PHONETIC ANALYSIS AND TROUBLESHOOTING

Transcribe the sentence below and discuss the pronunciation

problems it may pose to Spanish learners. Remember that
your explanations should include correction techniques.

THE YOB STOLE THE PURSE .

• /ð/
1. An error typical of Spanish speakers is to pronounce the fricative /ð/ as if it were a
dental /d/, since these sounds are not separate phonemes in Spanish. So the and then
are often realised as /de/ and /den/ (den!). In order to help with this problem, the
student should be aware that Spanish does have the [ð] sound as an allophone of /d/
when it occurs in intervocalic position, as in the words hada [aða] and codo [koðo]. At
this point some practice in context, i.e., using the sounds /ð/ and /d/ in the same
sentence, may be in order so that the student gets used to changing from one phoneme
to another. The traditional favourite is The day they died /ð de ðe dad/.

2. One problem for Spanish learners of English is that they often tend to give full value
to unstressed syllables, particularly those which contain the unstressed // sound. Thus,
the definite article is often realised as /ðe/. The commonest variety of schwa is between
half-close and half-open, central and unrounded, and, therefore, it should be
distinguished from the Spanish /e/, which is much fronter. One possible solution is to
ask the learners to pronounce /e/, then /o/, then a continuous sound that slides from /e/
to /o/, and stop part-way along, isolating the sound they are making and pronouncing it
without unnatural lip-rounding. If it sounds too much like /o/, they need to go back; if
it sounds too much like /e/, they need to go further. With trial and error, they should be
able to stop at the point where the slide passes through //, thus making the typical
hesitation noise in English.
• /jb/
1. Many Spanish students often confuse the sounds // and /j/, as they are not separate
phonemes in Spanish. So yob and yet tend to be realised as /b/ (job) and /et/ (jet).
One possible solution is to ask them to think of the initial sound as /i/ and to work
actively on this with particular attention to lip position. They should begin by
pronouncing /i/ with spread lips and to hold this sound for a few seconds before
adding /b/. This should be done several times, each time shortening the length of the
initial /i/ sound until the learners have a satisfactory /jb/

2. The back open vowel // differs from Spanish /o/ in that it is pronounced with open
lip-rounding, while the Spanish phoneme is just a bit closer and is pronounced with
close lip-rounding. This sound can be elicited by producing an opener allophone of
Spanish /o/, which can be found in the word coro.

3. The only problem associated with the pronunciation of the voiced stop /b/ is that in
Spanish this consonant does not occur in word-final position, and the Spanish speaker
usually tends to realize it as a fricative [], as in the word bobo [boo]. The student
should therefore be aware that this latter sound is foreign to English speech.
• /stl/
1. When Spanish speakers learn English, they must learn to pronounce sequences
defined as ‘impossible’ by the syllable structure conditions of the mother tongue.
English has word-initial consonant clusters of the form /st-/ and /sp-/, as in stole and
Spain, which Spanish does not have, and students frequently handle these clusters by
inserting an extra /e/ before them. Thus stole is realised as /estl/. One remedy is to
ask the learners to produce a long /s/ in isolation (hissing like a snake!) and then to add
the rest of the word: /ssssstl/. Another possible remedy is to work on linking the last
sound of the preceding word to the initial /s/ of the cluster. Thus, in the sentence The
yob stole..., we could ask the student to say yobs followed by -tole.

2. In Spanish the phonemes /t/ and /d/ are dental rather than alveolar, as they are in RP.
Thus /t/ and /d/ are pronounced with the tip of the tongue lightly touching the back of
the upper teeth rather than making contact with the alveolar ridge behind the upper
teeth. This has the effect of making /t/ and /d/ sound very soft, like a fricative rather
than a stop. One solution is simply to point out the place of articulation in English on a
mouth diagram and say that the tongue touches the alveolar ridge rather than the teeth.

3. The back-closing diphthong // should present little difficulty, but it should not be
equated with the Spanish near-equivalent /ou/. The first element may be realised with a
vowel of the Spanish o-quality, since the original mid-central quality of RP // now
sounds somewhat affected; yet the finishing point must not exceed the half-close level.

4. The realization of English /l/ poses no problem. However, care must be taken to
pronounce the velar postvocalic allophone [], which does not exist in Spanish. Given
that this variant has a u-quality, the student should practise this sound with words
containing the sequence [-] (full, bull, pull, etc.), which are pronounced with a very
slight retraction of the tongue.
• /ps/
1. Here the most common problem seems to lie in the absence of an aspiration when
trying to pronounce /p/ in initial position. A typical error is something that may sound
like /bs/, and this mistake is extremely noticeable because the aspiration is one of the
ways in which the stop is recognized as being a /p/ rather than a /b/. One solution is to
ask learners to puff hard when pronouncing this consonant. A sheet of paper can also
be used to demonstrate the importance of the amount of air expelled. The student
should hold the sheet about 5 centimetres in front of his or her face, and say the sound
[p]. The sheet of paper will normally move quite noticeably.

2. As to the central vowel phoneme, we can apply the same procedure as in / / (see
above), but the resulting sound should be slightly longer. In order to avoid any r-
colouring, the sound must be practised with the tongue-tip behind the lower teeth.

3. The only articulatory difference between the Spanish and the English /s/ is that the
former is apical (that is, the stricture is made with the tongue-tip and the alveolar
ridge), whereas the latter is made with the blade. Although this difference is hardly
noticeable, the student should practise the /s/-// opposition so as to ensure that the
places of articulation are kept distinct.