10 English Pronunciation Errors by Spanish Speakers
If your mother tongue is Spanish, you may find certain sounds in English more
difficult than others. Here we present the most common errors made by Spanishspeaking students.
1. Vowel Sound Positions
Spanish uses 5 vowel sound positions in pronunciation, GB English uses 12 vowel
sound positions – so this is a key area for Spanish speakers to learn. The most
important area is making the right shape with the mouth, rather than focussing on
the length of the sound.
Spanish has just one high front vowel [i] and Spanish speakers often use this
vowel for both the /ɪ/ vowel in HIT and the /iː/ vowel in HEAT. One ‘i’ in English is
normally the lower /ɪ/ vowel:
Spanish speakers often make the vowels in HUT /hʌt/, HAT /hæt/ and HEART
/hɑːt/ into the Spanish /a/ – they should be made in different positions in English:
Spanish /u/ is made with the tongue at the back of the mouth, English /uː/ in
FOOD is more central, and English /ʊ/ in GOOD is more open and central (note
also that the spelling < oo > can produce both sounds in English):
/uː/ food, soon, new
/ʊ/ good, cook, put
The central, neutral vowel /ɜː/ in HURT, EARLY, BIRD, WORSE, PREFER is often
mispronounced by Spanish speakers because there is no similar vowel sound in
the Spanish, and the spellings are confusing:
‘ir’ bird, shirt, sir
‘or’ worse, worth, world
‘ur’ hurt, turn, burn
‘er/ear’ prefer, heard, early
2. Weak Vowel: schwa /ə/
The most common sound in English is the weak vowel, ‘schwa’ /ə/. The problem is
that this sound can be spelt with any vowel – A, E, I, O, U and it should never be
stressed, which is difficult for Spanish speakers who normally stress every syllable.
3. /r/, silent < r >
Spanish /r/ involves tapping or trilling the tongue on the gum, English /r/ does
not, it’s a smooth approximant.
British English ‘r’ is silent at the end of a syllable (non-rhotic), Spanish speakers
pronounce these ‘r’s because Spanish is rhotic.
4. /v/ vs. /b/
In English /v/ is a voiced fricative using teeth and lip, Spanish speakers tend to
replace it with a plosive /b/ or an approximant sound using both lips.
5. /ʃ/ vs /s/
Spanish speakers don’t tend to pull the tongue back when making the /ʃ/ sound, so
it sounds more like /s/.
6. /h/ & silent < h >
English /h/ is a glottal fricative – it’s the sound you make when steaming up a
mirror. Spanish speakers may replace this with a velar fricative.
The ‘h’ in little function words like HAVE, HE, HIS, HER, HIM is often silent in
connected speech, but Spanish speakers may put it in: I must have forgotten it.
What’s her name?
7. Aspiration: /p,t,k/
In English, the plosive sounds /p,t,k/ are normally aspirated (a big explosion of air),
but they never are in Spanish.
8. Voicing
Spanish speakers often de-voice (/d/=/t/, /b/=/p/, /v/=/f/) at the end of syllables, as
the distinction is not made in Spanish.
The spelling ‘s’ is often pronounced as voiced /z/ at the end of syllables in English,
Spanish speakers tend to always pronounce it as voiceless /s/.
9. Sentence Stress
Spanish is a syllable-timed language so you stress every syllable, whereas English
stress-time involves choosing (normally only one or two) certain syllables to stress,
with everything else becoming weak and/or shorter.
10. Falling Intonation
GB English uses a wide pitch range and high falling tones are very common,
whereas Spanish uses more rising tones.
Abridged from: https://pronunciationstudio.com/spanish-speakers-english-pronunciation-errors/