New students of the Spanish language tend to mistakenly pronounce the letter ‘h’. Remember this letter in Spanish is silent. Any time you come across a word that contains this letter, you will find it at the beginning or in the middle of a word. When you see it, ignore it, move on to the next letter, the vowel, and pronounce that vowel.
Por ejemplo (For example): hotel… Did I hear something like ‘jotel’? Or maybe something like ‘otel’? That’s right! The sound is more like the second option.
Following the example of the previous word, you now should be able to read hambre, huevos, halcón. How about the word almohada? Did you struggle with this word? Remember to pronounce every vowel. There are only a couple of cases when the vowel u is silent, and those are with the following combinations que / qui / gui / gue.
But how about letter J? Well, whenever you encounter letter J in a Spanish word, then think of the sound of letter H next to a vowel in English. Saying that, let’s see if you can pronounce these words correctly: jamón, jabón, joven. Did those words sound like the letter H in English (ha, ho)? If yes, then you used the correct pronunciation.
Sometimes you can get away with using the wrong pronunciation, but remember it’s not always the case, plus it is always nice to hear someone making a conscious effort to pronounce words correctly.
Don’t rush your words trying to sound like a native speaker, believe me, I had done that when learning English. If your Spanish isn’t that good yet, people may struggle to understand you!
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