Intended for third year English-speaking students of Spanish or for teachers of Spanish classes at any level, this essential yet flexible handbook provides phonetic background to aid mastery of the basics of standard Latin American Spanish pronunciation. Each chapter includes numerous diagrams and charts to illustrate main principles, as well as ample ear-training, pronunciation, and written transcription exercises. Its format, style, and sequencing make it readily accessible to both teacher and student.

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From the Preface

Target Audience

Pronunciación de la lengua española para anglohablantes is designed to help students of Spanish improve their pronunciation. Its targeted reader is the native English-speaking undergraduate student pursuing a major or minor in Spanish, who has little or no knowledge of linguistics or phonetics of either English or Spanish. In general, such a student has recently completed an introductory course track (2 years; 4 semesters) in Spanish language and grammar – and therefore has limited reading experience in Spanish – and now seeks to refine his or her linguistic skill over the long term. Around this stage, many college undergraduate programs offer a semester course in Spanish phonetics; this text has been written with such courses specifically in mind. For maximum benefit, the course should be taken early in the curriculum before poor pronunciation habits have had a chance to take root.

The text is of equal value to native Spanish-speaking teachers of Spanish, as the materials provide useful strategies for diagnosing pronunciation problems, suggestions for remedying these problems, and numerous practical tips and training exercises that may be adapted and incorporated into a standard language lesson.

The text aims to fill three market niches:

• It is written in Spanish, and is therefore ideally suited to college Spanish programs that require junior- and senior-level courses to be conducted in Spanish and to use Spanishlanguage course materials;
• It is keyed to the linguistic skill level of students with limited Spanish reading ability (four semesters). This allows it to be placed early in the course sequence and therefore promote the development of good pronunciation habits when such development is most crucial;
• It is designed to be completed within a single semester. In a class that meets three times per week, roughly one week can be allotted to each pronunciation topic so as to ensure a good first pass, thorough review, and ample in-class practice.
• It includes four appendices that introduce the student to topics related to Spanish phonetics more broadly, including intonation and dialectology.

Pedagogical Concept

This text provides students with two types of practical knowledge. First, it draws upon key English-Spanish sound contrasts to guide proper pronunciation of Spanish sounds. Second, it adds to this body of information a systematic treatment of regular phonological rules and shows how these rules manipulate sounds. The goal of this twofold presentation is to impart not just more native-sounding pronunciation but also a conceptualization of the Spanish sound system that matches, as closely as possible, that of native Spanish speakers. This conceptualization emerges gradually over the course of the text, with each chapter introducing a new feature or principle, and revisiting all material already presented.

Because the target audience of the text is native English speakers, its pedagogical method is also largely therapeutic: to help students fix pronunciation problems, whether sporadic or habitual. Extensive use is made of side-by-side comparison of English and Spanish words or short phrases that sound similar but are not identical (such as yellow / hielo), to illustrate fundamental phonetic contrasts. End-of-chapter exercises evaluate mastery by means of verbal repetition drills, written transcriptions, phonetically relevant tongue twisters, and guided conversation tasks.

The appendices focus on four related areas of Spanish phonetics that are both useful and interesting to students as “next steps,” and are intended to supplement and enhance the main text. In summary, Pronunciación de la lengua española para anglohablantes is an essential, flexible, and complete course in Spanish pronunciation, and is designed for regular classroom use. Its format, style, and sequencing make it readily accessible to both teacher and student.

Contents

Pronunciación de la lengua española para anglohablantes consists of seventeen chapters and thus fits comfortably into a standard college semester without any need to rush or cut material. With roughly one week allotted per chapter, students in a three-hour class are allowed ample time to learn, review, and practice the material – in class. A summary of the chapters follows. Because each chapter builds cyclically upon material covered in all previous chapters, for best results, the student should progress through the chapters in order, without omitting any. The appendices are intended to enrich the course of study and may be included as time and student interest permit.

The Introduction lays out the goals of the book as well as the three components of a “native-sounding” accent: sound, intonation, and rhythm. It concludes with a preliminary ear-training exercise in differences between English and Spanish pronunciations of American place names, such as Arizona, San Francisco, Amarillo.

Chapter 1 introduces the basics of Spanish sound-spelling correspondence and explains the usefulness of a phonetic alphabet in studying pronunciation. The concepts of phoneme and allophone are introduced.

Chapter 2 introduces the essentials of consonant articulation, including the three coordinates by which consonants are classified phonetically: point of articulation, manner of articulation, and voicing.

Chapter 3 addresses the vowel system of Spanish and its phonemic description, with special emphasis on differences between the vowels of American English and the vowels of Standard Latin American Spanish. Special attention is also given to the phonemic representation of the Spanish letter <y>.

Chapter 4 looks at five common “traps” that English-speaking students should avoid as they perfect their pronunciation of Spanish vowels. These include vowel centralization, tense vowel diphthongization, <u>-diphthongization, vowel laxing, and nasalization. Exercises focus on eartraining and avoidance of these traps.

Chapter 5 introduces word syllabification and proposes four syllabification rules. Exercises focus on word division and how these divisions affect pronunciation.

Chapter 6 introduces the rules of semiconsonantization and semivocalization and shows how these rules interact with word syllabification.

Chapter 7 explains word stress, and considers how the stress pattern of a word may be known for sure as long as one knows how it is spelled. This same principle, applied in reverse, can assist in determining the need for diacritical marks in spelling – a skill commonly deficient even among even advanced learners of Spanish. Stress shifts and orthographic adjustments arising from affixation are addressed.

Chapter 8 revisits the topic of stress as it applies at the level of the phrase or sentence. Stressed grammatical categories are presented, as is the phonetic insight that underlies the spelling of such homophones as de/dé, que/qué, tu/tú, etc.

Chapter 9 introduces phrasal syllabification and shows five steps to correctly syllabify a phrase.

Chapter 10 examines syllable merger (synalepha/sinalefa) as a common effect in conversational (relaxed) speech. To emphasize the fact that syllable merger is stylistic in nature, a careful distinction is retained between careful and relaxed speech.

Chapter 11 introduces the voiced stop series /b, d̪, g/, which have the fricative allophones [b, d̪, g], and revisits the phrase boundary as a conditioning environment.

Chapter 12 examines the topic of semiconsonant fortition, a process whereby [y] and [w] are strengthened in syllable-initial and post-nasal position. The strengthened allophones are introduced. The role of morpheme juncture in fortition is considered.

Chapter 13 looks at the unvoiced stop series /p, t̪, k/ and the tendency of English speakers to aspirate these sounds in certain phonetic contexts: [ph, t̪h, kh]. The voiced fricatives [b, d̪, g] are further explored as allophones of /p, t̪, k/. Other pronunciation traps such as affrication and assibilation of /t̪r/ are discussed.

Chapter 14 explores the three palatal consonants /tʃ/, /ñ/, and /y̌/ . It explores problems posed by the aspirated English allophone [tʃh] and the common confusion of /ñ/ with [ny]. The Spanish allophony of /y̌/ is handled in detail.

Chapter 15 looks at the phonetics of the liquid consonants /l, r, r̄/ and considers the difficulty posed for English-speakers by the so-called “dark <l>” [l̴]. The principle of lateral place assimilation is introduced.

Chapter 16 introduces the unvoiced fricative phonemes and the difficulties these sounds can cause in pronunciation as well as spelling. The allophone [z] is introduced.

Chapter 17 further explores the principle of place assimilation as it applies to the nasal consonant /n/.

Appendix A gives a brief justification for the use of certain non-IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) symbols in the text, and gives the IPA equivalents of all such symbols used.

Appendix B contains an introduction to intonation, and focuses on three essential intonational patterns: declarative sentence, open question, and closed question.

Appendix C lays out the fundamentals of Spanish language dialectology and reviews the historical and geographic bases for phonemic variation across modern dialects.

Appendix D resumes the discussion of Spanish dialectology begun in Appendix C, spotlighting key regional allophonic variants brought about by /s/-aspiration, /n/-velarization, /r/-assibilation, and /r/-lambdacism.

The Glossary includes a list of all phonetic terms used in the text along with their definitions, and gives the chapters in which each term is discussed.

Additional resources:

• Instructor's manual
• Audio program

For further information about online audio materials and other ancillaries as they become available, please visit the publisher’s website.

A Note on "Standard" Language

The Spanish language is dialectally diverse, and choosing which dialectal features to present as “standard” in a pronunciation text is no easy task. This text adopts Mexican Spanish – specifically the inland variety associated with Mexico City – as standard. The decision to do so follows the tradition for Spanish language textbooks published in the United States and also acknowledges the demographic reality in this country: at the time of the 2000 National Census, 66% of the 33 million Latino residents of the United States were of Mexican origin. Thus, Mexican Spanish is the variety heard most frequently in verbal interactions in the United States. Although Mexican Americans herald from many regions other than the Distrito Federal, it is the variety spoken there that permeates Mexican popular culture and informs notions of “correctness” most fully.

The urban Mexican variety has the added advantage of being – for the most part – regionally neutral. This means that the essential phonetic features of Mexican Spanish tend to represent the “international” or “educated” dialect heard throughout urban areas in Latin America and reinforced generally in the broadcast media. By focusing on this regionally neutral urban dialect, the text aims to furnish the English speaker with the best possible access to Spanish as a world language, specifically for purposes of study, teaching, and employment. With the exception of the appendices on dialect variation, all phonemic and phonetic Spanish transcriptions reflect this “international” variety.

The English transcriptions adhere as much as possible to American Broadcast Standard, as this is the most regionally neutral variety of English spoken in the United States.