English Pronunciation for Spanish Speakers

"Eschool." "Berry good." A yes that sounds like Jess. If Spanish is your first language, someone has probably pointed out at least one of these, and English can start to feel like a list of random traps.

This guide is also available in Spanish as Pronunciación en inglés para hispanohablantes, and the English to IPA converter has a Spanish edition.

The traps are not random. Each one comes from a specific rule of Spanish pronunciation, and once you know the rule, you know what to change. Norman Coe, who wrote the chapter on Spanish and Catalan speakers in Swan and Smith's Learner English, puts the overall picture in one line: the consonant systems of the two languages have a lot in common, but "the vowel systems and sentence stress are very different, and these can cause great difficulty for Spanish-speaking learners of English."

This guide takes the difficult areas one at a time: what English does, what Spanish does instead, and a fix you can practice. The typical errors described below come from Coe's chapter; the facts about Spanish come from standard descriptions of its sound system (see Sources at the end). All transcriptions come from a pronunciation lexicon IPAtics maintains, checked by hand. Its US entries put the stress mark before the stressed syllable, as dictionaries do (ship /ˈʃɪp/).

Five Spanish vowels, many more English ones

Spanish has five vowel phonemes: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/ and /u/. English has far more, and the exact number depends on the accent. Coe describes the problem this way: typically at least two English vowels share the space of one Spanish vowel, and learners find them hard to tell apart, especially when length is part of the difference.

Three contrasts show the pattern clearly:

The US column writes the long vowels without a length mark (/i/, /u/) and the UK column with one (/iː/, /uː/). Both mark the same contrast.

Spanish /i/ is close to the vowel of sheep, which is why ship drifts toward sheep when the Spanish vowel is used for both. The fix for /ɪ/ is to make it shorter and looser, with the tongue slightly lower: aim halfway between Spanish i and Spanish e. The same move works for /ʊ/ in full: short, lips only lightly rounded, halfway from Spanish u toward o.

Spanish /a/ sits between the vowels of cat and cut. For /æ/, spread your lips and drop your jaw further than for Spanish a, with the tongue forward, as if you started a Spanish e and opened it up. For /ʌ/, say a short, relaxed a with the jaw only half open. Our list of English minimal pairs every learner confuses has more pairs for each of these contrasts.

The extra e: school, Spain, student

Spanish never starts a word with s plus another consonant. Where a word would, Spanish puts an e in front: escribir, España, estudiante. Coe lists the transfer of this rule into English as a typical Spanish-speaker error, and it is easy to hear, because it adds a whole syllable.

The cognates show where the pattern comes from: the Spanish word you already know has the e written in it.

Two fixes help. The first is to start with a long hiss: "sssss-kool", then shorten the s until it sounds normal. The second uses a rule Spanish already has. Spanish lets a syllable end in s, so say a school as if it were as + cool: the /s/ closes the first syllable and there is no room for an e. The same trick works in go to school or the Spanish class: whenever a vowel comes before the word, the /s/ can lean on it.

v, h and z: letters Spanish writes but says differently

These three letters exist in Spanish spelling, which makes them feel familiar. In each case the Spanish sound behind the letter is not the English one.

v is not b

In Spanish, b and v spell the same sound: bebé and viva begin with the same consonant. Between vowels, that sound softens so the lips come close without closing. English keeps the two apart. For /b/, both lips close. For /v/, the upper teeth rest on the lower lip and the air buzzes through. Coe notes the result: very comes out as berry, vest as best.

The fix is mechanical. Rest your upper teeth lightly on your lower lip and hum: that buzz is /v/. Practice the pairs slowly in front of a mirror and check that the teeth touch the lip for every v.

h is breath, not the Spanish j

The Spanish h is silent. The Spanish sound closest to English /h/ is the jota in jamón, /x/, made by raising the back of the tongue toward the soft palate so the air scrapes through. English /h/ has no contact anywhere: it is breath through an open mouth, already shaped for the vowel that follows. Coe notes that Spanish speakers often use the jota for English h, so hot and house begin with a scrape.

In many accents, including those of the Caribbean, Central America, Colombia, Andalusia and the Canary Islands, the jota is already pronounced as a plain [h]. If your Spanish is one of them, your own j is the English h. If it is not, whisper "ha" as if you were fogging a mirror. Nothing in the mouth should touch.

Spelling adds a second question, because English does say most of its h's, unlike Spanish:

z buzzes

English /z/ is /s/ with the voice switched on. Spanish has no /z/ phoneme. The letter z stands for /θ/ in most of Spain and for /s/ in Latin America, and a buzzing [z] turns up only as a variant of /s/ before a voiced consonant, as in mismo. Coe describes the result: English /z/ is often replaced by /s/, so zoo sounds like Sue.

The bigger problem is that English spells /z/ with an s all the time. Is, was, please and busy all have /z/, and so does the plural ending after a voiced sound, as in dogs and cars.

Put two fingers on your throat. Say a long "sssss", then switch on your voice without moving your tongue. The buzz you feel is /z/.

sh and ch, j and y

/ʃ/ and /tʃ/: sheet and cheat

Spanish has /tʃ/, the ch in chico. It does not normally have /ʃ/, which appears only in loanwords and a few dialects, and many speakers replace it with /tʃ/ or /s/. Coe describes the same substitution in English: shoes comes out as choose, sheet as cheat.

The UK column writes the affricate with a tie bar, /t͡ʃ/. It is the same sound as the US /tʃ/.

The last column is the test. /ʃ/ is the "shhh" you use to ask for quiet, and you can hold it for as long as your breath lasts. /tʃ/ begins with a short t stop, so it cannot be stretched. If your sh has a stop at the start, it has turned into ch.

Two groups of speakers start from a different place. In Argentina and Uruguay, the y and ll of yo and calle are pronounced [ʒ] or, among many younger speakers, [ʃ], so the English sh is already in the mouth. In some other dialects, such as northern Mexican and informal Chilean Spanish, ch itself softens to [ʃ]. If that is your Spanish, work the other way: keep the short t at the start of English ch.

/dʒ/ and /j/: Jess and yes

The Spanish y and ll cover a range of sounds. After a pause, an n or an l, they can be a stop-plus-friction sound close to English j. Elsewhere they are softer and closer to English y. Because one Spanish sound spans both English sounds, Coe notes that /dʒ/ and /j/ get confused, so yes and Jess, or yet and jet, can end up sounding alike.

English y is a glide, like the i in Spanish bien: the tongue moves toward the roof of the mouth but never touches it. English j is the voiced partner of ch. Say the ch of chop, then add your voice without changing anything else, and you have the j of jet.

Word endings: asked, months, world

A Spanish syllable ends in at most two consonants, and in native words the second one is always s. In many dialects, informal speech allows only one. English regularly stacks three at the end of a word, and the past tense and plural endings add more. Coe identifies final consonants and clusters as a place where Spanish speakers simplify or drop sounds.

Notice that asked, walked and helped are each one syllable. After most consonants, the -ed ending is a single /t/ or /d/, not an extra syllable.

Two techniques help. The first is linking: when the next word starts with a vowel, move the last consonant onto it. Asked us becomes "ask-tus", and helped it becomes "help-tit". The cluster splits across two syllables, which Spanish handles well. The second is building the cluster from the end: say "t", then "kt", then "skt", then "askt".

Stress and the schwa

Sentence stress is the other area Coe describes as very different between the two languages. English gives one syllable of a word a strong beat and weakens most of the others, usually to the schwa /ə/. Spanish keeps each of its five vowels whole, stressed or not. Our guide to the English schwa covers the reduced vowel in detail.

Banana shows the difference. Spanish says three equal a vowels with the stress on the middle one. English stresses the same syllable but weakens the other two: /bəˈnænə/. The stress can also move within one family of words, taking the full vowel with it: photograph is /ˈfoʊtəˌɡɹæf/, but photography is /fəˈtɑɡɹəfi/.

Cognates are where to be most careful. The spelling matches Spanish, so the Spanish stress feels right, and in many common words it is on a different syllable.

The UK entries in the dictionary leave stress unmarked, but the pattern is the same in both accents: all ten English words are stressed on the first syllable, and none of the Spanish ones is.

Look at the syllable counts too. Chocolate has two syllables in both columns, interesting has three, and the UK comfortable and family have three and two. Unstressed syllables in English do not just weaken; sometimes they disappear.

When you learn a new word, learn its stress with it. Say the stressed syllable louder, longer and a little higher, and let the others go quick and weak. The same gap between the two languages, seen from the other side, is behind the seven IPA symbols English speakers get wrong in Spanish: English speakers weaken Spanish vowels that should stay whole.

A practice routine

Nine areas is too many to work on at once. A routine that fits them into a few weeks:

1. Take one section a week. Start with the vowels, which Coe singles out, with stress, as a source of great difficulty.
2. Listen before you speak. Play a native recording of each pair in random order until you can tell which word you heard, then start saying them.
3. Record yourself reading the words in the tables, and compare with a native recording. You hear your own accent on a recording in a way you cannot while speaking.
4. Look up the transcription of every new word when you meet it, not later. The vowel and the stress mark tell you which section of this guide the word belongs to.

Trying it yourself

The tables cover the patterns; the words you meet every day are the practice. IPAtics shows the IPA for any text you select, in any app, so you can check a vowel or a stress mark the moment you read the word. To convert your own text in the browser, paste it into the English to IPA converter and choose US or UK.

Sources

• Coe, Norman. "Speakers of Spanish and Catalan." In Michael Swan and Bernard Smith (eds.), Learner English: A Teacher's Guide to Interference and Other Problems, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2001. doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511667121.008. The source for every typical error described in this guide.
• Wikipedia, "Spanish phonology": the five vowels, the added e before s + consonant, /ʃ/ as a marginal sound, the pronunciations of y and ll, the voicing of /s/, z as /θ/ or /s/, and the limits on consonants at the end of a syllable.
• Wikipedia, "Help:IPA/Spanish": b and v as one sound, the silent h, and the jota pronounced [h] in many accents.