Forget about spelling for a second. Only think about the actual sounds your mouth makes. For example, the pronunciation of the word "light" is really just a consonant sound (L), a vowel sound (I), and another consonant sound (T), which is notated like CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant). Try and forget about those extra letters that aren't even pronounced.
Now that we have that covered, let's move on.
If you're reading this, there's a good chance that you're a native speaker of Spanish. We don't know if you've noticed, but Spanish generally likes to pack their syllables light. This is what you're used to, so you probably pronounce English this way, too.
This includes pronouncing...
- "two" without puckering your lips more towards the end
- "work" without pronouncing much of the "k" at the end
- adding "e" at the beginning of words like "sport," "standard," and "stop"
These are all very subtle differences that only a native speaker (or linguist) can pick up on. The same goes the other way, too: native English speakers learning Spanish tend to unconsciously close or extend their syllables. For example, they pronounce "frijoles" like "free-hole-ayes" and "taquito" like "tuh-key-toe."
In Spanish, syllables are shorter and choppier than in English.
Of course, after some practice, this accent becomes way less pronounced than we're making it seem. At some point, you really have to try to pronounce it like that.
But if you want to reduce your accent faster, pay attention to your syllables. Here's a quick tip for native speakers of Spanish from our resident linguist: if you're trying to sound more like a native speaker of English, don't open your mouth so much when you speak English. English speakers learning Spanish: do the opposite.