Comentario sobre una grabacion
 

I had to record a voice recording of my hobbies and my professor critiqued it. I think I understand it for the most part but I don't really understand what a "shwa" is, even when I googled it in English it's still difficult to understand. The 3rd sentence, I'm assuming it's just a statement. Also, the word "vocales", I assume it stands for Vowels or the sound it makes, which maybe somewhat synonymous with the idea.

From dictionary: Schwa - is the name for the most common sound in English. It is a weak, unstressed sound and it occurs in many words. It is often the sound in grammar words such as articles and prepositions. Getting the schwa sound correct is a good way of making your pronunciation more accurate and natural.

For /e/ and /a/ avoid the neutral pronounciation of English (shwa????). Also, when there are two vowels?vocals? together, it is necessary to pronounce them in most fluid manner without making a light pause between them.

-In occasions, the consonant /d/, you pronounce it like in English, especially when it is between vowels/vocals?
(is this a statement that I unintentionally pronounce it like English or stating that I should pronounce it strong like English? My D and R pronounciations are sometimes very similar.)
-/k/, /p/. you pronounce them with aspiration, in Spanish, we don't do this.

I've mentioned before that there are about two Spanish consonants that we American English speakers pronounce the same way as the Spanish equivalent. The other consonants AND vowels are all pronounced differently than they are in American English.

In most of the world, a 'd' between vowels is pronounced like the 'th' in 'the'.

The schwa sound (note the more common spelling) is represented by IPA /ə/. It is abundantly used in English, but has no place in Spanish (and a lot of other languages). English has 19 vowel sounds. Spanish has five.
Spanish vowels are pure and must be pronounced that way, no matter where they appear in a word.

When you correctly pronounce the Spanish consonants 'c', 'g', 'p', 'd' and 't', you'll be surprised at how many English speakers will comment that you're saying another American English consonant. The aspiration your professor spoke of is actually a plosive sound. That sound is not found in Spanish.

Adding a little note to the "schwa" difficulty:


A Mexican friend of mine went to a record store in Chicago, and he wanted music by Harry McClintock; his English was slightly broken and his accent didn't help much, so the clerk asked him again what he wanted. My friend then went "maaahcliiinnntoohk". The clerk then said: "¿Usted es de México? Venga, las grabaciones históricas están aquí." Happy ending, but hard way to see how much he still had to learn.

I think your schwa thing is the same problem: Mexicans tend to make no difference between "sheep" and "ship" or between "must" and "most", because our vowels don't have any nuances. Similarly, American Spanish learners tend to pronounce vowels most of the time the way they would sound in English, which for our ears, that's as if most of them were /ə/ instead of a, e, i, o, u.
When they say something like "concierto", they'll probably pronounce most of the word as they would in English, then we can't recognize the first "o" and it's likely that the last "o" will be barely audible.
That's why they change the vowels of a word when they write (like when "carretera" becomes something like "corretera"), or change a verb even when they know the right conjugation (like saying "tú quieras agua" instead of "tú quieres agua").
Since the speaker provides vowels with the nuances they usually have in his/her native tongue, the sounds become unrecognizable for the Mexican listener. :thinking:

It's all a matter of dedication and practice. Most of us will never completely lose our foreign accents, but there are plenty of rewards when we have the certainty that we're easily understood. ;)



My :twocents: