You have decided that you are going to learn Spanish and that is a very commendable task but you still need to learn to speak it well. It is such a joy when you speak to someone who has learned a foreign language and can speak it well. The first thing you think is that person has learned well, and worked hard at practicing speaking the language. You do not necessarily think that this person is smarter because they can speak the language so much better than other people. It is not a matter of intelligence but rather the fact that they worked hard at this task and became a good speaker.

Try not to make the same mistakes that so many people make while learning Spanish. Consider hiring a tutor to work with you so you can learn Spanish quickly and easily. A tutor can correct your diction and you will sound funny at the beginning. Patience and practice will allow you to learn to pronounce the words clearly. Some parents that speak Spanish do not communicate it in front of their children, hoping to force them to become more fluent in English. Studies have been conducted that have revealed that many times one would rather mow the lawn or clean the house than take the time to learn Spanish.

Syllabification: a key to giving your Spanish a more natural rhythm is to understand a process called diphthongisation: that is, making two vowels share a single syllable. Whenever you see a ‘i’ or ‘u’ vowel next to another vowel in Spanish, you need to think about diphthongisation.

Variation: Especially in some parts of Spain, there is some variation to (2): there’s a greater tendency towards separate syllables at the beginnings of words (e.g. ‘bi..lo.go’, though ‘bi.lo.go’ is also possible), and where one word with definitely separate syllables has an influence on another by analogy. Thus, the word ‘v.a’ (”road”, “route”, “way”), always pronounced as two syllables, tends to influence speakers’ pronunciation of ‘vi.a.ble’ (”viable”); ‘r.e’ (”he/she laughs”) tends to influence ‘ri.en.do’ (”laughing”), whereas on the other hand speakers would generally pronounce ’sien.do’ (”being”) as two syllables.

Syllabification in normal speech: The patterns we’ve presented above apply to what we might call ‘careful’ speech: for example, the style used by a newsreader reading from the autocue. In normal, relaxed speech, diphthongisation goes a couple of stages further: 1. any two vowels next to each other tend to share a syllable; 2 even across word boundaries, two vowels can share a syllable.

So in careful speech, ‘poeta ingls’ (”English poet”) would be syllabified ‘po.e.ta.ing.ls’, in five syllables, but in normal, relaxed speech would tend to be ‘poe.taing.ls’; ‘come y toma’ (”eat and drink”) would be ‘co.mei.to.ma’; ‘mi amigo’ would be ‘mia.mi.go’ etc. The word ‘zanahoria’ (”carrot”) is often pronounced as three syllables, ‘za.na(h)o.ria’: as mentioned before, the ‘h’ isn’t pronounced and doesn’t affect syllabification.

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