We will learn to produce the sounds of American English in a straightforward way. First-time English learners listen to and imitate the words, which is fine. The mistake is that we imitate Spanish phonemes or sounds. American English and Mexican Spanish have many similar sounds, but they are different.
To achieve this, we need to develop phonological awareness, which is simply understanding how the sounds of English are. When we listen to and speak English, we realize that we don’t sound like native speakers. Just like when they speak Spanish, many of them don’t sound the same as us. This is because they speak Spanish using their English phonemes, and we speak English using our Spanish phonemes. Understanding this and beginning to identify the difference between those phonemes in both languages is simply the development of phonemic awareness.
Some important points to highlight before starting with this understanding are 1) to understand that the vowel sounds in English and Spanish are not the same, as in English they are a bit shorter or longer than in Spanish; 2) when we speak in English, we focus on the sounds, not the letters; that is, it doesn’t matter how many letters the word I am learning has; what matters is understanding the number of sounds in the word. 3) English has all consonants except “ñ,” with some differences. 4) English has more consonant sounds than Spanish, and accentuation is important in pronunciation. If there are two or more syllables together, only one is stressed. The same phenomenon occurs in English; it is crucial not to overlook this aspect, as it can improve our accent and pronunciation in the language.
While it is true that many people have learned English without delving into pronunciation issues and can communicate without any problem, it is also true that the English they acquire is with a particular accent, which can sometimes interfere with communication in cases where listeners do not understand the word exactly and cannot infer it from the context. If we are aware or sure of what the correct sound is for each word, we will not only improve our speaking skills but also greatly enhance our listening skills. When you first hear a song in English, you may understand some words, but the transcription or lyrics help. This is likely due to the fact that, despite having a vocabulary, you may not recognize English phonemes when they are pronounced correctly.
Maybe all of the above sounds a bit overwhelming; it seems like there are many things, and if you have had the opportunity to search the web about pronunciation, you have found many charts and explanations about alveolar fricative sounds, the tongue up and down, the lips, and so on. All of this is true, but we must take advantage of the similarities between Mexican Spanish and American English to produce English sounds and phonemes derived from Spanish. We will learn how to do so.
