By now you must know that I’m a big fan of sound. I married a music promoter. My whole family either sings or plays a musical instrument (we have guitars, ukuleles, harmonicas, a piano, diverse percussion instruments … ) I even have my own radio station!
Perhaps it’s part of my culture … have you ever noticed that anglos can’t stand silence? We even have music for a 10 second elevator trip!
Now, I’ll bet my bottom dollar that you and I hear some of the same sounds differently. For example, to me the word ‘silver’ sounds like /sil-vEr/. To a Spanish speaking ear it sounds like /sEyl-vEr/, the same sound that’s in the word ‘green’. This is completely unintelligible to a native English speaker because the tonic (the vowel sound of the important syllable) isn’t correctly pronounced. It is not a question of accent reduction, but rather accent neutralisation. This involves learning to hear the sounds so that you can reproduce them correctly.
We learn to distinguish between the different sounds our mothers make when we are still in the womb. Those sounds are ingrained in our brain like a statue carved in stone. This makes learning a new sound as an adult so challenging. I remember trying to learn the Catalan ‘ll.’ My tongue did all kinds of weird tricks until it figured out where it was supposed to be.
Reading and writing won’t help you with this. You need to listen and speak. I’ve put together a collection of videos for you to watch that are perfect for your level. Just go to my youtube channel:
There are different playlists according to what you’re looking for. Don’t forget to subscribe to receive notifications of new videos!
To the Silver Tongue,
Jennifer
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