[Villa]

Originally Posted by Zarnium

Eh... not quite that simple for me, because there are so few Spanish-speaking people where I live. I'm trying to copy my teacher's east-central Spain accent because I hear it the most often, and because I don't want to spend time thinking about "standard" pronunciations during lessons. If she says "atenthión," I'd rather just copy her instead of mentally replacing the th with an s. Plus, I want to at least attempt to sound like a native speaker of some kind rather than having a generic American accent.

It's not the way the students in the Spanish club talk, though, and I get the feeling they think my way of speaking is a bit ridiculous. They're way more into Latin America. However, I don't want to try to copy the pronunciation of anyone who's not a native speaker. (And really, they're not mean or standoffish or anything. I'm just a little concerned that picking up a funny accent will be a barrier, they all sort of chuckle when I say something like "grathias.")

What exactly are the big no-nos for English speakers as far as pronunciation goes? From observing the other students and comparing them to my teacher, beyond the ceceo difference, they seem to:

-pronounce d's very sharply, without much or any of a the sound.
-pronounce vowels as distinct syllables instead of running them together. (Together with the previous one, they tend to say "ah-dee-os" instead of "athyos" like my teacher says, and like my textbook says to.)
-Pronounce j's exactly like an English h. (A guy from Guatemala, the only native speaker in the group did this too, so I'm thinking that that the strength of the j sound isn't that consistent across accents.)
-Pronounce v's and b's exactly like an English b.

Not that I'm knocking them; their vocabulary and word choice appears to be excellent, and native Spanish-speaking people are obviously able to understand them just fine. I know there's a very wide range of native pronunciation too.

I recorded my Mexican history class when I went to school in Mexico. I then listened to those recordings over and over again for a few years. People would tell me I sounded like a university professor with a perfect educated Mexican accent when I would speak Spanish. I suggest you record your classes and listen to them a lot. Will your teacher let you record her talking? I also can imitate the voices of Spanish speaking actors from the novelas I watch.