Presented by Spanish-bookworld.com.
Hi, my name is Maria Fernandez. I am an experienced Native Spanish Teacher and on this video, I am going to show you how you can improve your Spanish in just five minutes.
Let me ask you if you are familiar with the following situation. You have learned some Spanish. You can use some every day words and you know how to put together some sentences. But when you actually say them to Native Spanish speakers, they stare at you blankly and do not understand what you are saying. The second or third time this happens, your confidence starts to fade and you loose interest in the language. Why is this happening?
You are using the correct words and other English speakers understand you all right. What is wrong then? The main problem is that you are saying the vowels wrong.
Native Spanish speakers find it very difficult to understand words where the vowels are mispronounced. Most of the pronunciation mistakes do not tend to make communication impossible but the vowels do.
Let us hear how the vowels should sound like in Spanish.
A-E-I-O-U, these Spanish vowels always have these five pure unchangeable sounds, A-E-I-O-U. It is particularly difficult to get the vowels right when the word sounds similar in both languages just like for instance, autobus, aeropuerto, itinerario, pasaporte. Notice how I have said the vowels A U in autobus. The A should sound like in the English word father. On the U, like in the word, put. Now listen to the word, aeropuerto, and notice the A E, aeropuerto. The E should sound like in the English word, egg and the O like in the word, lots.
Moving on to “itinerario”, notice how I say the first E., itinerario. It sounds like the I in the English word, machine.
Finally, let us hear the word, pasaporte, pasaporte. Here it is attempting to drop the E, but doing so makes it so difficult to understand this word. Make sure you say pasaporte with a clear E at the end, pasaporte.
Saying the vowels right in Spanish will dramatically improve the odds of people understanding what you are saying. Here is a trick to get the five vowels always right. Remember the sentence, “Father, put lots of eggs in the machine”.
Check out my other videos to find out more tips about Spanish. This video was brought to you by spanish-bookworld.com.
Transcription by:
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