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5 Fun Ways of Improving Your Spanish Pronunciation

[su_frame]Today we have a fantastic post from Sean Hopwood, MBA – founder and President of Day Translations, Inc., an online localization and Spanish translation services. Check out his website, and enjoy the post![/su_frame]

As one of the most spoken languages in the world, Spanish deserves a place on your list of languages to master.

Many a native English speaker, however, has struggled with the Spanish tongue because it requires a greater level of flexibility than English. You’ll have to work hard at polishing your pronunciation if you want to be able to speak with a solidly good Spanish accent.

It also means not despairing or quitting on your dream of speaking Spanish like a native when yet another Spanish speaker fails to understand you.

If you’re aiming to take your Spanish skills to a higher level, read the following 5 fun ways of improving your Spanish pronunciation to find out innovative ways of speaking more like a local.

1. Pick Your Accent

If you’re just starting to learn Spanish, you may be having problems distinguishing between different Spanish accents. Argentina, Spain, Mexico, Cuba and all other Spanish speaking countries in the world speak their own version of Spanish.

Some are so dramatically different, they may not even sound like Spanish to you.

However, don’t feel overwhelmed. The first step in improving your accent is to pick a Spanish speaking country whose accent and dialect you want to focus on.

Does Spain resonate with you because it is in Europe? Or Mexico due to the dominance of Mexican Spanish in the United States? Simply listen to the dialects that are out there and choose one that works for you and stick with it.

Once you adopt the following fun ways of improving your Spanish pronunciation and perfect your accent, adapting it to the Spanish speaking country you are in will not be so difficult.

2. Monitor Your “B’s” and “V’s”

Many students of Spanish tend to have problems differentiating the Spanish ‘b’ from ‘v’. To the untrained ear, these two letters can sound very similar – so similar you might think someone asked you for a ‘beso‘ (kiss) when what they really said is ‘vaso‘ (glass).

Let’s take this step by step: to emit the perfect Spanish pronunciation of ‘v’, for a second let your teeth rest on your bottom lip as if you are going to say the word ‘vest‘ and practice pairing this ‘v’ with the Spanish vowels of ‘a’, ‘e’, ‘i’, ‘o’ and ‘u’.

The Spanish ‘b’ is similar to the English ‘b’, as in ‘break’ or ‘berries’ and you may also practice pairing the Spanish ‘b’ with the language’s vowels.

Switch back and forth between these mouth positions when you pronounce words like ‘viento‘ (wind) and ‘bella‘ (pretty). If the two sounds sound similar, then you are doing something right.

3. Pronounce those Accents

Amongst the fun ways of improving your Spanish pronunciation is emphasizing Spanish accents. It may be all right for someone who is new to the Spanish language to ignore the little dashes written above a certain syllable in a Spanish word, but if you really want to perfect your Spanish pronunciation, it’s time you paid attention.

Word accents are especially important in Spanish because not only do they alter the meaning of the word, they can make all the difference on whether or not you’ll be understood.

For example, the word for ‘father’ is written as ‘papá’ with the accent on the last letter meaning you should emphasize the last bit of the word more. When you miss the accent, you have the evenly pronounced word ‘papa,’ which means ‘potato.’

Don’t make the mistake of calling someone’s father a potato by paying attention to word accents! One of the best ways to practice your accented words is to read out loud a lot. With practice, you will visually recall the words in your head as you hear yourself and others speak the accented words.

4. Tongue Twist Your Way to Good Pronunciation

Tongue twisters or ‘trabalenguas‘ is a wonderful way to improve your Spanish accent and pronunciation. The repetitive aspect of tongue twisters may make it hard for you to say the tongue twisting phrase quickly but they are relatively easy to commit to memory.

Each tongue twister gives your tongue a good workout and helps loosen it up so that it can easily adapt to Spanish pronunciation. Online, you can find a good many ‘trabalenguas’ that you can say daily to practice your pronunciation. Not only that, you will also be adding to your vocabulary. Here’s an example:

Tres tigres tragaban trigo, tres tigres en un tribal. ¿Que tigre tragaba mas..? Los tres igual.

Do you want to give it a try? Here are some websites with challenging ‘trabalenguas’:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190627065048/http://www.uebersetzung.at:80/
http://www.alphadictionary.com/
http://www.123teachme.com/

5. Link Your Words

When you’ve been around Spanish speakers long enough, you’ll notice they tend to occasionally link or blend words together.

When will they do this?

When the last letter of a certain word matches the first letter of the following word. For instance, the phrase ‘dos sacos’ (two coats) would sound like ‘dosacos.’

Spanish speakers also link words when the last letter of a certain word is a consonant and the first letter of the following word is a vowel. The question “¿Estás enamorado?” (Are you in love?) would sound linked, as in “¿Estásenamorado?”

Another instance of linking words happens when the last letter of a word and the first letter of the following word are both vowels, such as in the sentence: “Ella está enfadada.” (She’s angry.) The untrained ear would hear it as one long word: “ellaestáenfadada.”

Learning how to link words is one of the fun ways of improving your Spanish pronunciation. Developing an ear for linked words also improves your listening skills and better prepares you as you practice linking and blending your words.

In the end, the goal is to comprehend what Spanish speakers are saying when they blend words.

Conclusion

These 5 tips are certain to help you perfect your accent so that you can communicate more clearly with your fellow Spanish speakers.

While focusing on your pronunciation is one aspect of improving your command of the language, don’t forget to keep up with the other aspects of language learning such as grammar, reading, vocabulary, and speaking.

Focusing your full attention on Spanish learning while tackling all aspects of the language will gradually help you achieve your dream of speaking the language fluently.

Author Bio:

Sean Hopwood, MBA is founder and President of Day Translations, Inc., an online localization and Spanish translation services provider, dedicated to the improvement of global communications. By helping both corporations and the individual, Day Translations provides a necessary service at the same time as developing opportunities for greater sympathy and understanding worldwide.

Languages

How To Learn To Speak a Foreign Language With Social Anxiety

Bartosz Czekala 4 comments

Not everyone is equal in the kingdom of languages. There is one group that is mercilessly oppressed — one group which suffers from a crippling disease called SOCIAL ANXIETY.

It’s a terrible, terrible malady. It doesn’t matter how hard you try to keep your fears and anxiety in a padded cell of your brain. They always scrape their way out to feed your soul with poison. Even if only through the cracks.

But does it mean that you can’t learn a language because of it? Hell no!

I used to suffer from anxiety-induced panic attacks in the past. I sat in my room for days with curtains closed until I ran out of food. Those days are, luckily, long gone. Although anxiety still looms the dark corners of my mind.

So if you are also a victim of this condition – don’t worry. Here is the list of six ideas that you can use to learn to speak a foreign language with social anxiety.

How To Learn To Speak a Foreign Language With Social Anxiety

1) Don’t find a teacher, find a friend

There is a good chance that you don’t want to talk to others because you don’t know them.

You don’t feel comfortable baring your soul in front of them. Every cell in your brain sends you warning signals – watch out; they are out to get you.

But you don’t feel this way around friends or people you trust, do you?

That’s why this is probably the best way to approach language learning for those anxiety stricken. You won’t be able to get any panic attacks or feel anxious with a friend by your side.

Discussing anything becomes much easier when you grow attached to another person. You don’t even have to suffer from anxiety to be able to benefit from such a relationship.

Having such contact with another person drastically changes the way you experience lessons.
You don’t sit in front of a stranger who doesn’t give a shit about your day or well-being. You sit in front of someone who cares. Such a bond makes all the conversations much more meaningful and memorable, as well.

That’s why you should pay close attention to a person who will become your language partner or your teacher.

Look for similarities. Try a lesson to make sure that this person is trustworthy. And, what’s most important, don’t be a weirdo. “Hi, my name is Bartosz. Do you wanna be my friend?”. Ugh.

2) Talk To Yourself

What 99% of people seem to miss is that you don’t necessarily need countless hours of talking with others to be able to communicate freely in your target language.

Why?

Because almost all hard work is done in solitude.
Learning vocabulary, grammar, listening. All that you can do on your own.

Of course, it’s great to have some private lessons from time to time to make sure that you are on the right track. But other than that – you will be fine on your own. You can create your feedback loops to make sure that you are speaking correctly.

But how can you practice speaking on your own?

How to Practice Speaking with Yourself

The basic technique goes like this:

visit iteslj.org/questions
choose a subject you want to discuss
start answering the questions and do it out loud!

Don’t know a word? Write it down. Do you know a word? Try to find a synonym! Depending on your preferences, you might look it up immediately or save it for later.

You can even scribble these questions on a piece of paper and write down needed vocabulary on the flip side. It will allow you to answer the same question again in the following days.

EXAMPLE:
Q: Why do you hate Kate? (translated into your target language)
A: (needed vocabulary) brainless chatterbox, pretentious

Don’t Be Too Serious – Have Fun

As you can see, you don’t need to be serious when you answer these questions.
Heck, the questions themselves don’t need to be serious!

Have fun!

Q: Have you ever tried eating with your feet?

Q: If you were a hot dog, what kind of hot dog would you be?

The greatest thing of all about learning to talk like this is that nobody judges you. You might mispronounce words in your first try. You might forget them.

And guess what? Nothing. Nothing will happen.

Once you get good and confident enough, you can start talking with others.

I find it quite often to be more effective than real conversations. I know, I know. On the surface, it might seem absurd. There is no interaction, after all.

However, if you look beyond the superficial, you will be able to see that self-talk offers you a lot of opportunities that real-life conversations can’t.

For example, self-talk gives you a chance to activate less frequent words.

I can talk for 20 minutes with myself about cervical cancer. Could I do it with someone else? Let’s try to imagine such a conversation.

– “Hi, Tom! Wanna talk about cervical cancer? It will be fun! I promise!”
– “Stay away, you weirdo!’
– “Cool! Some other time then.”

3) Write instead of talking

Talking doesn’t necessarily mean discussing philosophical treatises face-to-face. It’s perfectly fine to stick to written communication. In the era of the internet, you are just a few clicks away from millions of potential language partners.

Here is a list of websites where you can find some language exchange partners:

Don’t want to talk to others? Don’t worry. You still might activate your vocabulary. Start writing daily. Anything really will do. It can be a diary, a blog, some observations.

Make it difficult for yourself and choose some difficult subject to jog your mind. It can even be some erotic novel! “The secret erotic life of ferns,” for example. Yep. I like this one.

4) Condition yourself

We might be the pinnacle of evolution, but in some regards, we are no different from your average gopher or a sloth. You can easily get conditioned to react to specific circumstances in a given way.

Why? Habituation. That’s why.

Habituation is a form of learning in which an organism decreases or ceases to respond to a stimulus after repeated presentations. Essentially, the organism learns to stop responding to a stimulus which is no longer biologically relevant. For example, organisms may habituate to repeated sudden loud noises when they learn these have no consequences.

Habituation usually refers to a reduction in innate behaviours, rather than behaviours developed during conditioning in which the process is termed “extinction”. A progressive decline of a behavior in a habituation procedure may also reflect nonspecific effects such as fatigue, which must be ruled out when the interest is in habituation as a learning process. – Wikipedia

Once you learn that all that gloom and doom is only in your head, you can start modifying your behavior (you can read more about it in Dropping Ashes on the Buddha: The Teaching of Zen Master Seung Sahn. Highly recommended!)

You can leverage this rule and condition yourself to become a braver version of yourself. Maybe you won’t get I-will-slay-you-and-take-your-women brave in two weeks, but it will get you started.

Your action plan is simple but not easy.

Find situations where you can expose yourself to stressors

As Oscar Wilde used to say, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” And only you know how deep you are stuck in this anxiety gutter.

Choose your first task accordingly, and move your way up from there. Don’t make it too easy or too hard on yourself.

Some of the things you might do are:

Learn To Speak a Foreign Language With Social Anxiety – Conditioning Strategies

a) HIGH ANXIETY LEVELS – post your comments:

in one of FB language groups
under a YT video
popular tweets
an article on Reddit or some other website

In other words, just leave a comment somewhere. You don’t even have to go back to check responses!

b) MEDIUM ANXIETY LEVELS (exchanging messages)

register at Italki.com and write to just one language exchange partner
download HelloTalk and write to someone

c) LOW ANXIETY LEVELS (face-to-face conversations)

go to a nearby language café and talk with others
find the nearest language meeting on MeetUp.com and go there

Any start is a good start as long as you start.

5) Reframe your thoughts

There is a good chance that you have heard about reframing your thoughts. The basic premise is very simple.

Every time you catch yourself being anxious about some situation, you should look at it from a different perspective.

Instead of saying, “Gosh, she sure wouldn’t like to talk with me,” you can change it to, “I bet she is bored right now and would love to have a nice chat with me.”

I know. It sounds corny.

The first time I heard this piece of advice, I felt as if a ragged hobo tried to jam a lump of guano in my hand, saying, “Just pat it into your face, and you will gain superpowers.”

Little did I know that this advice is as brilliant as it is simple. Much water passed under the bridge before I finally started applying it.

But why does it work? Because such is the nature of memories. They are not set in stone and perennial.

Research conducted by Daniela Schiller, of Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and her former colleagues from New York University, shows us something truly amazing.

Schiller says that “memories are malleable constructs that are reconstructed with each recall. We all recognize that our memories are like Swiss cheese; what we now know is that they are more like processed cheese.

What we remember changes each time we recall the event. The slightly changed memory is now embedded as “real,” only to be reconstructed with the next recall. – Source

So what does it all mean?

It means that adding new information to your memories or recalling them in a slightly different context might alter them.

How much? Enough for you to recalibrate how you perceive the world around you! It’s up to you how much you want to reshape your perception of reality.

6) Decide whether you really need to speak a language

It seems like a strange statement. But the truth is that not everyone needs to learn how to speak a language.

Before you dive into the language learning process, be sure that it’s something you want. You shouldn’t feel pressured into doing so just because others do. You don’t want to spend hundreds of extra hours on something you are not going to use.

Remember that every language, even the tiniest of them all, is a skeleton key to the vastness of materials – books, movies, anecdotes, etc. It’s fine to learn a language to be able to access them all.

Learn To Speak a Foreign Language With Social Anxiety – Your Strategies

Here is a quick summary of all the strategies mentioned above.

Don’t find a teacher, find a friend
Talk To Yourself
Write instead of talking
Condition yourself
Reframe your thoughts
Decide whether you really need to speak a language

How To Learn To Speak a Foreign Language With Social Anxiety – Summary

Overcoming your language learning anxiety can be hard, but it is certainly doable. When in doubt, always keep in mind that our reality is negotiable to a large degree – if you believe you can change, it is possible.

What’s more, you shouldn’t forget that the real work is always done in solitude. Teachers or language partners might show you what to concentrate on, but it’s up to you to put this knowledge into practice.

You don’t have to limit yourself to activating your vocabulary only through speaking. Writing is also a very desirable option.

Lastly, remember that changing your diet can also be very helpful. You can do it, for example, by introducing anti-inflammatory foods like turmeric.

Back to you.

Can you share any tricks/methods which helped you overcome your language learning anxiety?

No advice is too small or trivial. As always, feel free to comment or drop me a message.

Languages

Block Distracting Websites And Regain Control Over Your Time With These 5 Apps

Bartosz Czekala 2 comments

Checking your e-mail doesn’t seem very harmful, right?
Or any other site for that matter. I mean, it’s only like 2 minutes and you’re back in the saddle.

Ok, maybe after next 10 minutes you’ll check another website. Just one quick article and you get back to work.

After 4 hours it turns out that you haven’t done anything. You also don’t know how you ended up watching a YT on how to cook dinakdakan.

You don’t cook. And what the hell is dinakdakan?!

Take a look at this quote:

We found about 82 percent of all interrupted work is resumed on the same day. But here’s the bad news — it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the task.

Gloria Mark, Professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine

23 minutes and 15 seconds. That’s a scary number if you ask me. Of course, this is just one of the statistics. I have seen plenty of other research indicating different numbers. But usually, it takes between 5-25 minutes to regain your focus. Having that number in mind, interrupting your workflow check a website or to send a text message doesn’t seem so harmless anymore.

It’s not our fault though. I believe that the technology is the true culprit. We are almost conditioned to check our phones or e-mail every couple of minutes.

We do so because we can’t allow ourselves to miss out on…what?

That’s the question! What possibly could we miss that is so important?

Nothing. Nothing will happen if we don’t check this one website. There is a really easy solution to eliminate this kind of distractions – block the websites which steal your time and distract you!

Don’t Give Yourself a Chance To Fail

Before I move to the list of my recommendations, I would like to warn you about the crappy argument I have heard so many times.

“Yeah, theoretically it sounds good but I actually want to do it ON MY OWN, with help of my strong will. I don’t want to rely on any stupid software!” (read more about forcing yourself to learn).

Ugh, BS alert activated. I feel sick every time I hear it. How has it been working out for you so far? We can rationalize basically everything. However, most of the times this is not logic talking. It’s fear.

I am scared. It’s cold and lonely here without the cordial, digital touch of the internet.
If you acknowledge this fear, your battle with distractions is already half-won.

You can also look at it from a different perspective.

If you wanted to lose weight, would you place candies and cookies all over your flat? Would you sniff them every now and then and lick the glazing to reassure yourself about how great your willpower is?

Hell, if you were a junkie would you put a syringe in front of your face and try to “wait it out”.
Don’t think so. It’s pointless to rely on your strong will in this case.

You can force yourself to be more productive.

Here is the list of the most popular apps you can use to block the websites. I have used all of them personally (maybe besides Mac ones!) and I can wholeheartedly recommend all of them.

They definitely stand out from the mass of other apps of this kind.

Freedom

Freedom is one of the oldest apps of this kind. It’s currently used by more than 1 million users.
Throughout the years it has gained the support of, among others, Nick Hornby and Seth Godin.

It works on: Macs, Windows, Android (beta), and iOS (beta), Iphone, Ipad

It allows you to:

Block distracting websites
Plan out sessions that recur at the same time every week
Go cold turkey and block the entire internet when you really need to get work done

Highlights: It’s worth mentioning that it is currently the only distraction management solution for iPad and iPhone. It’s also the only app which can cut off your internet access.

Cost: Basic version is free. The premium version (which allows you to cut off the entire internet is 10$). Well worth the price and my absolute favorite.

LeechBlock

“LeechBlock is a simple free productivity tool designed to block those time-wasting sites that can suck the life out of your working day.”

This is the add-on I use the most. It has saved me countless hours and helped me overcome my meme websites addiction.

It is also very easy to use – all you need to do is specify which sites to block and when to block them.

It works on: Mozilla Firefox

It allows you to:

specify up to six sets of sites to block, with different times and days for each set.
block sites within fixed time periods (e.g., between 7 am and 2 pm), after a time limit (e.g., 14 minutes in every hour), or with a combination of time periods and time limit (e.g., 10 minutes in every hour between 9 am and 5 pm).
set a password for access to the extension options, just to slow you down in moments of weakness!
block entire sites
block specific subdomains / paths / pages
block websites using wildcards (e.g., *.somesite.com) and exceptions (e.g., +allowme.somesite.com).
track of the total amount of time you have spent browsing the sites in each block set.

Cost: Free

My routine is to block the most distracting websites (in my case: YT, my own websites, FB, e-mail, Wikipedia, meme websites) from 8 am till 10 pm.

The only website I block only from time to time is my Gmail account. Sometimes I simply need to send an e-mail in the middle of the day.

RescueTime

Rescue Time is a great app for everyone who is really serious about their productivity. It is definitely the most advanced of all the apps mentioned in this article. Especially tracking-wise.

The bad news is that most of the cool features are a part of Rescue Time Premium. However, it’s money well-spent if you ask me!

LiteVersion allows you to:

Track time in websites and applications
Set goals
Get a weekly email report
3-month report history

With Rescue Time Premium you can:

Track time away from the computer (meetings, phone calls, etc…)
Get alerts when you achieve your daily goals
Block distracting websites to stay focused
Keep a log of your daily accomplishments
Get access to more detailed reports and filters and unlimited report history

Cost: Basic version is free. The premium version is $9 a month.

Self-Control

Self-Control is definitely not one of those flashy, packed with features apps. It only blocks distracting websites but it does it well and it’s reliable.

It works on: Mac

It allows you to:

block entire sites
block specific subdomains / paths / pages
specify a period of time to block for

Highlight: It works on Mac. That’s something, I guess!

Cost: free

StayFcsd

StayFcsd should be your no 1 choice if you are a Chrome user.

It works on: Chrome

It allows you to:

block entire sites
block specific subdomains / paths / pages
block specific in-page content (videos, games, images, forms, etc).

Highlights: The Nuclear Option. Probably the best feature of this add-on. It allows you to block all the websites on the internet for a given amount of time. Only for the desperate!

Cost: free

I hope these recommendations will help you save some time!

Productivity