“Training your Tongue” when Learning Spanish

Joseph Chmielewski — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:43:10 +0000

Learning Spanish involves more than memorizing new vocabulary words.

And although vocabulary is important, other factors influence your language learning success. One of those factors is the ability to produce the sounds of Spanish in a way that communicates. This can be called, “Training your Tongue.”

Training your tongue means learning to produce the sounds of Spanish in the correct way. This means producing the sounds in a way other than the way that you normally do. This skill will decrease the “accent” that you have when you talk to a native Spanish speaker.

For language learners whose first language is English, this task is both easy and difficult.

Training an English-speaking tongue is easy because there is an English word that uses almost every Spanish sound.

Training an English-speaking tongue to produce Spanish sounds is difficult because the sounds in Spanish are produced in a slightly different way.

Training your tongue involves changing the position and role of your lips, mouth, teeth and throat…even your nose (or nasal cavity).

Even though most Spanish sounds exist in English words, the position of the tongue, lips, mouth and throat are different.

There is a difference in how native Spanish speakers form the sounds of Spanish, compared to how native English speakers form those sounds.

So, new Spanish learners start by approximating the sounds from their native English.

But, since the sounds are produced in slightly different ways, the results are different. That difference in how the sounds are produced is called your “accent.”

And though limiting (or eliminating) an accent from your Spanish conversation is desirable, it is not the goal of language learning. Communication is your goal.

Reducing your “foreign accent” when speaking Spanish increases your ability to communicate. But, takes practice.

But, what kind of practice?

You can listen to recordings of native Spanish speakers, and attempt to make the sounds.

Or, you can pick a sound and “babble.”

When you babble, you make different sounds that are almost the same as the sound that you are attempting to produce. You will produce the correct sound once is awhile at first, then latter, your speech-producing mechanisms will “zero in ” on how the sound is correctly produced.

This is a tactile-kinesthetic task, not a memory task; and you will develop a “sense” or a “feel” for creating the correct sound.

You will also develop a capacity to change your perception, i.e., how you hear the sound.

The factors that involve changing your perception are a sensory, rather than a memory skill. This skill can be called, “training your ear.” and the subject of another article.

Of course, with pronouncing Spanish, stress of the vowel sound in one syllable is also required. And Spanish has better (more uniform, easier) rules for accomplishing this pronunciation task than English. (The topic of an online Clase Chevere presentation.)

For an online presentation that focuses on the rules for pronouncing Spanish word, visit Clase Chevere’s: Spanish Pronunciation.

But, perfecting your Spanish pronunciation requires more than rules.

You have to practice.

Ready, set, babble…

Clase Chevere Blog » Spanish Pronunciation

“Training your Tongue” when Learning Spanish