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Speak Spanish like a
Native Speaker: Essential
Tips to Perfect your Spanish Accent

If you want to speak Spanish like a native speaker and have people ask you what part of Latin America you are from, it is important to pay close attention to the sounds, the intonation, and the pace of Spanish natives when they speak. The best way of practicing and acquiring the ability to pronounce correctly and, most importantly, the ability to speak fluently is to listen to a real speaker and imitate the way he or she speaks.

There are several ways to do this. For example, you can talk to your Spanish-speaking friends or colleagues without leaving your house using Skype. You can also listen and repeat Spanish sounds by watching videos uploaded online. You can watch Latin-American movies with Spanish subtitles which will help you learn new vocabulary as well! And last but not least, we have songs. Singing in Spanish is the best way to learn and practice sounds, intonation, and fluency. Our ear surrenders to the rhythm, our mind abandons control to enjoy the melodies and suddenly, without even noticing it, we are trying to sing and imitate the sounds. Once you can produce the sounds in Spanish, you can go a step further and to try to pronounce Spanish tongue twisters.

It is important to take into account that some Spanish sounds will represent a challenge for your lips, tongue, and vocal cords since these sounds may not exist in English and thus your whole vocal system will have to get used to moving in a different way.

Finally, you probably know that Spanish is one of the most popular languages spoken worldwide. However, there are many variants when it comes to pronunciation. Grammar and vocabulary may not vary so much from one country to another, but pronunciation does. Spanish spoken in Spain sounds different from Spanish spoken in Chile, for example. Here are some common rules that will make it a lot easier for you to discover these differences when the time comes. In this occasion, we will study sounds of the Latin American variant.

First tip: Look at a written word in Spanish. You must pronounce EVERY written vowel and consonant in almost every case. Spanish is different from English, in which you may have strong and weak syllables or silent letters in a single word. For example, the word "doctor" means the same in Spanish and in English, but in Spanish the emphasis is on the last syllable and you pronounce every sound, whereas in English, you only emphasize the first syllable "doc-" and the last syllable "-tor" is an unstressed sound. In Spanish, such weak sounds are not used.

Vowels and diphthongs

In Spanish, there are five vowels: a, e, i, o and u. It is a common mistake to confuse the pronunciation of the vowel e with the pronunciation of i and the pronunciation of a with the diphthong ei. Spanish vowels represent a single sound. Look at the examples and you will see where this confusion lies:

You also have to be careful when pronouncing diphthongs and triphthongs. In these cases, you will have two or three different sounds to pronounce quickly and you cannot omit any of them because otherwise the word would not be pronounced correctly.

Semi-consonants u-i

The diphthongs formed by u followed by a, e, i or o have a sound similar to "w" as in "water, weather, woven, winter, etc."; for example: estatua, cueva, contiguo, cuidar.

The diphthongs formed by i followed by an a, e or u have a sound similar to "y" in "yesterday, yolk, youth"; for example: fiesta, canciones, ciudad.

Accents

As a general rule, most of the words that make up the Spanish language are graves or llanas; this means that the stress of the word falls on the next-to-last syllable. However, there are many words stressed on the last syllable (agudas) or the third from last syllable (esdrújulas). There is something that makes it easier to find out where to stress a word: the written accent. Many words carry a written accent ( ´ ) on top of  a vowel, which tells you the syllable that must be stressed.

Consonants

Many consonants have the same sound in English and in Spanish. However, other consonants are quite different:

Double consonants

ll:  This sound varies a lot from region to region, but in general, it is pronounced as y in yesterday, you, and also as ll in million.
rr: It is a strongly trilled sound as the growling of a lion, for example, ferrocarril.
cc: The conjunction of cc such as acceso and accidente is pronounces as an x (first a /k/ and then an /s/)