Eleena of Voices en Español asked her readers something interesting some days ago;
Which would you prefer?
0 Fluent Spanish with a noticeable (non-native speaker) accent
0 Excellent Spanish accent but limited knowledge of language
* Poll is at the bottom of the post
Looking to my own experience, I’d say: Pronunciation is one of the most important things for a student. Why? Because it’s really hard to unlearn a bad accent. Instead, you should focus on listening and watching to native speakers in order to understand how you should sound. Only then you can start working on a correct accent. Furthermore, listening to natives long enough will make you produce automatically after a while.
What do you think? Is pronunciation important enough to focus on first, or is it only important to know a bunch of words and using correct grammar?
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey Ramses,
Maybe it’s my personal bias but I think that many people assume that they will never lose their native accent, so why even bother trying. You are so right about how difficult it is to “unlearn” the wrong pronunciation. I recently signed up for some private tutoring to help me with my Spanish pronuniciation and I’m learning new things about myself and bad habits I’ve acquired. Stuff that has become fossilized in my way of speaking. Stuff I wasn’t even aware of.
Thanks for giving me some “link love” the past few days. (jeje)
And while it is true that depending on one’s age or native language it can be a Herculean task to truly “polish” one’s accent in a second or third language, I still think it’s a worthy goal to shoot for. I’ve seen English speakers in Spain work really hard at incorporating Spanish slang and colloquial expressions into their vocabulary but their strong “gringo” accent just throws the whole thing off. Imagine how much greater the positive response would be from their audience if that same person just paid a teeny bit more attention to how they were pronouncing those witty Spanish expressions.
I know you agree with me, so I’m just speaking rhetorically.
eleena’s last blog post..Chatting with Mercedes León
Hi, I hope I´m not being a big pain in the ass because of my many comments here today, but once again I think you are wrong. It´s absolutelly impossible for an English-speaker to ever pronounce Spanish “rr” properly, really, so I wouldn´t even bother trying. Working on a good pronunciation is fine, but forget about the accent.
If you don´t believe me, try to say in front of a Spanish-speaker this rhyme:
Erre con erre guitarra / erre con erre barril / que rápido ruedan las ruedas del ferrocarril
If he doesn´t laugh, maybe you still got a chance.
Alan’s last blog post..Diario del internauta neófito: 6. El Blog
Sorry to say, but I think you’re wrong. It absolutely possible for ANYONE to learn to pronounce the rr. Just check out this post: http://www.spanish-only.com/2008/03/how-to-roll-your-r/
I learned it, and many others with me. With enough practice over 90% of the people can learn the rr. That you know a lot guiris that can’t pronounce the rr is probably because they never tried or didn’t try hard enough. It doesn’t say others can’t prove them wrong.
Although it can be hard to get completely rid of your accent, many achieved it. Again, you may be biased because you may know many with an accent that sucks. And even if you have a slight accent: slight is always better than heavy!
Reading that post, I see that you are Dutch. As I said, I think it´s impossible for English-speakers. Dutch “r”, as far as I know, it´s quite different to English one. So maybe that´s why you could do some Spanish “rr” pronunciation.
My opinion didn´t come from listening the “rr” on “guiris”, since I speak English to them. It came from listening USA ambassador on TV, or talking to some English teachers I had in Spain (they had been living in Spain for years, and still couldn´t pronounce “rr” properly). Still, all of them where native English speakers, not Dutch.
Alan’s last blog post..Diario del internauta neófito: 6. El Blog
I’ve heard many “guiris” get the “rr” pronounciation quite good!
but I have to say that you can have Spanish as a mother tongue… and have no one understand you (and viceversa). I’m from Argentina, and I came to Andalucía and god… impossible for me to understand some people. I had a hard time making myself understood in many ocassions as well. Vocabulary and entonation is so different!
So I agree that you need to work on pronunciation but pay attention to entonation, make yourself familiar with it. Still, try to learn a good amount of grammar before taking a deep plunge in pronunciation task
PS: want to listen to real hard Spanish? search “curso dandalu” in youtube and you’ll see how hard it can be to get what a Spaniard says XD
Curso dandalu? Those jackassed andaluHs? Well, I find their dialect repulsive, their accent laughable. Good lord, I could barely understand what that fatso and his co’pañeroH were saying. Castillian FTW
Hm, it’s a dialect. Personally, I don’t like the Texas accent, does that mean I can bash people just because they speak different? By the way: I also have an Andalucian accent, so…
I found that video fun! I was surprised that I actually understood most of what that guy was saying…I guess that’s what living in Spain will do to you. Even though I lived in Madrid, not Andalucía, I found that it was difficult to understand what most Spaniards said, since I live in California and was used to the Mexican accent. Now I appreciate the Spanish accent, I love the “c’s” and “z’s” and I love vosotros (even though that’s grammar, not accent). Andalucían is difficult though!
Oh, and I also do not like the Texan accent…I find it annoying. Or maybe Texans are just the annoying ones :p
Hi Janna,
Welcome to the blog. In your comment you talk about a video. What video?
Pronunciation should definitely be a priority. It’s sooo important, especially in Spanish. I can’t speak for Spain, but I know that when I’ve traveled in Latin America (Costa Rica and Ecuador), the level of respect you get increasing exponentially once you begin to get serious about fixing your pronunciation (and even more so if you can get rid of some of the little flaws in your accent that immediately tag you as an inhabitant of whatever country you happen to be from).
Looking back at the three years of high school Spanish that I took, I thing what helped me most was the fact that I smoked so much weed and consequently sat in the back class giggling at the funny sounds of Spanish when the teacher talked. I think that if I had started trying to speak right from the get-go, it would have seriously enforced my bad pronunciation. At that stage, I couldn’t even hear the errors in my voice when I talked. It wasn’t until much later that I could recognize them and that’s when I was able to really change how I spoke.