The Imaginarium of Dani Voice Overs, a place for wonder and knowledge, welcomes back Pablo, a Spanish voiceover talent well-known for his work in documentaries, commercials, narrations, and even e-learnings and corporate videos.
In this new chapter of The Imaginarium, Pablo gives us some information that is especially relevant for voice artists, but also for script writers and creative directors. He’ll show one difficult problem a professional sometimes have to deal with regarding Spanish language pronunciation.
With 400 million speakers, Spanish is the second most used language in the world, only behind Chinese. It’s the official language in 20 countries: 18 in America, 1 in Europe and 1 in Africa.
Related article: The 10 Most Spoken Languages in the World.
What’s this Spanish pronunciation issue? A combination of letters that is actually impossible to pronounce: a “s” followed by a “r”. When they come together like that in a word, they generate a serious problem. The reason: you simply cannot go from one to another without making a pause.
For example: desratización, Israel or even brand names like Osram.
What can we do in order to avoid this Spanish linguistic inconvenience? Pablo offers us two possible solutions:
- The logical option. “If it is impossible to pronounce r right before s, just don’t. Instead, make a pause between them.” See this example: desratización, Israel, los-resultados.
The problem with this alternative is that the result may feel unnatural. So, there’s a second option to consider:
2. Don’t mind the “s” . If you can’t say it, don’t say it. That’s what Spanish speakers do in their daily lives. Nobody will notice it. It will cause less discomfort to the listeners, if you keep the regular rhythm of the speech instead of stopping out of the blue to pronounce both letters perfectly.
This one is just one of the singularities Spanish has, but there are many more you should know if you work in the Spanish voiceover market. Here they are.
Related article: Spanish Accent in Voiceover. Latam, Neutral Spanish and European.
