How is my Spanish?

K. T.   Tue Jun 23, 2009 12:13 am GMT
"So if a Spanish learner wants to pronounce 'v' and 'b' differently, it is not a matter of just pronouncing them differently, you also must study all other aspects of the speech of the people who speak in this way and make your accent correspond to theirs in ALL aspects, otherwise it will be a dead give away."

This makes sense.
****   Tue Jun 23, 2009 2:15 am GMT
I really don't know because I can not use youtube in China.
American   Tue Jun 23, 2009 2:42 am GMT
Why not try recording something in Portuguese?
Samantha   Tue Jun 23, 2009 1:39 pm GMT
With such an Slavic accent her Portuguese would be excellent, much better than her Spanish
P. Herbert Aspinwall   Tue Jun 23, 2009 2:43 pm GMT
<<Why not try recording something in Portuguese? >

Why not post a reading of English. For some reason this "Comma Gets a Cure" story seems to be popular, but maybe a passage from the Bible, or some famous poetry wold also do.
castellano   Tue Jun 23, 2009 6:46 pm GMT
your accent is terrible, sorry.

-Your L's are totally Russian, therefore, try to avoid the dark L's or get some portuguese lessons.
-your D's are too hard. Spanish D is more like English TH in "that"
- S sound is palatalized in Castilian. If you try to speak some southern-american variant then it's ok.
-B/V distinction is bad in all Spanish norms.
E1Ler   Tue Jun 23, 2009 8:34 pm GMT
<<your accent is terrible, sorry.>>

It sounded good to me, a whole heck of a lot better than my accent, at any rate. The only thing I noticed was the unusual d-like d's.
Guest   Tue Jun 23, 2009 9:22 pm GMT
Her accent needs to improve,but it's not that terrible.
eek   Thu Jun 25, 2009 9:07 pm GMT
Spanish is a language that's REALLY hard for white non-natives to sound native in. Moreso than Chinese :o In fact it can come off kinda cheesy IMO, like you're trying too hard. I think having a bit of an accent is OK.
Guest   Thu Jun 25, 2009 9:21 pm GMT
Spanish is a language that's REALLY hard for white non-natives to sound native in

What has whiteness to do with that? People who speak Spanish best are the white French and Italians.
paraguayo   Thu Jun 25, 2009 10:16 pm GMT
you got to be kidding.

Italians pronounce Spanish awfully. Listen to Eros Ramazzotti. He speaks Spanish like an idiot.
French people...no comment.
Guest   Thu Jun 25, 2009 10:50 pm GMT
So who speak Spanish best according to you, the Congolese?
Rhoi (Sp3ctre18)   Fri Jun 26, 2009 2:24 am GMT
I think Spanish is just naturally easy, and shouldn't be hard for many people, even people like Americans because a lot of sounds already exist in english! Even some of the short sounds exist, or are simply english vowels cut in half!

The only thing hard in spanish may be the r....which, is always an evil letter in many languages.


To the original poster, I say, it's a very good try, and many of the consonants and vowels sounded very good, and your accenting was also good. However, There were some words I just COULD NOT understand, so that must be because of more russian-like consonants or something, because I either easily understood the word, or I never understood no matter what, hehe; there was no middle ground. So, I can't tell you what consonants those were, but apparently some people here do know, so listen to them.

Just clean up and practice those certain consonants, and I think you'll be able to speak it in a way that native speakers will find easy to understand.
Milton   Fri Jun 26, 2009 6:43 am GMT
-Your L's are totally Russian, therefore, try to avoid the dark L's


American L's are also dark, or using your words ''Russian''
lol



Spanish can sound nice even with a foreign accent.
A nice example of Spanish pronounced by a Brazilian, this song was a huge hit, and no one hated the accent:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqH6gLXurKw

(notice lax I in words like ''amigos'' and not softened intervocalic d as well as [v] for [b]" ''cada vez'' [kada ves]'' )
user   Fri Jun 26, 2009 8:49 am GMT
@ milton: i said it on purpose because she's from Ukraine and their L's are also dark. So i thought it would be much clearer to compare it with Russian than with English.

D's are almost always softened. so it's [kađa ßeθ] [mađriđ] etc...