Spanish aspiration (ep. 25)

Bienvenido o bienvenida, my dear beginner!

In the previous podcast, you heard one of the most difficult sounds in Spanish: the Spanish velarization sound /X/ that you must pronounced everytime that you find a word written with «J» (jota, like, for example: JAMÓN, EJEMPLO, JIRAFA, JOTA, JUGAR) or with G+E or plus +I, for example GITANO (gipsy) or GENERAL (general).

But, there is other similar sound called «aspiration» and its pronunced in some areas of south of Spain and America…

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Bienvenido o bienvenida, my dear beginner!

This sound is called «aspiración» or aspiration. This sound is the deeper sound in the Spanish standard variation.

Here, we must make a variety distintion between the Spanish aspiration between northen variaton of Spain and the aspiration that you can find in America and some parts of the south of Spain like Andalucía or the Canary Islands.

In the north of Spain, its a strong aspiration and in the other parts is bit more weak. For example, if we want to say «example» in the northest variation will be EJEMPLO and in the America or in the south of Spain it would be UN EJEMPLO, very similar to the aspiration in English like for example Happy.

Por lo tanto, if you want to pronounce it as in America or the south of Spain, try to do it as English: a weak aspiration. But if you want to pronounce it as in the northest of Spain, you will have to do it, sorry for the example, as if you split on the street: SOUND.

But please, don’t split. It’s not good manners. It’s just want to give a good EJEMPLO about this difficult sound in Spanish.