The Consonant Sounds of Spanish

Fine tuning the production of Spanish consonant “sounds” using basic consonant-vowel graphemes.

Initial Exercises

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Exercise Two

Listen carefully and repeat.

Consonant-Vowel Graphemes	Audio
B R E
D R E
F R E
G R E
K R E
P R E
S R E
T R E
V R E

Try making a recording of yourself to compare your pronunciation with the examples.

Exercise Three

Listen carefully and repeat.

Consonant-Vowel Graphemes	Audio
B R I
D R I
F R I
G R I
K R I
P R I
S R I
T R I
V R I

Reminder for Exercise Three:

Try making a recording of yourself to compare your pronunciation with the examples.

Exercise Four

Listen carefully and repeat.

Consonant-Vowel Graphemes	Audio
B R O
D R O
F R O
G R O
K R O
P R O
S R O
T R O
V R O

Try making a recording of yourself to compare your pronunciation with the examples.

Exercise Five

Listen carefully and repeat.

Consonant-Vowel Graphemes	Audio
B R U
D R U
F R U
G R U
K R U
P R U
S R U
T R U
V R U

Try making a recording of yourself to compare your pronunciation with the examples.

Exercise Six

Listen carefully and repeat.

Consonant-Vowel Graphemes	Audio
R A
RR A
R E
RR E
R I
RR I
R O
RR O
R U
RR U

Reminder for Exercise Six:

Try making a recording of yourself to compare your pronunciation with the examples.

Exercise Seven

Listen carefully and repeat.

Consonant-Vowel Graphemes	Audio
Ñ A
ÑA ÑA
Ñ E
ÑE ÑA
Ñ I
ÑI ÑA
Ñ O
ÑO ÑA
Ñ U
ÑU ÑA

Try making a recording of yourself to compare your pronunciation with the examples.

Exercise Eight

Listen carefully and repeat.

Consonant-Vowel Graphemes	Audio
RR A RA
RRA RE
RR A RI
RR A RO
RR A RU

Try making a recording of yourself to compare your pronunciation with the examples.

The whole point of exercises six and eight is to exercise what oftentimes is considered the toughest consonant sound challenge that Spanish poses for English Speakers: THE ‘R’.

The “R” is pronounced in a completely different manner in Spanish and as we will see in the next few paragraphs, it is one of FIVE consonant sounds that we need to learn to identify and pronounce.

Close your eyes and think where your tongue is when you are saying an R in English. It is set in the back of the roof [the palate] and the tip of your tongue comes up and gets close to the roof of the mouth. Think of words like:

Robert – Rag – Rope – Ringo – Rest – Roam – Render -Wring

Now let’s see what happens with Spanish.

What happens inside our mouth when we say R in Spanish? (Remember the name of the letter in the alphabet is “eRRe”).

Well, the tip of the tongue comes up to the roof of the mouth and sits against the hard palate about 1 to 3 millimeters behind your front teeth, where it flattens and produces a vibration by letting air pass through the lifted tip of the tongue. At first it might be difficult for you because you have never before done something like this as a speaker of the English language.