Sometimes? No, Always!

Especially if some of your teeth aren't your own.

It's a rare person who doesn't have some trace of an accent in a language he didn't grow up speaking. For English speakers, Spanish is easier to pronounce than some languages and harder than others. We all have words that drive us nuts; for me it's the simple word "general". I used to have a colleague from Honduras work with me on it; I'm better now, but it still doesn't roll of my tongue.

Anyway, you are fortunate to be learning Spanish, because native speakers of Spanish are very forgiving when it comes to accents or grammatical mistakes. If you try to communicate, you've got it made. Just smile, do your best, and the native speaker will be wonderful to you.

I am ashamed to say that some of us who speak English could take a lesson in manners regarding generosity to those who are learning our language!

There are a couple of words I have problems with. However, for the most part, I find Spanish to be very easy to pronounce since the vowels and diphthongs always use the same sounds. The accent marks make it easy to know which syllable to emphasize.

But then again, if someone were listening to me, they might have something different to say!!

It depends on what you mean by "hard to pronounce". Spanish ranks high among the languages of the world that have a close correspondence between their orthography and pronunciation (in other words, it's written the way it sounds). This really means that native speakers have very few/no problems reading their own language but does not mean that foreigners find Spanish pronunciation easy.

Whether the sounds of Spanish are easy for you, or not, depends on the sounds of your native language (similarities/differences) and your facility with "foreign" sounds.

On some level, all the sound of Spanish are easy to pronounce (some 99.9% of Spanish speakers produce these sounds with no problem). If you have a problem, this says something about your language experience/habits.

I thought I was doing good until the other day a Puerto Rican told me. "I don't understand you. I can't understand that gringo accent."

Not really. Understanding it can be difficult though...if it is not your mother tongue, but that is how all foreign languages are. It is actually easier to pronounce than English because once you learn the rules for pronunciation, all the words obey those rules.

There a few sounds that English speakers can't quite make right at first (like the soft V sound) but it just gives us a slight accent.

Probably the most noticeably challenging sound for most is the rolled R.

Overall I can pronounce words "Ok", at least in my mind they sound right! It's a matter of practice speaking out loud. However I do struggle with many words also.

An example of a word I came across when reading and had to stop and re-say it at least 10 times:

desproporcionadamente

While it is pretty straightforward word actually, with no "odd" characters in it to pronounce such a ll, ñ, etc... The actual length of that one threw me off. I come across shorter words all the time though that I have a hard time with.

Once again though, practice makes perfect!

Those darn double R's. I just cannot do it. However my amigos that I speak with in Mexico get a kick out of my accent. They understand me and enjoy the fact that I am trying so hard.

Well not necessarily I guess only if you don't really understand the right purnunciation of the word you are trying to speak.

I thought I was doing good until the other day a Puerto Rican told me. "I don't understand you. I can't understand that gringo accent."

Hi Phil. I wouldn't get to worked up about the "gringo" accent thing. I had a friend who was a first generation American, his family originally being from Mexico, and he was raised speaking both Spanish and English. He told me that when he goes to Mexico, people tell him that he has a "funny" accent or that he speaks "like a gringo."

I also worked with a girl whose family was from Guatemala (who was also raised speaking both English and Spanish) and she would say that when she went to visit her family that everybody used to make remarks about her "cute little accent."