subject: How To Begin Learning Spanish [print this page] In the excitement of embarking on learning a new language, it is often tempting to jump right in and begin memorizing words and useful phrases. But before doing this, you can save yourself an enormous amount of work if you take a few weeks to master Spanish pronunciation.
Spanish pronunciation is incredibly easy to master because it follows simple rules that never deviate. These rules include:
1) how to make the sounds of the individual letters, and
2) where to place the stress in words.
Once you know these rules, you can look at any word in Spanish and pronounce it correctly, even if you do not know the meaning of the word. Having mastered basic pronunciation, you will find building vocabulary to be much easier.
To master pronunciation, it is important to hear examples of how the letters are pronounced. Fortunately there are plenty of free online programs that allows you to do this. Just google "spanish pronunciation" and you will find several free online resources. The first one that comes up is really good. www.StudySpanish.com has 50 lessons for learning and practicing pronunciation. Each letter is explained and you can hear how they sound with audio samples.
Once you've mastered basic Spanish pronunciation, you will feel confident moving forward in your studies. Now that you know how to pronounce Spanish, you can move on to grammar and vocabulary building with much more ease. And you'll be well on your way to sounding like a native Spanish speaker and losing the "gringo" accent.
