Should beginners worry about their pronunciation?
I often hear my friends say "Spanish is not for them because they can't roll their R's correctly." This makes me laugh because my pronunciation in Spanish is horrible!
I generally focus on grammar and vocabulary. I am thinking ----- once you can read and understand Spanish, you can later pick up and improve your pronunciation.
Should I be giving pronunciation the same amount of focus? How important is pronunciation at the beginning?
Thanks!
19 Answers
Studying grammar and vocabulary is a total waste of time if you can't use it in the real world. I would give speaking and listening the highest priority. Don't get all bent out of shape if you aren't very good at it to begin with. It takes a lot of time and effort. But it is very important in the long run. I assume you eventually want to be able to talk to people in Spanish, and if you can't pronounce it properly you'll have trouble. Communicating with other people is what it's all about. Think about the people you've come into contact with who are not native English speakers and who can't pronounce it well. What did you think of their communication skills?
I'd recommend listening to native speakers on T V, radio, movies, etc. Reading out loud is tremendous practice in many, many ways. Train your ear, train your vocal cords. It all goes together.
I concur with the others, and I would like to add a practical point about this. Practice does not make perfect...perfect practice makes perfect. There is no practical sense in learning something wrong and having to go back and "unlearn" it and then, later on get it right. That wastes alot of time. Far better to learn it correctly and practice it correctly than practice it incorrectly. The point of learning Spanish (or any language) is that you want to communicate. I'm sure that you have men non-native English speakers whose grammar may be perfect, but you'll never know because their English pronunciation is so horrible that you can't understand a word they are saying. What's the point if you put all that hard work into learning Spanish if when you open your mouth you can't be understood?
While expecting perfect pronunciation from a beginner is totally unrealistic (perfect pronunciation and intonation is anyone unrealistic for most people), attempts should be made at imitating natives' pronunciation, because otherwise your Spanish (or any other language) could become nearly impossible to understand. Besides, good pronunciation will make spelling a lot easier, as mentioned above.
Now, most people are worried about their rolled R, while their vowels are all utterly wrong, and make sentences incomprehensible at times. The most important thing in Spanish pronunciation is the vowels: they are totally different from the English ones. Another sound you have to work a little bit on is the American D and T, which sound like our R with certain words. All other sounds will make you sound foreign if you don't work on them, but you will be easily understandable, which is the whole point of speaking a language. Perfect pronunciation requires a lot of work, and probably good ear, but if you mispronounce the vowels, it is difficult to understand what you are saying. Come on! There are only 5 vowels anyway, not like in English!
Anyway, the whole point of having a "decent" pronunciation is that natives can understanding with ease, without having to put an extra effort into understanding you. As long as this is achieved, one shouldn't worry much about sounding like a foreigner... unless you only aim for perfection, that is.
Another argument in favour of good pronunciation is that it is not a good idea to learn mispronouncing, because it will be fixed in your brain, and you'll find it extremely hard to un-learn all your bad habits. I learnt English with bad pronunciation, and now, even though I know the correct way, I keep reverting back to my initial bad pronunciation. I doubt I'll ever sound perfect. Had I learnt it properly from the start, like my wife did... it would have been a different story.
Correct pronunciation will help your spelling from the the beginning. It will help your comprehension of the spoken language because you will recognize and can match what you can hear and pronounce. Also of course it will help others understand you. Finally, when you open your mouth to speak and what comes out doesn't sound like Spanish, it will not sound pleasant to most listeners.
And practicing imperfectly makes imperfections permanent.
I have a relative who speaks Spanish & English fluently and who is also a stickler for correct grammer and pronunciation (for both English and Spanish). He is willing to Skype with me for a few minutes every week to brush up my beginner Spanish.
It is so good to have my grammatical mistakes pointed out periodically.
I'm learning early that my mouth and tongue need to be retrained along with learning vocabulary.
- My very novice recommendation is to find someone who you won't mind correcting you a lot that can help you hear your own mistakes and correct them.
It is important to worry about it the sense that it is something you need to do correctly, so you need to spend time practicing it. On the other hand, it is not something to worry about in terms of being afraid to speak until you have learned correct pronunciation. A number of people have pointed out that it is difficult to understand foreigners with poor pronunciation, but you can still understand them if you try. It is much more important to get into situations where you are speaking Spanish with a native who speaks no English than it is to have a perfect accent, and doing so will improve all aspects of your Spanish, including your pronunciation. If you are an adult, you will probably always have a foreign accent when you speak Spanish--I know people who have lived in the USA speaking English for over 40 years who still have accents that you notice before the end of their first sentence.
If you wait until you have a perfect accent to speak Spanish, you will never speak it, which pretty much defeats the purpose of studying it.
I speak two languages as my motherlanguage and none of them is Spanish. Now, spanish is my 3rd foreign language and I know what to do pretty much. I can recommend you a few things. First of all, always listen native speakers but first decide which local accent you would like to learn. I made that mistake while learning German, and it's a total mess. At first I was mimicking who ever I've heard of, people from Tirol, Vienna, Hamburg, Köln and I realised that, that was just causing trouble for listeners and also for me. It's hard and exhaustive for listeners, they don't understand what you say and you always sound like a foreigner. After moving in Vienna, now I speak like a Viennese, and people actually sometimes asking me if I'm a real Viennese. So, pick a local accent, only mimic it, for me it's Rioplatense. Second of all, talk. Talk a lot, because the much you talk the better you get. Your vocabulary, your understanding capasity, your grammer, your pronunciation, talking is the best solution. You might not know what a word means in spanish but while you're speaking and when you need it and if you don't know what that word or verb is, in a conversation you can ask or simply they would have know what you mean and tell you that word and even after days later you will remember that word. To write down vocabulary with their meanings is a good way to begin with but after a while you'll realise that you keep forgetting those words, and sometimes you know the meaning but don't know how to use them in a sentence. Third of all, yes, you should worry about your pronunciation but remember if you speak clearly and if you pronounce the words truly they will understand you. Foreigner people living here in Vienne keep saying that native speakers don't understand them. But even I can't understand them because they're pronouncing the letter "z", "ai" and "s" wrong. I mean as long as your pronunciation is good don't worry about the rest. You'll always have an accent, which is natural but the more days pass, the more you talk and the more you listen and mimic and lastly the more you pay attention to your accent the better and flawless your spanish will get.
I concur with the others, and I would like to add a practical point about this. Practice does not make perfect...perfect practice makes perfect.
I completely agree...practice makes permanent.
And practicing imperfectly makes imperfections permanent.
As others have so correctly stated Correct pronounounciation is vital especially when you are beginning to lay the foundations of learninng in any language! You will not get far or enjoy practising any language if your best attempts are frustrated by your inabilty to pronounce the words in an intelligible or coherent manner. ...2-way communication will not be possible!
Listening and speaking skills are very important as Kevin rightly says. One of the most important skills to develop when learning any language (and I speak as one who is learning to develop 3 or 4 in parallel) is to be observant about detail.
Good pronounciation is very important but don't worry about it or get hung up about it as a learner since such negative emoational responses are likely to create an unnecesary tension in you that will in itself make it hard to relax and be receptive to the new challenges that language learning will ineveitably bring with it
Reading Spanish (or any new language) aloud is a particularly useful and practical exercise to do with a native teacher who can correct you before any bad habits with pronounciation become established. When a person reads aloud while looking at the words they are reading in Spanish or any other language the link (association) between how the words sound, look and are spelt begin to be reinforced. You start to understand how the accent affects the way the words are pronounced. It is no surprise to anyone to discover that people who are frequently read to as children develop greater competence and mastery of language skills and more confidence than those who have not had that experience.
The link between spoken and written langauge cannot be overstated
I hope this helps 
I have been reading some interesting ideas regarding second language acquisition, in particular the idea of Automatic Language Growth (ALG). The theorists who support (as well as practitioners who use) this particular method indicate that speaking to soon actually tends to impose a ceiling on one's long-term potential. What they propose is that a more effective method is to spend at least 800 hours of listening to the language in an environment rich in visual and contextual cues. During these first 800 hours the goal is not to try to speak the language but to try to understand what is being said.
Schools that teach this method conduct their classes by having two teachers sit and speak to one another and to the class only in the target language while using plenty of visual cues (such as pictures, drawings, props, acting out skits, etc). Supporters of this method contend that by 800 to 1000 hours of listening with understanding (which usually takes anywhere from 1 to 2 years) students will generally start to be able to spontaneously use short phrases and words and that by three to four years many are able to speak without the chore of mental translation that often goes on with students who try to learn a language in abstraction (i.e. through memorization of word lists, grammar rules, etc). Moreover, they tend to speak with a much less detectable (if they have one at all) accent. Further language training after this then usually involves living in a community or country where the language is spoken.
I can't really say how effective these methods actually are as most of the schools of this type are located in Asia and specialize in languages like Thai, Khmer, etc. However, some of these ideas do seem to have a bit of intuitive appeal, especially the idea that a spoken language cannot be learned by reading alone, no matter how good a pronunciation chart a person might have at his disposal. It also makes sense to me that, learning words and pronunciation in a piecewise fashion (i.e. by studying word lists rather than by learning words through context) seems a bit artificial as a process. Finally, it also makes sense to me that words would come more naturally to one's mouth were one to have a more thorough background of hearing and understanding the language as it is spoken in various contexts.
I think that this last idea is probably the most poignant in that it is not enough to just listen to the radio drone on, and it is probably not that effective to listen while trying to translate in one's head. It might be better, instead, to try to find as many sources that provide an environment rich in visual cues to aid in understanding (not to be confused with translating) while one listens.
Well, I have probably droned on about this long enough. As I have said, it's just that I find these ideas extremely interesting – anyway, just some food for thought.
Correct pronunciation will help people understand you when you are speaking Spanish. I have focused heavily on pronunciation while I was learning vocabulary. I think it all kind of goes together.
Way to go, if you get an English learner who does not pronounce correctly, you won't understand him, however, in Spain people are more likely to try to understand in my experience. 
Correct pronunciation will help people understand you when you are speaking Spanish. I have focused heavily on pronunciation while I was learning vocabulary. I think it all kind of goes together.
Some languages are much more pronunciation sensitve than others. Mispronounced french or hungarian (magyar) is simply noise. English on the other hand is quite tolerant of mispronunciation (in my opinion) . Using a good friend of mine as an example, he is fluent in english and spanish, but he speaks spanish with a strong"west texas accent' and he gets teased mercilessly for it. In my experience being a good parrot is the answer. When in Monterrey and you hear the rr trilled to exteme, try to duplicate it,the same with the variations of the "LL". I have many friends here in northern México that speak little or no english and by virtue of that, in duplicating their speech, my spanish has almost no american english vices. Practicing the sounds with the news broadcast, or here with Paralee will help quite a lot. practice practice.
I cannot learn to play American football by reading a rule book and then thinking about playing. As many times as I visualize myself making a great touchdown pass, I will never be able to until I practice making great touchdown passes.
I think it is the same with learning Spanish. In order to learn to speak Spanish, one must practice speaking Spanish. No matter how well I memorize vocabulary and grammer, I will not be understood by a Spanish speaker untill I practice speaking with a Spanish speaker.
Anyway, I am just a newbie learner hoping for a lifetime of Spanish practice!
Peace
Check a guy who calls himself khatzumoto in youtube. He claims to have learnt Japanese by spending a ridiculous amount of hours watching and listening in Japanese without subtitles or anything (plus reading and memorizing vocabulary, of course), and his Japanese is really impressive.
Thanks...I have actually read this guys blog and seen his channel before, and I agree that his Japanese is impressive. Aside from immersing himself in the language, he also says that he did a lot of sentence mining with SRS (Spaced Repitition) to build his vocabulary. This is another thing that leads me to believe that learning vocabulary is better done through use of context than in abstraction (i.e. with lists of isolated words and there translated "equivalents").
If you are interested, you can have a look at David Long's explanation of ALG on the youtube channel algworld (aside from this explanation, this channel also offers several looks into a typical Thai language learning classroom as administered at the ALG institute in Thailand). The actual concept is built on and extends some of the ideas of language acquisition original posited by Steven Krashen's monitor model (I believe that two of his books as well as several articles are available at the link provided). In regards to Krashen, I find particularly interesting his Acquisition versus Learning Hypothesis.
Many language schools in Spain never use anything but the target language, and anyone interested in learning, becomes really fluent in a relatively short time (some faster than others).
I remember having seen some clips from the Alhambra Instituto which peaked my curiosity into this. There, students were taught completely in Spanish, but they were taught through activity–learning to sing and dance in the style of Flamenco, going out shopping with their tutor, learning to cook traditional Spanish dishes, etc–and each activity was done entirely in Spanish.
It reminds me of something I have seen here in the area where I live in America. Japanese children here are often sent by there parents 3-5 times a week to what they call "Japanese schools" where the only spoken language is Japanese. In the school, activities are based around preserving the Japanese culture through lessons in art, food preparation, manners, etc.
The common theme running through each of these seems to be the idea of learning through activities, visual context and by following examples. This appears to be in stark contrast to the typical manner of second language acquisition which relies much more heavily on translation. Of the two, the latter seems the more artificial.
"impose a ceiling on one's long-term potential" - Not necessarily with everybody, but I agree in most respects on this. Some people jump into it are excell at it, but most people are just learning how to mispronounce from the start.
I think that in terms of a ceiling, the proponents of this particular method of learning are not only emphasizing the pronunciation aspect but also the speaking aspect with regard to the idea that speaking too soon actually seems to impose a barrier on one's ability to think in the language or on one's ability to "more naturally" give voice to one's thoughts within a given language.
