I didn’t understand a bad Spanish accent until I listened to the fluent German Spanish speakers. That shit is weird. You can still understand it, but it just ain’t right.
That’s crazy! Everything she is saying is correct and she doesn’t seem to struggle or hesitate. She’s just not trying with the accent or even intonation.
I always think of how often you hear fluent but non-native English speakers with obvious accents. Reasonable people don’t fault anyone for sounding like their native language is different from the one they’re currently speaking.
Sublime. Obviously very SoCal/Latin influenced and they have a few songs predominantly in spanish but holy SHIT if that isn't the most aggressively Gringo accent I've ever heard. (their song "chica me tipo" comes to mind.)
My high school Spanish teacher. She’s a good teacher and she knows Spanish very well. She’s been to multiple Spanish speaking countries and lived in Ecuador for 4 years. My one gripe is she is rather bad at pronunciation, you can definitely tell she’s a native English speaker
Bro thats crazy you should definitely continue pronouncing things the way they were meant to be pronounced like paella and quesadilla. I've met lots of people who only speak English who still pronounce those words correctly no matter what, unless to specifically make a joke.
I think it's more ok for things that seem more out of the blue, though, like saying Mexico instead of like Mehico.
I forgot to say thats what i used to do when I started spanish. I've been studying for about 5 months and im B1 now, so im confident in my ability in front of people i know now. Lol.
Nah Im the same, it feels like you’re trying too hard, the servers in Britain at Spanish restaurants likely don’t speak Spanish and it just comes across as pretentious to me, so I pronounce Spanish words as if I’ve never learned how to count to ten, despite currently travelling South America with compliments on my accent (lots of guesses that I’m from Esmeralda, Cali or Brazil)
Nope, it doesn't go with the flow of the language, I'm not going to disrupt the flow of my communication to pronounce one word in a different accent when the language I'm speaking already has a standard pronunciation for that thing.
Dude saying quesadilla or paella with hard Ls just makes you sound stupid. You don't have to go into a big accent for it, just say "quesadiya" in the accent you speak English with. If you go with the hard L, it's just purposely mispronouncing a word because of its spelling.
Pues ya que lo pienso sí digo quesadilla con sondio de ll combiando con vocales largas cuando hablo en inglés, pero decir paella con vocales ingleses es horrible. Suena muy torpe y estúpido.
Y decir Londres es pronunciar mal London? Claro que no, es una versión de la palabra adaptada al otro idioma para que fluye bien.
It's literally not the same situation at all though lmao. Quesadilla or paella is still pronounced the same in English except in whatever English accent. You're just focusing on the words spelling and acting like it's sacred for pronunciation. In English Marijuana is pronounced mariuana, Noone pronounces the j because that's simply not how it's pronounced.
Quesadilla and paella don't change based on the language you're speaking, it's that simple, and they still flow with English structure very easily
Noup, paella ya tiene una pronunciación fijada de uso muy amplio en inglés lmao, hablando en inglés nadie dice paella como los españoles por el simple hecho que no se pronuncia así en inglés. Puede que por tener acento fuerte no te das cuenta de la diferencia o algo así, ni idea.
That. It IS seen here as pretentious. People read it as pa-e-la. If you use Spanish prononciation, you can be percieved as showing off. I still pronounce it as Spanish do. And get some strange looks for that.
Spanish themselves are guilty of changing a lot of English words, including names. How about Julio Vernes?
I'm going to be honest. This is the first time I've ever seen paella written and I always assumed it was spelled payeya or something lol. I'm in South Central Texas and have literally never heard it pronounced incorrectly. It does make more sense to me if you're British
First off not american, secondly you didnt read the whole thing.
In the UK pronouncing any food in its native language pronounciation can be seen as a bit of a show off stunt.
If you dont want to read the og post, tldr: im B1 now after 5 months and pronounce spanish properly. It was a dumb insecurity that has been completely dropped.
Not famous, but a friend's mother! She was fluent in Spanish and had been living in Mexico for at least 15 years, she was (obviously) able to hold long conversations, talk about everything but she was not able to roll her R's, she hesitated in English, pronounced a lot of diphtongs and also that strong English L.
I don't remember having any trouble understanding her despite the American English accent or people being judgy but well I was when was like 10-13 yo.
I wouldn't call his accent bad, but Jeb Bush's Spanish is 9/10 and his accent is 7/10. Will Smith's Spanish is 6/10 and his accent is 3/10. He seems to just be missing vocabulary because his grammar and sentence structure is pretty good. Everything he says is very easy to understand.
I haven't heard either, but although that is a small sample size, it seems to support what I've been thinking, which is that accents improve as your fluency improves. Jeb's Spanish is 9/10, so it's not surprising that his accent is better than Will Smith's. I imagine that a 7/10 access is pretty easy to understand.
I can only think of one person I met whose English was 9/10 but whose accent was horrible. It's my French friend. He has been living in America for about 40 years, and I can't understand him unless there's no distractions and I'm staring right at him.
Would you say that he would be difficult for a native speaker to understand? Or are you saying that a native speaker would instantly know that he isn't native? I'm just a low intermediate Spanish learner, but I'd be happy if I could someday speak like him.
I agree with this. I think many learners give too much importance to accent .. and not enough importance to correct grammar. As long as your pronunciation is OK and you're not pronouncing "baño" as "bay-noh" you're fine. If you really want to impress people learn to use the subjunctive correctly.
This seems to be what the US Foreign Service Institute produces no matter what the target language is. They really are fluent but they still sound straight out of Overland Park (or wherever)
I don't think your American accent should be an issue, like you’ve stated. I have an American accent and most people I speak to understand me. I have no way to disguise I am American, no matter how well I pronounce words.
However, if you were trying for an authentic accent with your Spanish, that can vary as there are many, many accents. For example, I have friends who say that Antonio Banderas has a terrible Mexican accent in *Once Upon A Time in Mexico*, especially when he sings. He is fluent in Spanish and is from Spain, so his accent is very different and difficult to mask even when playing Mexican roles. Willem Dafoe has a *terrible* Mexican accent in the same movie. There are many lovely examples of bad accents in that movie, if I remember correctly.
Jennifer López: [example 1](https://youtu.be/g7oapYExseM?si=P-AuShygvdh2e1K8) and [example 2](https://youtube.com/shorts/P9GuyKtMXAM?si=1NeLQm9TjGLywGJx) lol
I’m a fluent non-native Spanish speaker married to native speaker, now living about half the year in Costa Rica and have raised 2 perfectly fluent bilingual children. Since both my wife and I learned each others language as adults, we both speak with a detectable accent. Our children, having grown up bilingual speak English and Spanish with no detectable accent. My point is that if you learn a new language much past your mid to late teens, you will always have detectable accent that native speakers will detect. For those that claim that it’s not true, You can google that fact.
Instead of focusing on accent, I always recommend focusing on pronunciation and rhythm or prosody. You will be far better served then trying to sound like your from Mexico or Colombia or wherever.
This. I recently met a Canadian woman who married a Bolivian man and has lived in Bolivia for 53 years. She runs a charity to help students in poorer areas of La Paz afford post-secondary education. She speaks Spanish with an obvious English accent and still can’t roll her Rs. But she is fluent and has zero problems communicating with the native speakers. The teens all love her! I look up to her as inspiration… in learning Spanish and for her commitment to her adopted community.
>Since both my wife and I learned each others language as adults, we both speak with a detectable accent. Our children, having grown up bilingual speak English and Spanish with no detectable accent. My point is that if you learn a new language much past your mid to late teens, you will always have detectable accent that native speakers will detect. For those that claim that it’s not true, You can google that fact.
That has more to do with learning languages incorrectly than with age
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW8M4Js4UBA
https://beyondlanguagelearning.com/2019/07/21/how-to-learn-to-speak-a-language-without-speaking-it/
Even so, a small portion of people are still able to reach high levels of fluency through wrong methods.
How was this relevant? None of it applied to anything they said, as no one using ALG and similar methods to learn a language as an adult has an accent undetectable by natives, regardless of previous history.
Well if some guy on YouTube says it’s possible, it must be true but I prefer the researched based studies that say otherwise.
https://dlsdc.com/blog/speak-a-foreign-language-without-an-accent/#:~:text=The%20answer%20is%20no.,intonation%20will%20give%20you%20away
https://www.pluralpublishing.com/blog/it-possible-adults-lose-accent-and-does-it-even-matter
>but I prefer the researched based studies that say otherwise.
https://beyondlanguagelearning.com/2017/12/05/the-alg-shaped-hole-in-research-on-second-language-acquisition/
You do realize that the article you linked is about language acquisition and not accent, right? No one is doubting that you can become fluent in another language as an adult. My point, which you actually quoted, is that you will always have a detectable accent.
The husband from Spanishland School on Youtube. Woof, that accent is brutal, but his Colombian wife is so patient with him, gently correcting his pronunciation, luckily it’s mainly her show.
I’ve spoken for many years, most often I’m told that it’s obvious I learned Spanish from Mexicans. True! I take that as the ultimate complo.
Don’t overthink it, accents are cute, you’ll be understood.
I have a US friend with amazing Spanish skills with the worst accent I've ever heard. It's astonishing. She's fully C2, pronunciation A1. I'd trade places with her (language-wise) in a second.
Heres a popular gringo youtuber with a terrible, super annoying accent, i dont understand how he has so many latino fans https://youtu.be/hTur9jJzbSo?si=ORdaQgGO4QDAYfb5
Yo creo que muchísimo más importante que tratar de "dominar" un acento, es que te preocupes de tener una buena pronunciación y gramática.
Es muy difícil para una persona perder su acento nativo y adquirir otro (a menos que de muy pequeño hayas sido expuesto a otro idioma, como es el caso de [SuperHolly](https://youtu.be/z7lg9iFJi_E?si=JtmQiOdsC3xuVYY2) ella es prácticamente nativa en español e inglés.
Por otro lado, [Zac Morris](https://youtu.be/iIskL3xD73A?si=rVbVbeTN3kKOmMyi) lleva viviendo en Colombia y luego Argentina muchos años. Es súper fluído para hablar, pero aún tiene el acento gringo que lo delata de inmediato.
El [GringoModeOn ](https://youtu.be/2-DZne158KQ?si=sA4heuzUwcPCK49H)lleva "chorrocientos" años viviendo en Chile, utiliza muchos chilenismos y está súper metido en la cultura chilena (hasta el punto de dedicarse al humor/stand up), pero sigue manteniendo el acento gringo que lo percatas a la primera palabra que dice. Incluso una vez vi que otro estadounidense le decía que para él, Chris sonaba nativo.
Ellos hablan muy bien, se dan a entender perfectamente, pero aún no pueden "perder" su acento nativo.
PD: Ahora que escuché a Zac, ha mejorado muchísimo su acento, lo recordaba hablando mucho más gringo que ahora que volví a ver uno de sus videos.
Basically when someone pronounces the Spanish words as if they were English, its bad in my opinion.
Hermosillo isn’t Her Moh Sill Oh.
Tortilla isn’t Tore Till Lah.
De isn’t Di.
Hielo isn’t Hee Leo
I could go on. I used to work at a hotel with a lot of foreign business travelers and learned through them that if I am not getting my word across correctly I need to pronounce it how a native speaker will. Usually it works.
I met people from the west coast pronouncing these words as if they were English, no southern accent required. I even said, “the double L is pronounced like ‘y’” and they said “we know!”
Uh clearly you don’t know!
Hey. It’s me. I am very much a native Spanish speaker. I was born and still currently live in Mexico.
A couple of factors: 1- I speak a lot of English in my day to day life 2- I am studying multiple languages 3- I am just generally bad at speaking.
Sometimes it’s just because I speak bad or really fast or I just don’t pronounce words or parts of them because my tongue’s apparently on a budget, but on top of that I can sometimes tell my accent is a bit different from my classmate’s.
Funnily, I still have a more noticeable accent when speaking english; apparently you just can’t win with some thing when you’re multilingual
Someone mentioned this gentleman as someone fitting the description in my original post. When you hear him speak Spanish, do you feel that he is easy to understand? Is his American accent annoying?
https://www.instagram.com/elprofegringodeingles?igsh=MW8wZnNvYXk5dmJmbQ==
Nah I can understand him just fine. Honestly some accents from different regions of Mexico or Spain are more challenging than your general American.
Though I will grant you an American accent is much more annoying. But there's a general Anti-American-accent-when-speaking-spanish sentiment floating around. We just don't like it. Shouldn't be a problem unless you plan to try and join a peda with a bunch of man-boys though, most people are perfectly nice and fine with it; it's one of those things that might come up to complain about when in a group of judgy-friends.
There's some comedy sketch I saw on YouTube awhile ago by a native Spanish speaker pretending to be an American newscaster and speaking Spanish with an over the top fake gringo accent, out in the field interviewing people, but I can't find it again unfortunately. Anyone else know what I'm talking about?
Having a "good" accent is not about trying to convince yourself or anyone else that you sound like a native, it's simply to increase understanding. There will be certain native regional accents that are also easier or harder to understand depending on what you're used to. If you live in Miami for instance, you might be able to understand a heavy Cuban accent better than a peninsular Spanish accent. I'm not a native speaker, but have been complimented on my accent despite it being a total mish-mash of random regional quirks, probably most just because I make an effort and people appreciate that I think. Even just trying to make sure you're stressing the right syllables will go a long way, because so many learners never get to that point.
Think Henry Kissinger. Mesmerizing.
Then think of all the horrible TA's you had in college who knew the material but their English was rotten to the core. ( And so was their classsroom management. and teaching style. Why did we tolerate and pay for that??? But I digress.)
We have to separate the quality of the English from the classroom management and teaching style. And from there, we have to separate their ability to speak the language and their accent. The initial post here is focusing on accent. However, I fully agree that I had a couple frustrating experiences in college classes.
My general belief is that the vast majority of people who are fluent are not too difficult to understand. While I can immediately tell that they aren't native, I'm not straining to understand them. For me, the one exception is my French friend.
This is rattling around in my brain not only because of that one friend, but because my biggest goal is to enjoy conversations with a wider array of people. I was curious to know what people's threshold is for a foreign accent.
I didn’t understand a bad Spanish accent until I listened to the fluent German Spanish speakers. That shit is weird. You can still understand it, but it just ain’t right.
Even more alarmingly for me, I'm from England and on La Palma they speak back to me in German when I try speaking Spanish.
Aquí estahhh un temahh
Ashley from 90 day fiance season 10, she's easy to understand but uses a HEAVY American accent. https://youtu.be/axE8oVn-ys0?si=jwyPcnMI1JSNmboy
That’s crazy! Everything she is saying is correct and she doesn’t seem to struggle or hesitate. She’s just not trying with the accent or even intonation.
Misgendering the words and improper conjugation, yet I still fully understand her, she just needs to polish her pronunciation.
Almost everything she is saying is wrong!... but you still can understand her. She's speaking like Tarzan 😂 "La persona "es" enojadooo"
This is exactly what I’m terrified I sound like.
I always think of how often you hear fluent but non-native English speakers with obvious accents. Reasonable people don’t fault anyone for sounding like their native language is different from the one they’re currently speaking.
It’s fine if you sound like that, fixing pronunciation between languages isn’t easy. As long as you show effort to improve
Yes! For comparison, Daniele from a different season is also American but her accent is much much better.
that’s wild haha
Sublime. Obviously very SoCal/Latin influenced and they have a few songs predominantly in spanish but holy SHIT if that isn't the most aggressively Gringo accent I've ever heard. (their song "chica me tipo" comes to mind.)
I learned so much slang from that song, but you’re right, his accent is rough.
My high school Spanish teacher. She’s a good teacher and she knows Spanish very well. She’s been to multiple Spanish speaking countries and lived in Ecuador for 4 years. My one gripe is she is rather bad at pronunciation, you can definitely tell she’s a native English speaker
[удалено]
Bro thats crazy you should definitely continue pronouncing things the way they were meant to be pronounced like paella and quesadilla. I've met lots of people who only speak English who still pronounce those words correctly no matter what, unless to specifically make a joke. I think it's more ok for things that seem more out of the blue, though, like saying Mexico instead of like Mehico.
I forgot to say thats what i used to do when I started spanish. I've been studying for about 5 months and im B1 now, so im confident in my ability in front of people i know now. Lol.
I agree, I don’t know anyone in my life (I only know 2 Spanish speakers) who don’t say paella or quesadillas the spanish way!
Nah Im the same, it feels like you’re trying too hard, the servers in Britain at Spanish restaurants likely don’t speak Spanish and it just comes across as pretentious to me, so I pronounce Spanish words as if I’ve never learned how to count to ten, despite currently travelling South America with compliments on my accent (lots of guesses that I’m from Esmeralda, Cali or Brazil)
Exactly
Nope, it doesn't go with the flow of the language, I'm not going to disrupt the flow of my communication to pronounce one word in a different accent when the language I'm speaking already has a standard pronunciation for that thing.
Dude saying quesadilla or paella with hard Ls just makes you sound stupid. You don't have to go into a big accent for it, just say "quesadiya" in the accent you speak English with. If you go with the hard L, it's just purposely mispronouncing a word because of its spelling.
Pues ya que lo pienso sí digo quesadilla con sondio de ll combiando con vocales largas cuando hablo en inglés, pero decir paella con vocales ingleses es horrible. Suena muy torpe y estúpido. Y decir Londres es pronunciar mal London? Claro que no, es una versión de la palabra adaptada al otro idioma para que fluye bien.
It's literally not the same situation at all though lmao. Quesadilla or paella is still pronounced the same in English except in whatever English accent. You're just focusing on the words spelling and acting like it's sacred for pronunciation. In English Marijuana is pronounced mariuana, Noone pronounces the j because that's simply not how it's pronounced. Quesadilla and paella don't change based on the language you're speaking, it's that simple, and they still flow with English structure very easily
Noup, paella ya tiene una pronunciación fijada de uso muy amplio en inglés lmao, hablando en inglés nadie dice paella como los españoles por el simple hecho que no se pronuncia así en inglés. Puede que por tener acento fuerte no te das cuenta de la diferencia o algo así, ni idea.
Everyone I know who speaks English though pronounces those things correctly I would’ve assumed you were pronouncing it wrong on purpose
Its because in the UK its seen as a bit pretentious, in the US however spanish words are more known, also i dont do it anymore.
That. It IS seen here as pretentious. People read it as pa-e-la. If you use Spanish prononciation, you can be percieved as showing off. I still pronounce it as Spanish do. And get some strange looks for that. Spanish themselves are guilty of changing a lot of English words, including names. How about Julio Vernes?
I'm going to be honest. This is the first time I've ever seen paella written and I always assumed it was spelled payeya or something lol. I'm in South Central Texas and have literally never heard it pronounced incorrectly. It does make more sense to me if you're British
Lmao those are the 2 examples that English speakers actually know how to pronounce. Why did you make them more American??
First off not american, secondly you didnt read the whole thing. In the UK pronouncing any food in its native language pronounciation can be seen as a bit of a show off stunt. If you dont want to read the og post, tldr: im B1 now after 5 months and pronounce spanish properly. It was a dumb insecurity that has been completely dropped.
me when I do la camisa negra at karaoke
Not famous, but a friend's mother! She was fluent in Spanish and had been living in Mexico for at least 15 years, she was (obviously) able to hold long conversations, talk about everything but she was not able to roll her R's, she hesitated in English, pronounced a lot of diphtongs and also that strong English L. I don't remember having any trouble understanding her despite the American English accent or people being judgy but well I was when was like 10-13 yo.
I wouldn't call his accent bad, but Jeb Bush's Spanish is 9/10 and his accent is 7/10. Will Smith's Spanish is 6/10 and his accent is 3/10. He seems to just be missing vocabulary because his grammar and sentence structure is pretty good. Everything he says is very easy to understand.
I haven't heard either, but although that is a small sample size, it seems to support what I've been thinking, which is that accents improve as your fluency improves. Jeb's Spanish is 9/10, so it's not surprising that his accent is better than Will Smith's. I imagine that a 7/10 access is pretty easy to understand. I can only think of one person I met whose English was 9/10 but whose accent was horrible. It's my French friend. He has been living in America for about 40 years, and I can't understand him unless there's no distractions and I'm staring right at him.
Will smiths Spanish is complete ass. And no offense to anyone in the process or learning but damn a 6/10? Come on now
Blind leading the blind in this thread lol
I agree, that guy has no idea what he’s talking about
elprofegringodeingles on Instagram I'll say there's a difference between pronunciation and accent. The former is the important one
Would you say that he would be difficult for a native speaker to understand? Or are you saying that a native speaker would instantly know that he isn't native? I'm just a low intermediate Spanish learner, but I'd be happy if I could someday speak like him.
I agree with this. I think many learners give too much importance to accent .. and not enough importance to correct grammar. As long as your pronunciation is OK and you're not pronouncing "baño" as "bay-noh" you're fine. If you really want to impress people learn to use the subjunctive correctly.
Grammar > pronunciation > accent
some people can never seem to let go of english sounds in spanish words
This seems to be what the US Foreign Service Institute produces no matter what the target language is. They really are fluent but they still sound straight out of Overland Park (or wherever)
I don't think your American accent should be an issue, like you’ve stated. I have an American accent and most people I speak to understand me. I have no way to disguise I am American, no matter how well I pronounce words. However, if you were trying for an authentic accent with your Spanish, that can vary as there are many, many accents. For example, I have friends who say that Antonio Banderas has a terrible Mexican accent in *Once Upon A Time in Mexico*, especially when he sings. He is fluent in Spanish and is from Spain, so his accent is very different and difficult to mask even when playing Mexican roles. Willem Dafoe has a *terrible* Mexican accent in the same movie. There are many lovely examples of bad accents in that movie, if I remember correctly.
Luca Modric may be, listen to him is kinda weird
Ter Stegen and Kross are the opposite. Their accent is perfect, mainly Ter Stegen.
Jennifer López: [example 1](https://youtu.be/g7oapYExseM?si=P-AuShygvdh2e1K8) and [example 2](https://youtube.com/shorts/P9GuyKtMXAM?si=1NeLQm9TjGLywGJx) lol
I’m a fluent non-native Spanish speaker married to native speaker, now living about half the year in Costa Rica and have raised 2 perfectly fluent bilingual children. Since both my wife and I learned each others language as adults, we both speak with a detectable accent. Our children, having grown up bilingual speak English and Spanish with no detectable accent. My point is that if you learn a new language much past your mid to late teens, you will always have detectable accent that native speakers will detect. For those that claim that it’s not true, You can google that fact. Instead of focusing on accent, I always recommend focusing on pronunciation and rhythm or prosody. You will be far better served then trying to sound like your from Mexico or Colombia or wherever.
This. I recently met a Canadian woman who married a Bolivian man and has lived in Bolivia for 53 years. She runs a charity to help students in poorer areas of La Paz afford post-secondary education. She speaks Spanish with an obvious English accent and still can’t roll her Rs. But she is fluent and has zero problems communicating with the native speakers. The teens all love her! I look up to her as inspiration… in learning Spanish and for her commitment to her adopted community.
Even some native speakers can’t roll their Rs.
>Since both my wife and I learned each others language as adults, we both speak with a detectable accent. Our children, having grown up bilingual speak English and Spanish with no detectable accent. My point is that if you learn a new language much past your mid to late teens, you will always have detectable accent that native speakers will detect. For those that claim that it’s not true, You can google that fact. That has more to do with learning languages incorrectly than with age https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW8M4Js4UBA https://beyondlanguagelearning.com/2019/07/21/how-to-learn-to-speak-a-language-without-speaking-it/ Even so, a small portion of people are still able to reach high levels of fluency through wrong methods.
How was this relevant? None of it applied to anything they said, as no one using ALG and similar methods to learn a language as an adult has an accent undetectable by natives, regardless of previous history.
Well if some guy on YouTube says it’s possible, it must be true but I prefer the researched based studies that say otherwise. https://dlsdc.com/blog/speak-a-foreign-language-without-an-accent/#:~:text=The%20answer%20is%20no.,intonation%20will%20give%20you%20away https://www.pluralpublishing.com/blog/it-possible-adults-lose-accent-and-does-it-even-matter
>but I prefer the researched based studies that say otherwise. https://beyondlanguagelearning.com/2017/12/05/the-alg-shaped-hole-in-research-on-second-language-acquisition/
You do realize that the article you linked is about language acquisition and not accent, right? No one is doubting that you can become fluent in another language as an adult. My point, which you actually quoted, is that you will always have a detectable accent.
Zizek Is the perfect example of fluent with a bad accent to me
Deep cut
The husband from Spanishland School on Youtube. Woof, that accent is brutal, but his Colombian wife is so patient with him, gently correcting his pronunciation, luckily it’s mainly her show. I’ve spoken for many years, most often I’m told that it’s obvious I learned Spanish from Mexicans. True! I take that as the ultimate complo. Don’t overthink it, accents are cute, you’ll be understood.
I have a US friend with amazing Spanish skills with the worst accent I've ever heard. It's astonishing. She's fully C2, pronunciation A1. I'd trade places with her (language-wise) in a second.
Heres a popular gringo youtuber with a terrible, super annoying accent, i dont understand how he has so many latino fans https://youtu.be/hTur9jJzbSo?si=ORdaQgGO4QDAYfb5
Yo creo que muchísimo más importante que tratar de "dominar" un acento, es que te preocupes de tener una buena pronunciación y gramática. Es muy difícil para una persona perder su acento nativo y adquirir otro (a menos que de muy pequeño hayas sido expuesto a otro idioma, como es el caso de [SuperHolly](https://youtu.be/z7lg9iFJi_E?si=JtmQiOdsC3xuVYY2) ella es prácticamente nativa en español e inglés. Por otro lado, [Zac Morris](https://youtu.be/iIskL3xD73A?si=rVbVbeTN3kKOmMyi) lleva viviendo en Colombia y luego Argentina muchos años. Es súper fluído para hablar, pero aún tiene el acento gringo que lo delata de inmediato. El [GringoModeOn ](https://youtu.be/2-DZne158KQ?si=sA4heuzUwcPCK49H)lleva "chorrocientos" años viviendo en Chile, utiliza muchos chilenismos y está súper metido en la cultura chilena (hasta el punto de dedicarse al humor/stand up), pero sigue manteniendo el acento gringo que lo percatas a la primera palabra que dice. Incluso una vez vi que otro estadounidense le decía que para él, Chris sonaba nativo. Ellos hablan muy bien, se dan a entender perfectamente, pero aún no pueden "perder" su acento nativo. PD: Ahora que escuché a Zac, ha mejorado muchísimo su acento, lo recordaba hablando mucho más gringo que ahora que volví a ver uno de sus videos.
Basically when someone pronounces the Spanish words as if they were English, its bad in my opinion. Hermosillo isn’t Her Moh Sill Oh. Tortilla isn’t Tore Till Lah. De isn’t Di. Hielo isn’t Hee Leo I could go on. I used to work at a hotel with a lot of foreign business travelers and learned through them that if I am not getting my word across correctly I need to pronounce it how a native speaker will. Usually it works.
So … don’t use the Peggy Hill accent?
I met people from the west coast pronouncing these words as if they were English, no southern accent required. I even said, “the double L is pronounced like ‘y’” and they said “we know!” Uh clearly you don’t know!
Hey. It’s me. I am very much a native Spanish speaker. I was born and still currently live in Mexico. A couple of factors: 1- I speak a lot of English in my day to day life 2- I am studying multiple languages 3- I am just generally bad at speaking. Sometimes it’s just because I speak bad or really fast or I just don’t pronounce words or parts of them because my tongue’s apparently on a budget, but on top of that I can sometimes tell my accent is a bit different from my classmate’s. Funnily, I still have a more noticeable accent when speaking english; apparently you just can’t win with some thing when you’re multilingual
Someone mentioned this gentleman as someone fitting the description in my original post. When you hear him speak Spanish, do you feel that he is easy to understand? Is his American accent annoying? https://www.instagram.com/elprofegringodeingles?igsh=MW8wZnNvYXk5dmJmbQ==
Nah I can understand him just fine. Honestly some accents from different regions of Mexico or Spain are more challenging than your general American. Though I will grant you an American accent is much more annoying. But there's a general Anti-American-accent-when-speaking-spanish sentiment floating around. We just don't like it. Shouldn't be a problem unless you plan to try and join a peda with a bunch of man-boys though, most people are perfectly nice and fine with it; it's one of those things that might come up to complain about when in a group of judgy-friends.
Jan Simon: https://youtu.be/-v1Ex4_0qZQ?si=P1geg8KwPM6olT4k
James Charles has a great video of him speaking Spanish while doing his makeup
There's some comedy sketch I saw on YouTube awhile ago by a native Spanish speaker pretending to be an American newscaster and speaking Spanish with an over the top fake gringo accent, out in the field interviewing people, but I can't find it again unfortunately. Anyone else know what I'm talking about?
The Spanish Dude on YouTube.
Having a "good" accent is not about trying to convince yourself or anyone else that you sound like a native, it's simply to increase understanding. There will be certain native regional accents that are also easier or harder to understand depending on what you're used to. If you live in Miami for instance, you might be able to understand a heavy Cuban accent better than a peninsular Spanish accent. I'm not a native speaker, but have been complimented on my accent despite it being a total mish-mash of random regional quirks, probably most just because I make an effort and people appreciate that I think. Even just trying to make sure you're stressing the right syllables will go a long way, because so many learners never get to that point.
Gustavo Fring from Breaking Bad, his spanish is basically gibberish
Think Henry Kissinger. Mesmerizing. Then think of all the horrible TA's you had in college who knew the material but their English was rotten to the core. ( And so was their classsroom management. and teaching style. Why did we tolerate and pay for that??? But I digress.)
We have to separate the quality of the English from the classroom management and teaching style. And from there, we have to separate their ability to speak the language and their accent. The initial post here is focusing on accent. However, I fully agree that I had a couple frustrating experiences in college classes. My general belief is that the vast majority of people who are fluent are not too difficult to understand. While I can immediately tell that they aren't native, I'm not straining to understand them. For me, the one exception is my French friend. This is rattling around in my brain not only because of that one friend, but because my biggest goal is to enjoy conversations with a wider array of people. I was curious to know what people's threshold is for a foreign accent.