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freedombentoday at 4:24 PM1 replyview on HN

Native English speaker, but yes this is something I love about Spanish. There are rules to learn (sometimes quite variable depending on Mexico vs. Spain, etc) but once you learn them, pronunciation is usually pretty confident.

Though one downside which I've gleaned from friends who are non-native English speakers, is that the variance in pronunciation in English does sometimes lead to native English understanding what you meant, whereas in Spanish if you're pronouncing it wrong the listener often has no idea what you're trying to say. That's heavy anecdata though. I'd be super interested to hear from others if that's been their experience or not.


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strongpigeontoday at 4:29 PM

I would say I agree. That being said, my experience is biased from working in Big Tech where the accents are on such a wide spectrum that people have no choice but to develop a "flexible" ear.

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