Friends and me hanging on the bitch in Santa Barbara

After hearing from my students one too many times, “Jenny, do you live on the bitch in California?” I’ve decided to focus on teaching correct English (well, West-Coast American English, anyway) pronunciation. It started easily enough–I showed them how to stretch their cheeks far and wide to make a long ‘e’ sound, “beach,” and basically said, “anything shorter than that long vowel sound, and you’ll be saying the equivalent of prostitute.” (But no, I did not exemplify the shorter sound.)

But teaching pronunciation is a mighty task, especially with older students, as the “window of acquisition” (when it’s easiest for your tongue to develop the muscles to make new sounds) is rapidly closing. So I’ll be happy if I see only moderate improvements. My number one goal is for every student to be able to say, “I am from SPAIN” (the stereotype of a Spanish-speaker talking in English is to add an ‘e’ before ‘s’ sounds, so the result is “I am from ESPAIN”). We devoted 10 minutes of class to this, and most students achieved relative success. Of course, since we’re in the independence-hungry city of Bilbao, there’s always one rebel in the class who, when asked “Where are you from?” defiantly replies, “I AM NOT FROM ESPAIN, I AM FROM BASQUE COUNTRY!” Be that as it may, your accent still needs work.

A while back I showed a video of the perils of poor pronunciation. Here is another one that a Basque friend showed me. . . . seriously hilarious, if not a bit un-PC.

About The Author

Jenny

Jenny Marshall studied Language, Culture, and Society at the University of California Santa Barbara, and now teaches English in Spain. Here she writes about the intersection of language and culture, and lives a life translated by travel.