Five easy things...

...which will make you sound like an expert Spanish speaker.

Students of all ages rarely realize how relevant learning the alphabet is for their language learning process.  And in some languages it may be less so, but for Spanish, it can be the difference between sounding like a native speaker and sounding like a complete gringo.  

Let's be honest, one of the things that many people find terrifying about learning a new language is the "accent" or, more correctly, pronunciation.  If you're an English speaker learning Spanish, there is nothing scarier than a five-year old Mexican girl with beautifully trilled Rs.  Likewise, a native, Honduran English teacher trembles in fear when trying to explain the difference between eyes and ice to his or her students; two words that are awfully difficult to differentiate with a strong Spanish accent.

Well, here's the good news, while learning Spanish, don't worry about those Rs.  If you can do it, great, if not, no worries; many Costa Ricans stopped bothering years ago.  It's the least of your worries.  What you do need to know are your vowel sounds:

1. A --> Ah

2. E --> Ay (slightly softer than a "hard" A in English)

3. I --> EE

4. O --> Oh (slightly shorter than in English)

5. U --> Oo (there is no y sound here, it's all ooooooo, think monkey noises)

Or as I teach my students to practice while standing in line for coffee, waiting for computers to boot up, or any other time you're aimlessly letting time pass:

Ay, EE, Aye, Oah, You (English vowels)

is

Ah, Ay, EE, Oh, Oo (Spanish vowels)

And that's it.  That's all there is.  None of this hard vowel, soft vowel, different when followed by x nonsense that we have in English.  Just five simple sounds to get used to.

The key here is, if you're learning Spanish from someone who already knows Spanish (and let's face it, if you're not, then you're doing something wrong), they will be talking about verb forms, endings and words using Spanish pronunciations.  Then suddenly a word that you hear as baybays is actually spelled bebes.  No biggie if you're going for a strictly spoken competency, but you'll grow faster in your abilities if you incorporate the written word as well. Not to mention the fact that most of us who aren't learning language as children are more accustomed to learning with a focus on written things that we can see.  With that in mind, not having a solid command of the pronunciation of the Spanish vowel sounds can make everything else about learning Spanish ten times more difficult.

Moral of the story:  When you feel like a kindergartner as you practice the Spanish alphabet, it really is  worth it.  No, the big point isn't actually learning an alphabet that's almost identical to your own, it's about practicing and internally processing a set of sounds and pronunciations that you're not familiar with, most important of those being the vowels (most of the consonants are roughly the same, with the exception of g, h, j, ll and ñ). 

Give it a shot:  Try reading some English out loud while using the above Spanish vowel sounds.  If you do that and remember that every letter in Spanish is (typically) pronounced, you'll find yourself sounding oddly like a native Spanish speaker speaking English with a thick accent.  It won't be perfect, but it's the first step to really sounding fluent and polished.