How to speak Spanish and sound like a native Spanish speaker
Today I’m going to give you one of the most important tips you’ve ever heard on how to speak Spanish and sound like a native Spanish speaker. Yesterday, here in Medellín, Colombia, while I was in a “shopping center”, I overheard a conversation between a native speaker and a gringa who was fluent in Spanish.
I didn’t want the two of them to realize that I was listening to their conversation, but I couldn’t help but admire how well the American woman pronounced her words in Spanish while clearly pronouncing each and every word she said.
But as I paid more attention, I noticed that the native Spanish speaker did something that the American woman did not. Let me explain you with an example.
The American woman said:
“Grandma does those things.”
Grandma does those things.
And when she said that phrase it actually sounded like “Grandma does those things.”
But when the native speaker said “Grandma does those things,” it sounded more like:
Little things.
Let me correct that. It did not just sound as if the native speaker had said “little things”, but rather that the native speaker had, in fact, said “little things.”
I wasn’t hearing things. Or to be more precise, I was NOT hearing things.
The Spanish speaker spoke very fast and took 4 of the 5 words and ran them together to create a separate word, for a total of two words:
Little things.
But when the American woman spoke, she said five different words:
Grandma does those things.
I have a friend here in Medellín, Colombia who teaches Spanish and English at the university. He has a background in linguistics, especially phonetics. And he explained to me that there is actually a name for what I heard the Spanish speaker do.
It’s called “word linking.” Word linking occurs when a speaker takes two or more words and connects or executes them together.
Word linking can occur in several different ways in Spanish. But one of the most frequent occurrences of word linking occurs when the last letter of one word is the same as the first letter of the next. When this happens, the two words are pronounced as one word.
Then “the grandmother” becomes “labuela” and “does those” becomes “you do.” And “labuela” and “doas” become “labuelacesas”.
Word linking is one of the things that separates native Spanish speakers from people who speak Spanish, even fluent, but are NOT native Spanish speakers.
If you can master word linking, you will sound more like a native Spanish speaker. And if you can master word linking, you will also be able to understand native Spanish speakers better. And when they speak naturally, it won’t sound like a rapid machine-gun shot.
By listening to native Spanish speakers, I have acquired some habits to make my pronunciation mimic theirs. When I say “I was born in New York” (I was born in New York), I actually say “I was born in New York” or “I was born in New York”
And if I said “new blouse”, I would say “new blouse” or “new blouse”