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Básicamente este artículo es como un repaso de cómo se puede quitar el inglés de la voz cuando se habla para hablar una otra lengua mejor. Se trata de la entonación y de repetir todo para pronunciarlo mejor, también debe buscar todo sobre la fonología de la lengua que quiere estudiar. Además, se deben pronunciar todos los vocales en una palabra casi en manera individual.

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People who speak languages other than English are sometimes impressed by how well I and other linguists pronounce words or names in their language, even if we don't speak a word of it. But it's not magic: Here are seven basic principles that linguists use to fake-pronounce foreign languages but that anyone can apply. They won't make you sound completely fluent, but you'll sound a lot better than the average English speaker.

1. Pronounce ALL the letters. English (and a few other languages like French and Gaelic) often has silent letters at the ends of words, but most languages don't. Unless you know you're dealing with one of the silent-letter languages, you should pronounce that "e" or "h" at the end of the word and all the other letters too.

2. When someone says a word or phrase to you, try to repeat it with exactly the same intonation as they said it. Instead of making it into a question because you're not sure if you're right or lingering on syllables you're less certain about, try to mimic them as precisely as possible. Not only will you seem more confident this way, but this will make you sound much better at tone languages and languages with non-English-y intonation styles.

3. De-English your vowels. English has a weird vowel system because of the Great Vowel Shift, but for any other unfamiliar language your best option is to pronounce the vowels as in Spanish or Italian. This basically means to pronounce "i" like "ee" in see, "e" like "ay" in play, "a" like "a" in la, "o" like "o" in go, and "u" like "oo" in too.

You won't always be right with this vowel system, but it will reduce your odds of being wrong from about 99% to about 30%. Bonus points if you can stop pronouncing the subtle w and y sounds that typically show up at the ends of English vowels but aren't very common in other languages.

4. Pronounce all of the vowels fully. Instead of reducing them to schwa, the faint sound that's the first vowel in "potato" or the last vowel in "sofa," go for the Spanish/Italian vowels mentioned above. Reducing unstressed vowels to schwa is something that English does and most languages don't.

5. Pronounce the r like a tap, instead of like English r. A tap (also called a flap) is the sound the dd makes in ladder and the tt makes in latter, if you speak American or Canadian English. Many more languages have an r that sounds like a tap than an English-style bunched/retroflex r, (e.g. Spanish, Japanese).

6. Look up the language if you know you're going to be in contact with it. Most languages have Wikipedia articles about them, with titles like Turkish language or Russian phonology. You may even be able to find a few guides on YouTube, such as this one on j, q, and x in Mandarin. Figure out what any accents or special characters sound like, and if letters in certain positions are likely to be silent. Also check vowels and the following standard Roman letters which often have different sounds: c, g, j, x, q, h, ch, kh, and any other consonant with h.

If you're going to be travelling to a country where a particular language is spoken, or even if you just often meet people who have names from a certain language, it's worth spending a few minutes figuring out which letters correspond to which sounds by muttering under your breath in private, in order to sound like a pro later in public. Even without learning a whole new script, you can get a leg up by learning how to pronounce the Roman letters normally used to transliterate it. Again, Wikipedia has this information for most languages.

7. For maximum ability to fake any language, learn a whole lot of non-English sounds. Spend some quality time in a phonetics class, with a clickable chart of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), or even with a beatboxing tutorial, and actually figure out how to pronounce most of the sounds English doesn't have. I'd recommend wrapping your tongue around IPA /x/ and /q/ to start with, as they're found in many languages and fairly easy to figure out for English speakers, but you can also pick sounds found in a particular language that's relevant to you. This step definitely takes the most up-front investment, but it pays off in improving your ability to hear and reproduce words and names from a wide variety of languages.
A version of this post appeared on All Things Linguistic.

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7 Ways to Fake-Pronounce Any Foreign Language

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People who speak languages other than English are sometimes impressed by how well I and other linguists pronounce words or names in their language, even if we don't speak a word of it. But it's not magic: Here are seven basic principles that linguists use to fake-pronounce foreign languages but that anyone can apply.

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Ésta es una página informativa sobra la gramática italiana y las reglas más básicas. Pero, si lo lee, encontrará ciertas situaciones en las que italiano quita en manera escrita el problema de una sinalefa. Por ejemplo, si el artículo definitivo es femenino y la siguente palabra comienza con un vocal vamos a añadir un apóstrofo y quitar una ’a’. Tomamos “la“ y “automobile“, en italiano esa palabra es femenina así que sigo la regla y tenemos “l’automobile“.

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Cyber Italian - Grammar - Names - Online Language Courses

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Italian nouns can be masculine and feminine, singular and plural. For example, the noun "gatto" (cat) has 4 forms:

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Me gustó mucho este artículo muchísimo porque hable de la “e“ antes de una palabra que comienza con s + consonante. No es un artículo basado en tanta investigación pero es más una pequeña collección de personas que dan su opinion de por qué en latín no hay una “e“ cuando es “st“ o “sc“, etc. Esto es algo que yo veo en español e italiano, y yo creo que es porque en español todas las palabras no terminan con un vocal así estaría difícil pronunciar “las escuelas“ si no fuera una “s“, (sería “las scuelas). El tema relacionado con el capítulo aquí es el cómputo silábico.

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Question: Do people who speak Spanish speak a lot faster than we do, or does it just seem that way?

Answer: As far as I've been able to find out, it just seems that way. Although I'm sure I have read that Spanish speakers use more syllables per minute than do English speakers, I have repeatedly searched in vain for any reliable studies to back up that belief. Even if we knew that Spanish speakers in general used more syllables per minute, that might not mean a whole lot, because Spanish syllables tend to be shorter than English ones.

In any case, it is difficult to make comparisons. The rate of speech can very enormously even among individual speakers. I remember watching the Mexican president (then Vicente Fox) give a formal speech, and he spoke at a rate that made him easy to be understood. But in an interview later that day, he spoke more rapidly, and I assume that if he were in an animated conversation he would speak at a rate that would make it difficult for non-native speakers to comprehend him.

Pay attention to your own rate of speech. In a given day you may speak quite deliberately at times with careful enunciation, while at other times you may speak "a mile a minute." The same is true for Spanish speakers.

Whatever the differences are, probably the reason it seems like Spanish is so much faster is because you don't know the language. Since you know English well, you don't have to hear every single sound in every single word to know what is said, because your mind is able to fill in the gaps and to determine where one word ends and the next begins. But until you know another language well, you don't have that ability with it.

It also seems to be true that the process of elision - the omission of sounds as words run together - is more extensive in Spanish than it is in English (although perhaps not as extensive as in French). In Spanish, for example, a phrase such as " ella ha hablado" (meaning "she has spoken") typically will end up sounding like ellablado, meaning the distinct sound of an entire word () plus part of another word are gone. Also, most Spanish consonants (other than the ) can seem indistinct to the ear accustomed to English, making understanding a bit more difficult.

I don't know of any fixes for the problem, except that practice makes perfect (or if not perfect, better). As you learn Spanish, try to listen for Spanish phrases rather than individual words, and perhaps that will speed up the process of understanding.

Addendum: The following letter received after the initial publication of this article raises some interesting points. One of them, about the different formation of syllables in the two languages, make sense, so I'm adding the letter here:

"Somewhere I read the results of a study that concluded Spanish is spoken more rapidly than English. The reason is the typical Spanish syllable is open (meaning consonant-vowel) while in English the typical syllable is closed (consonant-vowel-consonant). Words with more than one syllable in English tend to have two dissimilar consonants together requiring a slowing of speech to sound both of them.

"We natural English speakers get to be pretty adept at sounding two consonants together, but it is tough for a natural Spanish speaker to do. In Spanish when two consonants are together the natural speaker often inserts an extra (unwritten and soft) vowel sound between them. For example in the Spanish word AGRUPADO, you can hear it pronounced AGuRUPADO. The extra u is short and soft, but separates the consonants. Natural English speakers have no problem sounding "GR" without inserting an extra vowel, but we do it at a slightly slower rate.

"Your comments about Vicente Fox are interesting. I have found political figures usually speak so clearly that I can understand them better than the general Spanish speaking public. This is especially true when they are giving addresses. Although I seldom liked what he said, I used to enjoy listening to Fidel Castro because he was so easy to understand. These days his voice has a senile quality that interferes with clarity somewhat. Most ministers have the same clear speech as political leaders, and thus religious services are good places to practice your Spanish listening skills if you are a learner."

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Do Spanish Speakers Talk Fast, or Does It Just Seem That Way?

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Question: Do people who speak Spanish speak a lot faster than we do, or does it just seem that way? Answer: As far as I've been able to find out, it just seems that way.

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Para mi, yo puedo oir la diferencia entre tres acentos de español: Español de España, México, de Florida/ el Caribe, pero con este artículo puedo ver todas las diferencias entre su lugar y su propia pronunciación. Se trata de unos contrastes fonémicos que son mencionados en la página 49 en el libro de texto.