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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

In today’s episode I’m going to give you fifteen tips that are going to dramatically improve your Spanish accent. Stay tuned till the end, because the tips only get better and better.

Tip #1: To sound fluent, say repeated letters only once, and drop the second one.

For example, instead of saying:
“Jaime - es - simpático.” (Jamie is nice).

Say it like this: Jaimesimpático.

Say only one E in “Jaime es”: Jaimes

Then say only one S in “es simpático”: esimpático

So the whole sentence is: jaimesimpático.

It should sound like one long word with no gaps at all between the words: jaimesimpático.

When you link words like this you’ll sound much more fluent, and you’ll also be able to understand fast spoken Spanish a lot better.

Tip #2: To sound even more fluent, link words that end in a consonant and start with a vowel.

For example: Juan escribe en español [Juanescribenespañol]. (John writes in Spanish)

Say it as if it was one long word, not three or even two word. Just one word: Juanescribenespañol.

Link the final N in “Juan” and the initial E in “escribe”: Juanescribe

Then say only one E in “escribe en”, as you learned in Tip #1: escriben.

Then link the final N in “en” to the initial E in “español”: enespañol.

And now the whole sentence sounds like one long word: juanescribenespañol.

Tip #3: The majority of Spanish words are stressed on the second-to-last syllable.

For example:

familia (faMIlia)
chocolate (chocoLAte),
avenida (aveNIda),
botella (boTElla),

Watch out for words that look similar in English. Make sure you stress them on the right syllable:

In English: FAmily.
In Spanish: faMIlia.

CHOcolate - chocoLAte

Avenue - aveNIda

BOttle - boTElla

Getting the stress right makes a big difference. People will understand you a lot better.

Tip #4: Some letters become more difficult to say when they come after certain letters.

For example:
the letter S followed by the rolled R: Israel

When saying “Israel” you don’t get a full on S and a full on RR. Instead, you get only half of each: Israel.

Avoid saying: Iss-rrael. To sound fluent, make sure you shorten both the S and the RR: Israel.

If you want tomaster the double R, and all other Spanish sounds, have a look at my Spanish courses. I’ve put the link in the show notes.

Tip #5: Spanish has only 5 vowel sounds, and they correspond to the written vowels.

The five Spanish vowel are: A, E, I, O, U

See the full transcript.

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WHO AM I?
💃🏻 I’m Maria Fernandez, a native Spanish speaker from Madrid (Spain). I’ve taught Spanish for over 5000 hours, and counting. My mission is to make you fluent in Spanish super fast. Creating step-by-step lessons for you is one of the things I love most. 😀

Over the last few years I've published a bunch of courses, books and audiobooks. I’ve also studied an insane amount of English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Japanese.

To find out more about me, visit my website: kerapido.com

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