Record, do not perform
Say each phrase at the speed you would actually say it. The point of recording is that you stop listening to what you meant to say and start hearing what you said.
Spanish
Spanish pronunciation test
There are eight sounds that separate a Spanish accent from an English one. Record yourself saying each, play it back against a specific cue, and find out which of the eight is costing you the most — because it is almost never the one people worry about.
Free, no account needed, and nothing you record leaves your device unless you ask us to score a clip.
- 1 of 8
Vowels that hold still
a, e, i, o, uNo sé si es verdad
no / know — Spanish “no” against the English word
English vowels glide. Say the English word “no” slowly and you will hear it travel — it ends somewhere near “oo”. Almost every English speaker imports that glide into Spanish.
Spanish has five vowels and each is one steady sound from beginning to end. The tongue does not move while the vowel lasts.
Play your recording back and listen to the vowel in “no”. Does it stay on one note, or does it slide?
- 2 of 8
Every syllable gets its beat
rhythmEs complicado para nosotros
com-pli-ca-do / cuhm-PLI-cuh-duh — four equal beats against the English reduction
English squeezes unstressed vowels into a neutral “uh”. That is why “complicated” has one strong syllable and three mumbled ones. Doing it in Spanish is the single biggest reason English speakers are hard to follow.
Spanish is syllable-timed. Each syllable takes roughly the same time, and every vowel keeps its full quality whether it is stressed or not.
Tap once per syllable while your recording plays. Do the taps come out evenly, or do some syllables disappear?
- 3 of 8
The rolled r
rrEl perro corre, pero no por la carretera
pero / perro — “but” against “dog”
English has no trill, so the usual substitute is the English r — which Spanish hears as neither of its two r sounds.
The tongue tip sits just behind the top teeth, loose, and the airflow makes it flutter. Two or three taps is a trill; one tap is the single r in “pero”. Some accents — parts of Puerto Rico, and the Andes — make rr at the back of the mouth or with a buzz instead, which is native too. What matters everywhere is that rr and r are audibly different.
Is “perro” clearly longer or stronger than “pero”, whichever way you make it — or do the two come out the same?
- 4 of 8
H is silent, always
hHola, hay hielo en el hotel
hola / ola — “hello” and “wave” sound identical
Reading an h and pronouncing it. It is the most visible tell in the language because it happens on the first word most learners ever say.
Written h is never pronounced in Spanish. “Hola” and “ola” are the same sound.
Listen to the start of your “hola”. Is there any breath before the o at all?
- 5 of 8
D between vowels goes soft
d between vowelsNo he podido nada de eso
nada / na-tha — the soft d, written the English way
Using the hard English d everywhere. It is understood, but it marks a foreign accent on some of the most common words in the language.
Between vowels, Spanish d softens towards the th in “this” — the tongue touches the teeth lightly instead of stopping the air.
In your “nada”, does the d stop the sound dead, or does the air keep flowing through it?
- 6 of 8
J and soft G are one sound, and it is not English
j, ge, giLa gente de Gijón come jamón
gente / jente — g before e sounds like j, never like “get”
Reading g before e or i as the g in “get”, or as the j in “jam”. Spanish uses neither of those here — and the two spellings are one sound, so “gente” and “jefe” start alike.
J, and g before e or i, are the same sound, and it is friction rather than a stop. How rough that friction is varies by region — a rasp at the back of the mouth in Spain and much of Mexico, something close to an English h in the Caribbean and Central America. Both are native. The English g and j are not.
Do “gente” and “jamón” start with the same sound, and is it a breath or a rasp rather than the g in “get” or the j in “jam”?
- 7 of 8
B and V are the same sound
b, vVamos a beber vino en la ventana
vaca / baca — “cow” and “roof rack” — pronounced the same
Making v with the top teeth on the bottom lip. Spanish has no such sound; doing it is instantly audible.
B and v are one sound in Spanish. Both lips, never teeth. After a pause it is a full b; between vowels the lips barely close.
Say “vino” and watch your mouth. Do your top teeth touch your bottom lip? They should not.
- 8 of 8
LL and Y, and picking a lane
ll, yYo me llamo Guillermo y ella también
llamo / yamo — the same sound in most of the Spanish world
Reading ll as the English l. The lleísta accents of the Andes and Paraguay do keep a separate ll, but it is a palatal l made with the tongue flat against the roof of the mouth — not the English one, which no variety of Spanish uses here.
For most speakers ll and y are the same sound, close to the y in “yes”. Buenos Aires and Montevideo use the sh in “shoe”, or the s in “measure” among older speakers. All of those are correct; the English l is not.
Do “llamo” and “yo” start with the same sound in your recording?
Rate all 8 sounds to see your score.
What this test is, and what it is not
This is a structured self-check, not a machine score. You record, you listen, and you answer eight yes-or-no questions about your own recording — the score is your own judgement, arranged so it means something. By default the audio never leaves your device: no upload, no server, nothing kept. What you cannot get that way is the part your own ear cannot do, which is hearing a sound your first language does not use — so next to any phrase you have recorded there is a button that sends that one clip to us and has ChattyPatty score it. It is the only thing on this page that uploads anything, it asks before it does, and the clip is discarded once it has been scored. An account is what turns that one-off into daily practice.
There is also no model audio to copy on this page, deliberately: generating a native recording per visitor would cost something per visit, and a free page that quietly runs up a bill is a page that eventually stops working. Every sound below is described physically instead — where the tongue goes and what the air does — which is the part a recording of someone else does not actually tell you.
The eight sounds, and what each costs you
The sounds are not worth the same. Each carries a weight from 1 to 5 — 28 points in total — set by how much getting it wrong costs a listener, not by how hard it is to learn. Vowel purity and rhythm carry the most because they degrade every word in the sentence at once. B against V carries the least because no pair of Spanish words is told apart by it, so it marks an accent without ever obscuring a meaning.
| Sound | Cost | What English speakers do | What Spanish does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vowels that hold stilla, e, i, o, uno / know — Spanish “no” against the English word | 5 / 5 | English vowels glide. Say the English word “no” slowly and you will hear it travel — it ends somewhere near “oo”. Almost every English speaker imports that glide into Spanish. | Spanish has five vowels and each is one steady sound from beginning to end. The tongue does not move while the vowel lasts. |
| Every syllable gets its beatrhythmcom-pli-ca-do / cuhm-PLI-cuh-duh — four equal beats against the English reduction | 5 / 5 | English squeezes unstressed vowels into a neutral “uh”. That is why “complicated” has one strong syllable and three mumbled ones. Doing it in Spanish is the single biggest reason English speakers are hard to follow. | Spanish is syllable-timed. Each syllable takes roughly the same time, and every vowel keeps its full quality whether it is stressed or not. |
| The rolled rrrpero / perro — “but” against “dog” | 4 / 5 | English has no trill, so the usual substitute is the English r — which Spanish hears as neither of its two r sounds. | The tongue tip sits just behind the top teeth, loose, and the airflow makes it flutter. Two or three taps is a trill; one tap is the single r in “pero”. Some accents — parts of Puerto Rico, and the Andes — make rr at the back of the mouth or with a buzz instead, which is native too. What matters everywhere is that rr and r are audibly different. |
| H is silent, alwayshhola / ola — “hello” and “wave” sound identical | 4 / 5 | Reading an h and pronouncing it. It is the most visible tell in the language because it happens on the first word most learners ever say. | Written h is never pronounced in Spanish. “Hola” and “ola” are the same sound. |
| D between vowels goes softd between vowelsnada / na-tha — the soft d, written the English way | 3 / 5 | Using the hard English d everywhere. It is understood, but it marks a foreign accent on some of the most common words in the language. | Between vowels, Spanish d softens towards the th in “this” — the tongue touches the teeth lightly instead of stopping the air. |
| J and soft G are one sound, and it is not Englishj, ge, gigente / jente — g before e sounds like j, never like “get” | 3 / 5 | Reading g before e or i as the g in “get”, or as the j in “jam”. Spanish uses neither of those here — and the two spellings are one sound, so “gente” and “jefe” start alike. | J, and g before e or i, are the same sound, and it is friction rather than a stop. How rough that friction is varies by region — a rasp at the back of the mouth in Spain and much of Mexico, something close to an English h in the Caribbean and Central America. Both are native. The English g and j are not. |
| B and V are the same soundb, vvaca / baca — “cow” and “roof rack” — pronounced the same | 2 / 5 | Making v with the top teeth on the bottom lip. Spanish has no such sound; doing it is instantly audible. | B and v are one sound in Spanish. Both lips, never teeth. After a pause it is a full b; between vowels the lips barely close. |
| LL and Y, and picking a lanell, yllamo / yamo — the same sound in most of the Spanish world | 2 / 5 | Reading ll as the English l. The lleísta accents of the Andes and Paraguay do keep a separate ll, but it is a palatal l made with the tongue flat against the roof of the mouth — not the English one, which no variety of Spanish uses here. | For most speakers ll and y are the same sound, close to the y in “yes”. Buenos Aires and Montevideo use the sh in “shoe”, or the s in “measure” among older speakers. All of those are correct; the English l is not. |
How to get a useful answer out of it
Listen for one thing at a time
Each phrase comes with a single cue — one question with a yes or no answer. Judging a whole accent at once is impossible; judging whether a vowel moved is not.
Be honest about “not sure”
“Not sure” is a real answer and scores half. It usually means the sound is one your ear has not learned to hear yet, which is useful information rather than a failure.
Fix one sound, not eight
The result names the single sound costing you the most and gives you one drill for it. Working through all eight at once is how people end up doing none of them.
Questions people ask
- How good is my Spanish accent?
- Almost always better than you think on vocabulary and worse than you think on two things: vowel purity and rhythm. English speakers glide their vowels and swallow unstressed syllables, and both habits travel into Spanish without the speaker hearing them. Those two carry the most weight in this test for that reason.
- What is the hardest Spanish sound for English speakers?
- The rolled rr gets the attention, because it is the one people notice failing. It is not the one that costs you the most. A missing trill makes one word ambiguous; reducing unstressed vowels to “uh” makes every word slightly wrong at once, which is far harder for a listener to work through.
- Is this test actually scoring my recording?
- By default, no: you record yourself, play it back, and rate each sound against a specific cue — the score is your own judgement, weighted by how much each sound costs a listener, and your recordings stay on your device. There is one exception, and you have to ask for it: next to any phrase you have recorded there is a “Have this one scored for me” button. Pressing it sends that one clip to us so ChattyPatty can listen to it instead, and it tells you so before anything is sent. Each press sends one recording and no other; nothing you have not pressed for leaves your device, and no clip is kept after it is scored.
- Can I really hear my own pronunciation mistakes?
- Partly. Recording and playing back is a genuine step up on saying it into the air, because you stop performing and start listening. The limit is real though: the sounds your language does not use are the ones you are least able to hear, so the sounds you rate as fine are exactly where an outside ear earns its keep.
- Do I need to roll my r to be understood in Spanish?
- To be understood, no — context carries almost every case, and plenty of native speakers have a weak trill. To avoid one specific ambiguity, yes: pero and perro are different words. Treat it as worth fixing rather than as a gate you have to pass before speaking.
- Does the Spanish accent I learn matter?
- Less than people fear, and several of these sounds vary by region rather than being fixed. LL and Y are said one way in Buenos Aires and another in Madrid or Mexico City; the J ranges from a hard rasp in Spain to something close to an English h in the Caribbean; the D between vowels is often dropped altogether in Andalusia and the Caribbean; and the rolled R is made at the back of the mouth in parts of Puerto Rico. All of those are native Spanish. The cues in this test are written so that any of them passes — what it is looking for is the English habit underneath, not distance from Madrid.
- How long does it take to fix a Spanish accent?
- Individual sounds move in days once you know which one to work on, because there are only a handful of them and each has a physical description you can follow. What takes months is making the new sound automatic at conversational speed, which needs regular speaking rather than more drilling.
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