The Cartesian Spanish Pronunciation Lesson has what will probably seem like odd or even silly exercises. The purpose of these exercises, like all exercises, is to get you out of your comfort zones and to create a paradigm shift in your assumptions about language and language pronunciation.
Languages have their own unique ways of pronouncing countless combinations of letters, vowel sounds, consonant sounds, and the more. That is not what The CSPL addresses. The CSPL addresses the most fundamental mechanics involved in pronouncing “American English” versus pronouncing Spanish, or any other language in the world.
Criss-crossing Pronunciation
Growing up speaking English (Spanish or whatever your original language is), you were encultured or habituated into doing things with your ears, brain, and mouth in one and only one way. It’s as if you’ve grown up using a machine with your right hand and you’ve done that for your entire life.
When you commit yourself to learning a new language, it’s as if you’ve been provided a different machine, one that is very awkward to use, almost impossible to use for no apparent reasons.
It’s only when someone taps you on the shoulder and tells you that you should use your left hand, and you try that, that you realize that it suddenly isn’t awkward and definitely not impossible to use. That is what The CSPL and these exercises are doing, illuminating the distinction between the two.
In this exercise you will be asked to pick a sentence, phrase, headline, slogan or whatever string of text that you can find and apply to it the opposite rules for pronunciation. As an example, apply Spanish pronunciation (emphasizing VOWELS over consonants) to the following sentence:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Displaying this graphically to represent how the Spanish pronunciation would affect these English words, it would look like this:
thE qUIck brOwn fOx jUmps OvEr thE lAzY dOg
Let’s try to make this more phonetically easy to follow thusly, applying the five and only five correct Spanish vowel pronunciations which never change of Ah, Eh, EE, Oh, OO:
th-EH q-OO-EE-ck br-OH-wn f-OH-x j-OO-mps
OH-v-EH-r th-EH l-AH-z-EE d-OH-g
Remember that Spanish doesn’t really have a “th” sound, so the softer you make this, the better. Also, the “WN” combination is unfamiliar in Spanish and would probably most closely sound like a soft “when.” “J” is aspirated like an “H” sound as in “José” rather than a hard “G” sound as in “Jerry.” The main point is to swallow or de-emphasize the consonants and exaggerate, emphasize, or even sing the VOWELS.
If, in saying this, you start to hear why speakers with a thick Spanish accent sound the way they do, you’re doing it right.
In learning something complex, it’s sometimes useful to break what you’re learning to learn how it’s made, or at least take it apart.
If you’re a Spanish-speaker learning English, now would be a good time to flip this Criss-crossing of the pronunciation and read the following sentence with English pronunciation even though that seems counter-intuitive. It’s fun and funny and insightful.
If you’re an English-speaker learning Spanish, this is still helpful even though the immediate result will be what you might already be doing which falls into the category of learning your version of Spanish, as in the famous high school Spanish class phrase, “¿DoNDe eSTa La BiBLioTeCa?” If you can do this intentionally (rather than accidentally or out of habit), you will become much more conscious of this distinction and be able to reverse what you’re doing and pronounce the Spanish correctly.
El zorro marrón rápido salta sobre el perro perezoso
Displaying this now graphically to represent how the English pronunciation would affect these Spanish words, it would look like this:
eL ZoRRo MaRRóN RáPiDo SaLTa SoBRe eL PeRRo PeReZoSo
To make this more phonetically easy to follow, it looks like this:
eh-L Z-oh-RR-oh M-ah-RR-óh-N R-áh-P-ee-D-oh
S-ah-LT-ah S-oh-BR-eh eh-L P-eh-RR-oh
P-eh-R-eh-Z-oh-S-oh
What “American English” does to Spanish words is over-articulate the difference or even harshness of the CONSONANTS over the vowels. It won’t sound pretty. It should sound clunky. But if you reverse it and pronounce the VOWELS more emphatically and swallow the consonants, it’ll actually be Spanish, and you’ll probably notice it very clearly.
This is why some people remark that speaking Spanish (or any other language in the world) feels like singing, whereas speaking “American English” feels like talking.
Play with this Criss-crossing pronunciation exercise as often as you can and see what you come up with. If you force yourself to make these ridiculous sounds you’ll very quickly find yourself pronouncing the actual words correctly. It will be as if the lights have come on when you pronounce Spanish in Spanish.
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