Quintana de Laya, C. & Laya, A. (1994). An introduction to the study of phonology. Caracas: FEDUPEL.

CONSONANT SOUNDS

VOICELESS BILABIAL STOP

/p/
Comparison with Spanish:
Spanish / p / is also voiceless and bilabial, but is not accompanied by the degree of aspiration which
characterizes English / p /. It is usually syllable initial, but it may appear at the end of a syllable if the next one
begins with a voiceless dental stop, e.g. “septimo”, “captura”. Spanish / p / rarely occurs in word final position,
and when it does, it is found in loan words: “musica pop”, “se le quemó el stop izquierdo”.
Native speakers who study EFL have great difficulty producing the aspirated variant of English / p /. Great
attention should be given to the pronunciation of this allophone, since the production of the [ p ] in all
environments will give the learner a very heavy foreign accent.
Compare the two p’s:
English Spanish
pore por
pester peste

VOICED BILABIAL STOP

/b/
Comparison with Spanish:
The English phoneme has only one important allophone, [ b ], while Spanish / b / has three:
[ b ]: voiced bilabial stop, identical to the [ b ] of English. It occurs in:
Initial position: banco, basura.
Preceded by [ m ]: tambaleante, cambiante, un buen día.
In medial position, followed by a consonant other that / l / or / r /: objeto, observa.
[ ß ]: devoiced bilabial fricative: In the rare instances in which it occurs in final position:
Molotov, Jacob.
[ ß ]: voiced bilabial fricative which occurs elsewhere: alba, larva, abeja.
The production of English / b / does not present many difficulties to Spanish speakers, though they must learn to
produce the sound in final position, where rarely occurs in Spanish. The teacher must insist that the students
pronounce the stop allophone in all environments, since they tend to produce the Spanish fricative allophone [ß]
in intervocalic position (sobbing, rabid).

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 VOICELESS ALVEOLAR STOP
/t/
Comparison with Spanish:
English / t / is alveolar, while Spanish / t / is dental in articulation. The Spanish sound is never aspirated nor it
becomes a flap between a stressed and an unstressed vowel. Spanish / t / is a phoneme with little variation in
phonetic shape. / t / is a consonantal sound whose mispronunciation by Spanish influence results in a heavy
accent, since in the early stages the learner will tend to produce the Spanish dental unaspirated stop in all
environments.
Compare the two t’s:
English Spanish
tea tí
two tú

VOICED ALVEOLAR STOP

/d/
Comparison with Spanish:
English / d / is alveolar, whereas Spanish / d / is dental. The Spanish speaker usually presents some difficulty in
learning the flap and glottal allophones of English / d /. The flap is part of the sound system of Spanish;
however, it is not an allophone of / t / or / d / but it functions as a separate phoneme, / ſ / (pero). Spanish / d / is
realized as:
[ d ] voiced dental stop: In initial position: día, drama.
After / n /: cuando, donde.
After / l /: falda, toldo.
[ δ ] devoiced dental fricative: In final position: verdad, fealdad, maldad. Many speakers drop / d / in this
environment.
[ δ ] voiced dental fricative: occurs elsewhere: moneda, hada, pardo, arduo.

VOICELESS VELAR STOP

/k/
Comparison with Spanish:
Spanish / k / is velar also, but unaspirated. In Spanish, / k / may appear at the end of a syllable, (acción), but
rarely in word final position. English / k / appears in a larger number of environments than Spanish / k /. When
learning English, the Spanish speaker will tend to produce the unaspirated variant in all environments, and will
tend to omit / k / when it appears in final position.

VOICED VELAR STOP

/g/
Comparison with Spanish:
English / g / has only the velar allophone, while the Spanish voiced velar stop has two allophones:
[ g ] the stop allophone: identical with that of English, which occurs in initial position:
gas, gota.
After velar nasal: mango, tengo, rango.
[ γ ] the velar fricative allophone: which occurs elsewhere: ruego, largo, hago, malgastar,
el gris, el grueso.

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 VOICELESS LABIODENTAL FRICATIVE
/f /
Comparison with Spanish:
English / f / is very similar to Spanish / f /, though the English sound is tenser and produced with a greater
degree of friction. Spanish speakers should pay attention to English / f / in final position, where it rarely occurs
in their native language. Spanish / f / occurs in this environment in loan words (staff, latuff). Students tend to
weaken the sound thus giving the word a Spanish-like pronunciation.
Compare the two f´s:
English Spanish
affair aferrar
staff staff
fowl fausto

VOICED LABIODENTAL FRICATIVE

/v/
Comparison with Spanish:
/ v / is alien to the Spanish phonological structure. In Spanish, words such as vello/bello are homophones. The
speaker and hearer depend on context for their interpretation. For this reason, the Spanish speaker will have
difficulty with the pronunciation of English pairs such as very/berry, and all those examples presented before.
The student will generally substitute / b / for / v /, being the mistake difficult to eradicate especially in medial
position.

VOICELESS DENTAL FRICATIVE

/θ/
Comparison with Spanish:
/ θ / is part of the sound system of Castilian Spanish, yet it does not occur in any dialect of American Spanish.
In Castilian Spanish, / θ / occurs in words with z: zorro, caza, or when c is followed by e or i: celos, canción.
Students generally have trouble with this sound in the early stages, when they are most likely to produce / s /
instead. The substitution of one sound for the other brings serious consequences since it makes changes in
meaning: think, sink; theme, seen.

VOICED DENTAL FRICATIVE

/ð /
Comparison with Spanish:
/ ð / presents difficulties to the Spanish speaker since in Spanish it does not function as a separate phoneme but
as an allophone of / d /. Although he produces a dental fricative in words like “encantado”, “merecido”, he is
not aware that this sound is part of his phonological inventory, due to the fact that speakers are only conscious
of the existence of contrastive units.
When Learning English, the Spanish speaker tends to substitute / d / for / ð / in all environments, and thus needs
intensive practice till he incorporates / ð / to his sound system.

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 VOICELESS ALVEOLAR FRICATIVE
/s/
Comparison with Spanish:
The Venezuelan / s / presents two variants:
[ s ]: voiceless alveolar variant, similar to the English sound: saco, salón, masa.
[ h ]: an aspiration which occurs before consonants or in final position in the pronunciation of most Venezuelan
speakers: postal, cuesta, de una vez.
When learning English, the student must learn to produce the alveolar sound in all environments, and must
make the sound somewhat longer and tenser than the Spanish / s /.
Compare the two s´s:
English Spanish
soccer saco
saloon salon
massacre masa

VOICED ALVEOLAR FRICATIVE

/z/
Comparison with Spanish:
/ z / is not part of the Spanish inventory of sounds, so the Spanish speaker must learn to produce this sound
when learning the foreign language. This sound causes serious difficulties to the learner due to the large number
of English words in which / z / is represented by the letter “s” in spelling: hasn´t, doesn’t, Jesus,etc. Thus the
student tends to substitute / s / for / z / whenever he finds an “s” in spelling. Those mispronunciations will give
the speaker a very heavy foreign accent, and will lead to misunderstandings in many cases.
Apart from giving the students the phonological rule presented earlier, very little aid can be given to them as to
when to pronounce / z / instead of / s /. This knowledge will come to them progressively as they become more
acquainted with the target language.

VOICELESS ALVEOPALATAL FRICATIVE

/∫/
Comparison with Spanish:
Spanish does not have a voiceless alveopalatal fricative sound, consequently, the Spanish speaker has to learn
how to produce this new sound. In the beginning, he will frequently try to substitute / t∫ / for / ∫ /, but he soon
gets rid of this habit. For instance, instead of saying “sheep” /  / he will say / t /. As can be seen, this is a
serious mistake since he is making a change in meaning.

VOICED ALVEOPALATAL FRICATIVE

/  /
Comparison with Spanish:
Our Venezuelan dialect does not have a voiced alveopalatal fricative among its sounds. When students
encounter this sound, they tend to produce its voiceless counterpart, / ∫ /.

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 VOICELESS GLOTTAL FRICATIVE
/h/
Comparison with Spanish:
Venezuelan students have no trouble producing English / h /, since their dialect of Spanish has an identical
sound. Compare how/jaula. The problem arises mainly in relation to the orthographic representation of the
sound. In Spanish, / h / is represented by the letters by the letters “j” and by “g” followed by “i” or “e”, whereas
in English it is always represented by the letter h. This letter is silent in Spanish. In the early stages, some
learners tend to omit the glottal fricative when pronouncing English words, but they soon generalize the
pronunciation of / h / to all words in which the letter h appears in spelling. Attention should be given then to the
pronunciation of exceptions.

VOICELESS ALVEOPALATAL AFFRICATE

/ t∫ /
Comparison with Spanish:
The English affricate / t∫ / is produced with more force and accompanied by a greater degree of friction than the
Spanish sound.
Compare:
English Spanish
check cheque
chore chorro
achieve archive

VOICED ALVEOPALATAL AFFRICATE

/ dʒ /
Comparison with Spanish:
Spanish also has a voiced alveopalatal affricate among its sounds, however, it does not functions as a separate
phoneme as in English, but as an allophone of the palatal fricative phoneme / y/.
Spanish /y / presents the following phonetic variants:
[ ]: voiced alveopalatal affricate which occurs in word initial position, and in syllable initial position
preceded by [ n ] or [ l ]: yema, lluvia, ya, conyuge, inyeccion, enyesado, el yeso, el yerno.
[ y ]: which occurs elsewhere: raya, rastrillo, payaso, llave.
In word initial position, [ y ] and [  ] are in free variation, [ ] being more typical of slow, emphatic
pronunciations.

VOICED BILABIAL NASAL

/m/
Comparison with Spanish:
The articulation of the English bilabial nasal should present no difficulty to Spanish speakers since there is also
a bilabial nasal in Spanish. The problem seems to arise only in final position, in which the Spanish learner tends
to produce [ ŋ ] instead of [ m ], e.g. “I am a boy”. This is due to the fact that [ ŋ ] is the nasal that most speakers
of Venezuelan Spanish pronounce in final position. This phenomenon is commonly observed in Spanish in
relation to the pronunciation of words of Latin origin with a final / m /: curriculum, memorandum, pensum, Te
Deum, which native speakers generally pronounce with a final velar nasal.

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 VOICED ALVEOLAR NASAL
/n/
Comparison with Spanish:
Spanish also presents an alveolar nasal. As it happens with the English consonant, the articulation of Spanish /n/
is also influenced by neighboring sounds, e.g:
 When followed by a labiodental sound, it may become labiodental: enfriar, infierno, enfermera, confuso.
 Before a dental sound it becomes dental: cuanta, cuando.
 Word final / n / frequently assimilates to a following word initial bilabial or velar consonant, being realized
as [ m ] or [ ŋ ]: ten paciencia, ven mañana, cien carros.
[m] [m] [ ŋ ]
The Spanish speaker will have to pay attention to words ending in / n / since he will tend to substitute an [ ŋ ]
in this position.

VOICED VELAR NASAL

/ŋ/
Comparison with Spanish:
/ n / and / ŋ / are separate phonemes in English, but not in Spanish. In Spanish the velar nasal functions as an
allophone of / n /. This variant occurs before velars (tango, banquete) and in final position, where it may occurs
in free variation with [ n ] (cien, Carmen).
Through Spanish speakers have [ ŋ ] as part of their sound system, they still have some difficulty with the
English sound due to the difference in spelling in English and in Spanish. Care should be taken to make the
students pronounce the the -ing morpheme termination as [  ] and not as [ ŋg ].
Spanish palatal nasal / л /:
Apart from the bilabial and alveolar morphemes studied previously, Spanish presents another nasal
phoneme /л/, which voiced and palatal. A similar sound does not occur in English: Spanish / л /is produced
by a complete closure between the front of the tongue and the palate, the velum being lowered, and the air
escaping through the nasal cavity. This sound is generally found in word initial position: ñame, ñato, ñema; and
between vowel sounds: rebaño, riñon, añadir.
The palatal nasal has a low frequency of occurrence in Spanish.

VOICED ALVEOLAR LATERAL

/l/
Comparison with Spanish:
In Venezuelan Spanish we only find one lateral phoneme. This is the voiced alveolar lateral / l /. Spanish / l / is
clear. As Venezuelan Speakers do not have a dark l in their dialect, they usually pronounce a clear l in all those
environments in which the dark l occurs in English, sounding extremely foreign. An easy way to lead students
towards the correct articulation of [  ] is to place the sound in the learners’ own language. Students are usually
very good at imitating foreign accents, so pronouncing a sentence like “Manuel y Miguel hicieron aquel cartel”
with an English like pronunciation, will usually help.
The articulation of Spanish / l / is also susceptible of modification by a neighboring sound, e.g. when followed
by / t, d /, it becomes dentals rather than alveolar: salto, escolta, pìldora, maldecir.

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 VOICED RETROFLEX APPROXIMANT
/r/
Comparison with Spanish:
In Spanish, there are two r-phonemes:
/ ſ /: the flap, which is pronounce when we find a single r in spelling which is not word initial position or
preceded by /n, l, s /: para, coral, siempre, corto.
When the r-sound occurs in word final position, it is usually pronounced as a fricative r which we will
symbolize as [ ]. This sound produced by the approach of the tip of the tongue toward the alveolar ridge,
without coming into contact with it. If a contact does occur, no vibrations are produced. Examples oh this
variant are found in words such as: mujer, huir, color.
/ r /: The trill, which is represented by r or rr in spelling.
 Word initial position: Ruben, reza, rama.
 Medial position preceded by /n, l, s /: Enrique, alrededor, desraizar, Israel.
 Medial position represented byby rr: parra, corral, tierra, torre.

It is important to notice that when two r- morphemes of Spanish are not in intervocalic position, the contrast
existing in other positions is neutralized; in other words, the opposition existing between these two phonemes is
lost. For example, the contrast between / ſ / and / r / in “pero” and “perro” is crucial, but the contrast is lost or
neutralized in cases like “tejer”, “carta”, “mojar”, “cargo”, where the substitution of one phoneme for the other
will make no meaning differences.

VOICED PALATAL SEMIVOWEL

/j/
Comparison with Spanish:
In Spanish we also have a sound very similar to the English semivowel. This Spanish [ j ] functions as an
allophone of the vowel / i /. We find this sound in diphthongs starting with / i /, for instance in /ia, ie, io, iu /.
Compare:
English Spanish
yard asiático
yes pies
suit ciudad
york murió

Native Spanish speakers usually mispronounce English / j / when it is orthographically represented by the letter
y, since Spanish words are spelled with initial, are pronounce with the palatal fricative in non-emphatic speech.
They tend to pronounce words like “yes”, “you”, as // and //.

VOICED LABIOVELAR SEMIVOWEL

/w/
Comparison with Spanish:
There is in Spanish a labiovelar sound which matches closely the English / w /. The Spanish [ w ] functions as
an allophone of / u /. English and Spanish w’s are both labial, velar, and gliding; but in defining the English
phoneme the labial quality is more important. A clear illustration of this difference is the way in which nasals

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are assimilated before / w / in each language: in English, the word “sandwich” is pronounced by some speakers
[]; in Spanish, the same word (borrowed) is pronounced by most speakers []. Another example oh
this importance of the velar quality of the Spanish [ w ] is that in non-standard pronunciation you hear “guevos”
[gweos] for “huevos”, guesos [gwesos] for “huesos”.

Among Venezuelan learners of EFL we can observe the tendency to substitute a / g / for / w / when the
labiovelar semivowel occurs in word initial position followed by a high back vowel. For instance, instead of
saying “wood” //, they say “good” /  /, instead of women / ♀ /, they say /♀ /. Another mistake
observed is the introduction of / g / before word initial / w /: instead of saying “window” /  /, they
say / /, and instead of saying “when” / wen /, they say /gwen /.

Compare the two glides:

English Spanish
west hueste
wave huevo
wake hueca