French → Spanish
Spanish uses 27 sounds. You already own 19 of them from French. The other 8 are the work — and 6 of those are the dangerous kind: close enough to something you already say that you will substitute them without hearing yourself do it.
The silent swaps
Your mouth has something close enough to reach for. These survive for years precisely because they sound right to you — the fix is hearing the difference first, not trying harder.
the move: labiodental → bilabial
Spanish: to have · written "b", "v"
Soft b/v between vowels — lips don't fully close.
Your /v/ is the one in vin (wine).
the move: labiodental → dental
Spanish: nothing · written "d"
Soft d between vowels, like English 'th' in this. Nearly vanishes in -ado endings.
Your /v/ is the one in vin (wine).
the move: labiodental → dental
Spanish: beer · written "z", "ce", "ci"
Spain only. Latin America: /s/.
Your /f/ is the one in fleur (flower).
the move: uvular → velar
Spanish: water · written "g", "gu"
Soft g between vowels.
Your /ʁ/ is the one in rue (street).
the move: plosive → fricative
Spanish: ham · written "j", "ge", "gi"
Harsh in Spain, soft [h] in the Caribbean.
Your /k/ is the one in quand (when).
Words you may say identically
Two or more Spanish sounds landing on one sound of yours. Until the ear separates them, the mouth cannot — which is what the ear trainer is for.
Genuinely new
Nothing in French sits close to these. They sound foreign in your mouth — which is the good news: you can hear that you are not saying them yet.
Rhythm and pitch
The layer spelling never records, and the one that makes a correct sentence still sound foreign.
| French | Spanish | |
|---|---|---|
| Stress | This is the one that surprises everyone: French words have NO fixed stress. Prominence lands on the last syllable of the rhythmic GROUP, not of the word — so the same word is stressed differently depending on where it sits. 'Un chocolat' stresses -lat; 'un chocolat chaud' moves it to chaud and the word chocolat loses it entirely. There are no French minimal pairs by stress, because there is nothing to contrast. | Fully contrastive, and mercifully written: if a word breaks the default pattern (stress on the second-to-last syllable for vowel/-n/-s endings, on the last otherwise) it carries an accent. Three-way minimal sets are common and the accent is the only thing separating them. |
What you have that Spanish doesn't
17 sounds with no job in Spanish. They are not mistakes — but they are where an accent leaks in, because a sound you own is easy to use when a hard one is due.
The honest caveat
This is a prediction from the shape of two sound systems, not a recording of you. It says what your inventory makes likely — it cannot know that your French has a regional variety that already owns one of these, or that you learned Spanish from someone whose accent you copied. A teacher listening to you beats it. Use it to know what to listen for.
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