Spanish pronunciation: difficult everyday words – Episode 53

Spanish pronunciation: difficult everyday words

Podcast episode 53 – SEE ALL EPISODES

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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Today you’re going to master saying 5 tricky everyday words.

Today’s question comes from Alfred, one of my students. Not long ago, Alfred gave me a list of words he finds difficult to say. What struck about his list, is that they were all fairly short words. They weren’t the obvious long words you find in most pronunciation courses. The words on his list were all very common words that are used daily in conversation. And those are really the words you should be focusing on.

See also: Maria’s step-by-step Spanish courses.

Spanish pronunciation – difficult words: intro

In my experience, both as a teacher and a language learner, when you can say basic words clearly, you can communicate in almost every situation. On the other hand, if you’re an advanced student with a vast vocabulary, but your pronunciation of basic words is not good, you’ll have trouble with all conversations.

Spanish pronunciation – difficult words: speaking practice

So, in today’s lesson we’re going to practice saying 5 of the tricky words suggested by Alfred, my student. Repeat after me:

• arroz :: rice
• elegir :: to choose
• hecho :: done
• llover :: to rain
• ofrecer :: to offer

Let’s say those 5 words again.

So, what’s difficult about those words? Which pronunciation mistakes are you likely to be making? Let’s go through the 5 words:

Spanish pronunciation – difficult words: arroz, rice

Arroz, rice. Here we’ve got the double R sound: RRRR. As we saw in lesson 10, this is one of the most difficult sounds in Spanish. It’ll take you some practice to master it. Go back to lesson 10 for tips on how to get it right. When saying the word Arroz, watch out for the two vowels: A, O – arroz. And the final Z isn’t an easy sound either: arroz. This short word is a lot trickier to say than it looks: arroz.

Spanish pronunciation – difficult words: hecho, done

Our second word is: hecho, done. Here, remember that the initial H is silent: hecho. And make sure the final O sounds like this: o. And not like in the English word: no. Avoid adding a ‘u’ sound to the o: hecho.

Spanish pronunciation – difficult words: elegir, to choose

The third word is: elegir, to choose. Both ‘E’s’ in elegir sound like this: e. Elegir. And the GI sound is: gi. Elegir. And, to produce the final R, you need to flap your tongue just once against your palate: elegir.

Spanish pronunciation – difficult words: llover, to rain

The fourth word is: llover, to rain. The initial sound LL is one you need to practice regularly to get right: LL, llover. We’ll go through this tricky sound in a future lesson. Watch out for the vowels in the word Llover: o, e. Llover. And remember to pronounce the final R like in the previous word, elegir. Flap your tongue just once against your palate: llover.

Spanish pronunciation – difficult words: ofrecer, to offer

And our final word is: ofrecer, to offer. Here, we’ve got another O. As before, avoid adding a ‘u’ sound to it: ofrecer. To master the middle syllable, F-R-E, fre, practice saying it on its own: fre, ofrecer. We’ll see the cluster “F, R plus vowel” in future lessons. Also, make sure that the two E’s in ofrecer sound like this: e. And not like the English E in words like: ‘eve’ or ‘offer’. As to the final R, like we saw in llover and elegir, to produce the single R sound, you need to flap your tongue just once against your palate: ofrecer.

Let’s say those 5 words again. Repeat after me:

• arroz, a
• hecho, h
• elegir, e
• llover, ll
• ofrecer, o

And once again:

• arroz, a
• hecho, h
• elegir, e
• llover, ll
• ofrecer, o

Come back to this lesson every now and then, to make sure you master these five everyday words.

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