead pronounce the Spanish vowel individually. I as the “ee” in the English word meet, o as the “o” in the English word no, and then the “n”.

And those are the common pronunciation mistakes in Spanish I wanted to talk you about, I hope you find this blog useful  and helps your Spanish pronunciation.  Remember you can join me for a FREE 4 days Spanish pronunciation challenge, starting the 19th of March signing up here.

 

Now, as always I would love to hear from you, leave a comment and let me know:

 

-have you recognized any mistakes that you do or have done in the past?

 

-what is your biggest struggle with the Spanish pronunciation?

 

-have you already joing the FREE 4 days Spanish pronunciation challenge? If you haven’t you can sign in here –> https://blancadelatorre.kartra.com/page/itz80

 

-from 0 (being not confident at all) to 10 (very confident) where do you  think you stand with your Spanish pronunciation?

 

-have your pronunciation ever stopped you from speaking Spanish?

 

 

Looking forward to reading your comments!

 

 

 

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