If after years of studying Spanish your pronunciation still sucks, finding out your "Turquoise Sounds" may help you reduce your gringo accent
Before you waste your time scrolling, there are 3 important things I want you to know.
The first one:
- I don’t have any official studies related to Teaching Spanish.
- I don’t speak flawless English, and
- You may see mistakes in this text.
If this is a problem for you, you shouldn’t continue reading.
The second one:
People who speak good Spanish didn’t born with a special gift for learning languages or a good ear.
That’s a myth.
There’s something anybody with an IQ higher than a fly could start doing right now to speak better Spanish.
I’ll explain what in this page.
The third one:
If you think you’ve already tried everything to improve your pronunciation but you don’t see results, discovering the Turquoise Sounds may be your last bullet.
And I say “last”, not because there aren’t more options (there are always more options) but because you won’t need them.
A pronunciation lesson I learned while a man was buying a pair of sneakers
A man entered a shop.
He wanted to buy a pair of sneakers to match his hoodie. He looked around, and immediately, he felt in love with a pair exhibited on the wall.
– Can I try those green sneakers on? – he asked the shop attendant.
– Sure, what size?
– 43.
The shop attendant searched and gave him a box.
The man opened the box.
– Excuse me, these are not the sneakers I asked for.
The attendant, confused said:
– I’m sorry, these are the only green sneakers we have.
The man walked away, took one of the sneakers he saw on the wall, and showed it to her.
– Ahhhh!!! This!!! – she laughed. – This is turquoise!
But the turquoise color wasn’t in the spectrum of colors of this guy.
For him, it was either green or blue.
Turquoise didn’t exist.
And that had consequences:
- He asked for the wrong sneakers.
- He made the busy attendant work double.
- He also made an extra effort to stand up, go to grab the sneaker he meant, and come back to show it to the lady.
- Although the lady was very kind, he felt awkward when she pointed out the right color of the sneaker.
Something similar happens inside our brain when we speak a foreign language with a thick accent
So what's a Turquoise Sound?
Look at the following image.
It shows a green, a blue, and a turquoise sound.
Explanation of the image:
When I heard the word “apple” (pronounced [æ]pple), my brain needed to decide whether that word was pronounced “[a]pple” or “[e]pple”.
[a] or [e]?
Green or blue?
The turquoise sound [æ] didn’t exist in my brain (so it wasn’t an option).
(Yet).
that give you aways as a gringo,
and make the conversation hard to follow.
So when we say words that contained any of our turquoise sounds, we often get that look that says…
"I have no idea what you're trying to say"
Most of the time, we don’t notice the difference between what we say, and the correct pronunciation.
It’s like these colored pencils:
(Do you think they are the same?)
Probably you didn’t see that all of them, except for one, are different.
Because the difference is very subtle.
But what looks almost the same, could show up totally different when we draw.
And the same happens with our pronunciation.
A game to improve your speaking skills
Situation:
If I had never been surrounded by natives, I’d have been the happiest person on earth with my B1 (written/reading) level.
Luckily, that didn’t happen.
Like most people, I studied English
- at school,
- in academies, and
- with private tutors (some of them were native speakers),
After 10 years, (when I started speaking with natives on a daily basis in the USA) I realized that all that people could see, were lots of pronunciation errors that were never corrected.
I was young (and more stubborn than ashamed).
And I wanted to have fun so nothing was not gonna stop me.
What did I do to improve my pronunciation?
I played the following game.
They had fun hearing a foolish Spaniard pronouncing "very easy words" as if I had a speech disorder
When my friends and family didn’t understand me, I asked them to repeat what I said. And I repeated after them, like a parrot.
1, 2, 3…17 times.
Until they told me I did well.
Of course, as adults, we can’t do this with everybody. For most people, it would be boring. Or annoying.
But for me and my friends, it was like a game:
They had fun hearing a foolish Spaniard pronouncing “very easy words” as if I had a speech disorder.
And I had fun mimicking them.
After a couple of weeks of repeating like a parrot -for at least 5 hours a day-, I learned more than in the last years:
- The conversations started to flow. On both sides. I never felt ashamed of making mistakes, but not having to repeat myself boosted my confidence and motivation.
- I wasn't interrupted being asked "What's that?" every 2 sentences (maybe it occurred every 20 sentences). So I started to have solid conversations (as solid as a teenager can have) and enjoy sharing stories.
- I was able to interact more with the real world, I got to connect with the locals on a deeper level, and I felt part of the group.
I was focused on improving my speaking skills, but I got something else with that game.
2×1.
When I improved my pronunciation, I automatically improved my listening skills
- Decoding fast-taking natives wasn't such an effort anymore. Sure I didn't understand everything yet, but I was more focused on hearing their adventures than trying to figure out what they just said.
- I understood the radio, I understood a great part of the dialog in the movies, and the lyrics of songs I've heard 2987319 times before made sense for the first time.
At that time I didn’t know what or which my Turquoise Sounds were.
I just repeated random words and sentences, without focusing on any specific sound.
However, I had a lot of fun, time to practice, and direct feedback from natives all day long.
This is the best way I know to improve your pronunciation and anybody can do it
Listen, repeat, feedback.
It just takes (quite a lot of) time if you do it as I did (repeating random sentences and words, without on what specific sounds you need to focus).
What now? (The X-Ray Pronunciation Diagnosis)
If you have time,
or you only learn Spanish for fun,
you may want to try the previous exercise, and repeat random sentences you hear in podcasts, Youtube videos or songs, without focussing on any in particular sound.
Or you can surf the net to find more drills to improve your pronunciation in Spanish.
But if you are a busy person,
you think you’ve already tried everything or reached the roof of your pronunciation,
or you need Spanish at a professional level…
you may want to find out which are your Turquoise Sounds to go straing to the point.
- Detect your Turquoise Sounds (those sounds that make it difficult for people to enjoy a conversation with you). Because it doesn't matter how interesting you are, if people have to put effort to decode what you're saying, they start losing interest in that you're saying.
- As Lord Kelvin said: "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it". Discover the percentage of failure and success of every individual Spanish sound. And your total accuracy compared to a native.
- The PDF doccument will snitch the sounds you need to fix in a visual way. With pictures, graphics, and colors. To easily see on what you need to focus and dance through all other distractions.
- Mouth positioning and tips for your particular case, so that you know whats happening inside your mouth, why you don't get the native sound and how to place your mouth.
- It takes only 10 minutes of your time.
Will the X-Ray Diagnosis tell me how well (or bad) I pronounce each of the 33 Spanish Sounds, so that I can practice my Spanish more efficienly?
Yes, with a quick look at your Pronunciation Radiography you will know exactly:
How accurate is each sound you produce (with colors, charts and percentages), which sounds are screaming for your help to fix them (and stop hearing the annoying “Can you repeat that?”), what is the problem with each one of the sounds…
And stop wasting time by trying to improve areas you don’t need.
**Secure payment with card or Cash App Pay**
True story of a dry trip to Costa Rica
(and why this service is called X-Ray: Pronunciation Diagnosis)
A friend went on a trip to Costa Rica, and she fell down.
She couldn’t walk long distances or swim in the sea because she had a cast. It could’ve been worse… – she said to herself.
Until she arrived in Madrid, and they made an X-Ray radiography.
(Ohhh, surprise!!)
The bone was never broken.
She could’ve swum in the sea, visited all the places she had planned, and avoided the muscles of her leg weakening unnecessarily because she didn’t need a cast.
A radiography allows to see the problems you can’t see with the naked eye.
That’s the idea of the X-Ray Pronunciation Diagnosis:
To prevent unnecessary efforts, and make you enjoy your journey while focussing on what you really need.
If you could see a radiography of your pronunciation, what would you see? Do/did you wear an unnecessary cast?
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FAQ
If you have a lot of free time don’t buy. This is a shortcut.
It’s thought for busy people who need feedback from a native to go straight to the point when they practice.
And to have an Before&After picture, like people take do when they start a diet and go to gym. To see where you are, your improvements and keep up your motivation when you see the results.
There is 1 thing you need to do before I can shoot the X-Rays.
You’ll know when you buy.
Don’t worry, they take less than 10 minutes.
For me, it’ll take a little longer (up to 3 working days) since I need to analyze each sound, one by one. Several times. In different contexts.
There are some sounds you always pronounce the same way (be it good or bad).
But there will be other sounds that you may pronounce right or wrong depending on the moment or the sounds around.
By analyzing each sound in different contexts you have a more real diagnosis. You will see (with percentages and visual charts) how accurate you pronounce each of the 33 sounds of Spanish.
And how good you are at joining sounds as natives do.
No.
It’d be strange that you have any doubt about the document, is so visual, that even a Primary-school child could understand it.
In any case, if you have any doubt, just tell me and I’ll explain whatever you need.
The X-Ray Pronunciation Diagnosis doesn’t include exercise corrections.
All you need to know where to focus the next time you practice your Spanish, is in the document.
You’ll find an analysis of each and every sound, how close your pronunciation is to native pronunciation, and whats the problem with each of your broken sounds.
If you need to see how you are improving, you can buy another X Ray Pronunciation Diagnostic in a few months.
Before a doctor decides the correct treatment, he needs to know what is the Diagnosis.
If you want to cure your pronunciation, knowing your Diagnosis is probably a good investment.
Unless you decide not to open the doccument, and put your Pronunciation Diagnosis in the same folder where you save the pictures you have with your ex-girlfriend.
Or you have a lot of time or learn Spanish just for fun.
In that case, don’y buy.
**Secure payment with card or Cash App Pay**
