Mastering The Spanish Accent - The Andalusian Accent
The Andalusian Accent
Have you been trying to nail a specific Spanish accent? Wish you could pass as a local when speaking Spanish fluently? Can’t master the Andalusian accent? There certainly comes a time in your language learning journey when you notice something is missing… You don’t sound quite right.
It can be frustrating when you just can’t manage a certain pronunciation. You might long to sound like the native speaker you’re having a conversation with, but there’s so much more than one Spanish accent. There are many, and the Andalusian accent is just one.
For anyone who has ever lived in Sevilla searching for the best way to learn Spanish, or anywhere in the South of Spain, you may have noticed a distinct language variation in the pronunciation of Spanish. Though of course there are many dialectical differences across Spanish speaking countries, the South of Spain seems to have a greater number of noticeable differences than many of the other Spanish dialects.
What Is The Andalusian Accent?
If your goal is to achieve the ideal Spanish accent, you first need to figure out which dialect you want to master fully. There are several types of Spanish dialects, and they all have different pronunciation rules. The truth is - you could spend decades trying to learn every dialect in Spanish, but you need a purpose.
Are you trying to sound more like the native speakers around you? Or perhaps you want to go further than the basics of conversational fluency. Either way, mastering the Spanish accent starts by understanding how expansive the Spanish language can be.
Here are the dialects spoken throughout Spain:
Castilian
Andalusian
Murcian
Llanito
Other Smaller Dialects
When it comes to the Andalusian accent, we can talk specifics. Here in the South, we speak the Andalusian dialect. It has a few noticeable pronunciation differences, namely:
Deletion of consonants 'd' and 'r'
Aspiration of 's' at the end of words
Deletion of final consonant of words
This makes learning standard Spanish in Southern Spain particularly difficult. But, if the Andalusian accent is your end goal, then there are a few things to remember during your next conversation.
A look at speaker dispersion of major languages across continents
How To Master The Andalusian Accent
You’ll hear the Andalusian accent most often in the Southern most regions of Spain, but it’s not unusual to hear it a little further afield. While it’s not as popular as the Castillian Spanish dialect, Andalusian still has a range of identifiers you can learn to listen out for and include in your own speech.
The biggest factor that makes the Andalusian accent so recognisable is that it doesn’t utilise the ‘Spanish lisp’. This is the lisping s noise heard in words like gracias. If you were talking in Valencia you may pronounce it as ‘grah -thi- as’ whereas in Sevilla, you would pronounce it as ‘grah - see - as’.
This absence of a lisp affects the letters S, Z and C. It’s a big give-away to locals if you use the lisp in Sevilla, that you aren’t from Southern Spain!
As well as this change in the S sound, Andalusian Spanish will also require you to drop letters in your speech. This rule obviously applies differently to many words, but as a rule of thumb you can follow this simple rule.
Drop the S at the end of a word and drop the D from every word. When you speak like this, you’ll notice your Spanish sounds smoother and softer than some other Spanish dialects.
Want to practice your newfound Andalusian accent? You can speak to native speakers using the video chat feature on the Idyoma lanuage exchange app.
Spanish is hardly the only language to have so many language variations though. With the immense number of languages spoken around the globe, it is interesting to think about where one language ends and where another begins.
Take a look at how John McWhorter details what the world can really call a dialect, and what is really a language... or if those distinctions should really exist at all!