Spanish · español
English accent training for Spanish speakers
Spanish gives you five clean vowels and an almost perfect sound-to-spelling match. English gives you somewhere between eleven and fifteen vowels, unpredictable spelling, and a rhythm that squashes half of them into a mumble. That mismatch — not vocabulary, not grammar — is what makes fluent Spanish speakers still get asked to repeat themselves.
The good news is that the transfer patterns are extremely predictable. Almost every Spanish-speaking learner runs into the same eight or nine issues, in roughly the same order. Work through them deliberately and the accent shifts fast.
The sounds Spanish speakers get wrong most often
/b/ vs /v/
Spanish spells both b and v but pronounces them the same way, so English very and berry, vote and boat collapse into one word.
Test yourself: very / berry · vote / boat · vest / best · curve / curb
How to fix it: For /v/ the lips never touch each other. Rest your top teeth lightly on your bottom lip and hum — you should feel a buzz in the lip. If your two lips meet, you have made a /b/.
/iː/ vs /ɪ/
Spanish has one high front vowel, so sheep and ship, beach and a much less polite word, come out identical.
Test yourself: sheep / ship · beat / bit · leave / live · feel / fill
How to fix it: /iː/ is long and tense with a wide smile. /ɪ/ is short, relaxed, and the jaw drops slightly — closer to a quick Spanish 'e' than to 'i'. Practise them as a pair, never in isolation.
Initial s-clusters
Spanish words never begin with s + consonant, so an /e/ appears in front: espeak, estudy, Espanish.
Test yourself: speak · school · Spain · student · street
How to fix it: Start the word already hissing. Hold a long ssssss, then release straight into the next consonant without letting a vowel sneak in front of it.
/dʒ/ vs /j/
Spanish y and ll sit between the two English sounds, so yellow and Jell-O, year and jeer trade places.
Test yourself: yellow / Jell-O · year / jeer · yolk / joke · yet / jet
How to fix it: /dʒ/ starts with the tongue tip stuck to the ridge behind your teeth and pops off. /j/ never touches — the tongue just glides. Add a light /d/ in front when you need the harder sound: d-yes → 'Jess'.
Final consonants
Spanish ends most syllables in a vowel, so English final stops get softened or dropped and the -ed and -s endings disappear.
Test yourself: worked · asked · lived · dogs · finished
How to fix it: Give every final consonant its own tiny beat. Say 'worked' as work + t, not 'work'. The -ed ending is /t/ after voiceless sounds, /d/ after voiced, and /ɪd/ only after t or d.
/h/
Spanish h is silent and the j sound is scraped at the back of the throat, so 'hello' becomes either 'ello' or a raspy 'jello'.
Test yourself: hello · hope · hard · behind · ahead
How to fix it: English /h/ is nothing but a puff of breath with the mouth already in position for the vowel. No friction, no scraping. Sigh, then add the vowel.
/z/
Most Spanish varieties have no /z/, so 'zoo' turns into 'sue' and every plural is voiceless.
Test yourself: zoo / sue · buzz / bus · rise / rice · eyes / ice
How to fix it: Say a long /s/, then switch on your voice without moving your tongue. Put a hand on your throat — /z/ vibrates, /s/ does not.
/θ/ and /ð/
Latin American Spanish has no th, so think becomes 'sink' or 'tink' and this becomes 'dis'. (Peninsular speakers already have /θ/ and only need the voiced one.)
Test yourself: think / sink · that / dat · breathe / breeze · three / tree
How to fix it: The tongue tip touches the bottom of your top teeth and air escapes around it. Exaggerate it until it feels silly, then dial it back.
The rhythm problem is bigger than any single sound
Spanish is syllable-timed: every syllable takes roughly the same amount of time, which is why Spanish sounds so even and musical. English is stress-timed. Stressed syllables get length, pitch and volume; everything between them gets compressed into a schwa, the lazy 'uh' sound that is the most common vowel in the language.
Say 'I can do it.' A native speaker gives real weight to 'do' and reduces 'can' to 'kn'. A syllable-timed version gives all four words equal weight and instantly sounds foreign, even when every individual sound is correct.
Practise by tapping the stressed syllables of a sentence on the table and letting the unstressed ones fall between the taps. Reducing vowels feels like sloppy speech at first — it is the opposite. Native listeners rely on that contrast to find the important words.
A 10-minute daily practice routine
- Minimal pairs, 60 seconds a day: very/berry, sheep/ship, zoo/sue, yellow/Jell-O.
- Read a paragraph aloud and mark every stressed syllable first. Then read it again hitting only those.
- Record yourself saying ten past-tense verbs and check that every -ed ending is audible.
- Shadow a 30-second clip of a speaker you admire — same speed, same melody, no pausing to think.
Find out which of these apply to you
The 2-minute assessment records a short sample of your speech and scores it sound by sound, so you know which of the patterns above are actually costing you clarity — and which you have already solved.
Take the free assessment →Frequently asked questions
Why do Spanish speakers add an 'e' before words like 'school'?
Spanish phonotactics do not allow a word to begin with s followed by another consonant, so the language inserts a vowel to make the cluster pronounceable — the same reason Spanish spells the country 'España'. Starting the word already hissing on the /s/ removes the extra vowel.
How long does it take to reduce a Spanish accent in English?
Individual sounds usually change within two to four weeks of daily practice, because they are a motor skill. Rhythm and vowel reduction take longer — most learners need two to three months of consistent work before it stops requiring conscious attention.
Should I aim to lose my accent completely?
No, and it is not a useful goal. The target is clarity: being understood the first time, every time, without listeners spending effort decoding you. An accent that is easy to follow is an asset, not a problem.