Guide for Spanish Speakers
Native Language Guide for Spanish Speakers
Following common areas of difficulty for native spanish speakers:
Consonants
1. Consonant Clusters
2. Verb Ending in "-ed"
3. The "th" Sound
4. Confusing "b" and "v"
5. Confusing /ʤ/ and /j/
6. Confusing "sh" and "ch"
7. The /m/ Sound
8. The /s/ sound
9. Confusing /s/ and /z/
Vowels
1. Words Spelling with "o"
2. The /ɪ/ Sound
3. The /ʌ/ Sound
4. The /ʊ/ Sound
5. The Schwa /ə/ Sound
Word Stress
1. Word Stress
Keep in mind as you learn English pronunciation that English spelling is rather unpredictable with a multitude of exceptions and variations. The rules sometimes seem to lack a predictable pattern. Fortunately there are only a limited number of 'phonemes', or sounds. That's why this pronunciation lesson focus on the phonemes and try to give only non-exceptional spelling examples. This should make it easier for you to master the individual sounds as you progress and start to encounter variations and exceptions. Individual phonemes are represented by their International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbol between forward slashes: / /. To further simplify things, we will only cover vowel pronunciation in standard U.S. English. We will not cover the multitude of variations that exist in the different U.S. regions or in different countries.
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