Why is English Difficult? (PRONUNCIATION)

So, first thing I want to talk about is one of the biggest reasons why English feels so difficult, right? Of course, I'm talking about pronunciation. Also, remember it's pronunciation, not pronunciation. The verb is to pronounce, yes, but the noun is pronunciation, non como monja, non, pronunciation. The first thing to take into account is the difference in vowel sounds. In Spanish we have ae o and they don't really change. If you see an a, it's an a sound.

If you see an e, it's an e sound, and so on and so forth. However, in English there are around 20 different vowel sounds, give or take, and maybe even more if you take into account every dialect that is spoken. English is actually one of the most complicated languages in the world in terms of vowel systems. We have short vowels like the i in sit. We have short vowels like the I in sit, and long vowels like the I in sit. That's sit as in sentarse and sit as in unaciendo. You sit in a seat.

Already, what seems like a small difference can cause problems. A Spanish speaker may not differentiate between these two sounds when speaking. Here's another example of something that might be difficult for Spanish speakers. The E sound in the words where, donde, and were, the past tense of the verb to be. Both words contain the letters er e, right? But they require different mouth shapes.

Where requires your mouth to be more open around the sides, where, while were requires a more closed, rounded shape. Try saying dónde estabas in English. Where were you? Where were you? Do you hear it? Where requires this sonido de e in Spanish, where, while were requires a sound that doesn't really come up, que no suele surgir, that doesn't really come up in Spanish. Bear and bird, where and were. Same thing, practice that.

Then there's the fact that depending on the word, vowels sound completely differently. I was reading this page about American English vowel sounds versus Spanish vowel sounds, and they used the example of the O. I thought this was crazy. So check out the O in the following words. They all sound different. Some woman women and work. Again. Woman, women and work. It's crazy that all these O sounds are different depending on what comes before or after.

It's understandable that you would pronounce these in the same way if you were a Spanish speaker, right? I feel like it's almost French in a way, these in-between sounds. I think if you speak French, it'll be easier to nail clavar, to nail these vowel sounds. Now, there's a concept you need to be familiar with if you want to improve your pronunciation in English when talking about vowels.

It's called the schwa, spelled S-C H W A. Now, the schwa is a vowel sound that is often referred to as a lazy vowel sound, like the lazy cousin, primo bowl, the lazy cousin of vowels. It is the sound that often appears in the unaccented syllable, in the unaccented syllable. So in the syllable where the stress is not present. Take the word balloon, for example. Balloon, global, right? When I say balloon, I'm not using a Spanish A. It's not balloon. It's a schwa sound. B balloon. Try it.

It's a short sound. In fact, the hecho, in fact, it's shorter than a short vowel. It's shorter than a short vowel, the schwa. More examples. Problem. It's an e, but it's not problem. It's like uh. It's not an I either, it's not problem. It's somewhere in between. Now, a schwa doesn't have to be any letter in particular. My favorite food is pizza. That a in pizza is a schwa sound. Uh, pizza, uh. There's the schwa.

So once you get a bit more used to it, once you get a bit more used to it and you start to look for it, which I suggest you do, which I strongly suggest you do, you'll see it everywhere. Well, you'll hear it everywhere. A giveaway, or algo que de lata sonido, a giveaway is if you hear that lazy, relaxed sound uh. Listen for that. It will take a while, va de morar, it will take a while, but you'll start to hear it more and more. I promise. Ahí estaba in promise. Promise, uh. Promise is.

You'll also hear it when people are thinking and they make that uh sound. It's that type of sound. Well now, let's move on because I want to talk about something that I think is really important. This is something that I've spoken about on the show before, but I think it's super, super important when it comes to pronunciation. And no, I'm not going to talk about how it's not that important to have a perfect accent, even though I do believe that. I want to talk about imitating versus reading.

Imitating versus reading. This is something I think that will really help your pronunciation. So when you learn the language, your first language, you see the world through that prism or lens. You know the alphabet in that language, and you read every word through that lens. What happens is there are a series of rules that we learn when it comes to reading that are very difficult to unlearn. Difficult to unlearn.

If your first language is Spanish, you will read words in Spanish, even if they are in a different language, right? It's very difficult to read a word in a language that you don't know and say it correctly, because you will read it with the bias of the rules of your language. When you read words in English, or even when you don't, but you imagine the word in your head, when you say it, you'll read it, entre comillas, read it with those rules in mind.

And then you'll say it again with those rules in mind. Now, what happens with children? Why do they pick up accents and pronunciation so easily? Well, in part, it's because they're not really doing that. They are imitating sounds, mimicking sounds they hear. I noticed this in my classes with kids, because as a joke, or for fun as a joke, they would imitate the way I said things like kids do.

I would say something like, Alright, let's take a water break, and then they would say, Let's take a water break, because they were messing with me and they wanted to joke around. But what happened when they did that? They would nail the pronunciation, they would nail the pronunciation, and they would often surprise themselves. I would encourage them, I would encourage them to imitate my accent because they weren't reading the words anymore. They were just relaxing and copying the sound.

So this is what I want you to start doing. Imitate sounds that you hear. Relax and just make the sounds you hear. Don't read, just imitate. If you think about it, I'm not making sounds that you can't make, right? I don't have a different mouth anatomy, so just copy the sounds I make. I know it seems like a little bit of a reductionist approach, but I think you would be surprised with just how effective it can be. Alright, that's it for this episode of English with Dane.

I hope you enjoyed the show, and I hope I gave you some good tools, herramientas, some good tools to not only improve your accent, but also to give you some insight into why sometimes English can be difficult or can seem difficult. Speaking of good tools, no old application Twin. The link is in the description of the episode. Try the app, practice your speaking, and let me know what you think.

I think it would be a great herrame for practical in casa and this stress that we consume when we're in alto.