5 Common Spanish Mistakes Gringos Make (With Examples)

¡Queridos amigos gringos! (Dear gringo friends!)

We made a lesson about the most common Spanish mistakes that give away your foreigner status when you’re speaking Spanish.

The most important thing today will be: how to avoid them. Paulísima, our Spring Spanish teacher will tell you some tips and tricks!

1. Vowels in Spanish

Vowels in Spanish are very simple compared to the vowels in English!

In English there are about 20 vowel sounds, with so many vowel sounds in English, it could be easy not knowing the way something should be pronounced in Spanish.

Hagamos un pequeño examen. (Let’s run a little test.)

How would you pronounce these chunks of Spanish?

There are only five vowel sounds in Spanish.

You can trust that vowels, like chunks, phrases commonly used by native speakers, don’t change.

You can download a list of useful Spanish chunks in the link in the description.

✔️ Cheat Sheet with 54 essential Spanish Chunks you’ll hear and use yourself in ANY Spanish conversation (and example sentences). Taken from our YouTube Teacher’s most popular videos!

✔️ 2 Bonus Cheat Sheets with Travel Chunks and Dating/Relationship Chunks

✔️ A Spanish Chunking Tutorial showing you the 1 technique that’ll help you make 100% of the Spanish from our videos roll off the tongue in just 5 minutes a day (you’re probably only using 50% of our lessons’ potential right now…)

Yes! Send me my FREE Spanish Chunking Kit

And you can learn the Spanish vowels with this children rhyme that we all know in Mexico.

A, E, I, O, U, ¡la caquita te la comes tú! (A, E, I, O, U, you eat the “little poop”!)

A siempre es A. (A is always A.) E siempre es E. (E is always E.)

Don’t try to make it into something else.

2. Forgetting about indigenous languages

Paulísima, ¿conoces Holbox?
(Paulisima, have you been Holbox?)

¿Quieres decir Holbox?
(Do you mean Holbox?)

¿Holbox? ¡Pensé que en español la H no se pronunciaba! Y pensé que la “x” sonaba como ks.
(Holbox? I thought H wasn’t pronounced in Spanish! And I thought that the “x” was pronounced as ks.)

Pues… sí, tienes razón, pero Holbox es un nombre maya, no español.
(Well… yes, you’re right, but Holbox is a Mayan name, not a Spanish one.)

¡Ay, no! ¿Y entonces se dice Oaxaca?
(Oh, no! So then is it pronounced Oaxaca?)

De hecho… no, en ese caso sí se dice Oaxaca.
(Actually… no, in that case we do say Oaxaca.)

This is a very common conversation with our advanced students.

I actually had this conversation very recently again with a student in our Inner Circle at our monthly meetups. If you want to join our next meetup, check out the Inner Circle, link is in the description.

The thing is, while in Mexico the most spoken language is Spanish, it’s not the only one. Antes de continuar… (Before we continue…) have you subscribed to the Spring Spanish channel? If not, this is the right time to do it. Bueno, como les iba a diciendo… (Well, as I was saying…)

There are actually 60 indigenous languages that while not spoken by the population at large, do influence the way we speak.

We often see indigenous influence in the name of places and people.

Sometimes not even Mexicans know how something is pronounced. The best way to avoid making this mistake is learning the following chunk:

Disculpe, ¿cómo se pronuncia esta palabra?
(Excuse me, ¿how do you pronounce this word?)

And then you point out the word.

Usemos el chunk con la palabra Wixarika. (Let’s use the chunk with the word “Wixarika”.)

This is the name of an indigenous people in Nayarit, erroneously and commonly called “Huichol”.

Disculpe, ¿cómo se pronuncia esta palabra?
(Excuse me, how do you pronounce this word?)

Se pronuncia “wiRarika”.

Now with Xel-Ha, a natural water park in the Mayan Riviera.

The name is in Mayan, not Spanish.

Disculpe, ¿cómo se pronuncia esta palabra?
(Excuse me, how do you pronounce this word?)

Se pronuncia Xel-Ha.
(It is pronounced “Xel-Ha.”)

3. The problematic D sound

How do you pronounce this?: Puerto Escondido.

Did you say “Puerto Escondido”?

This is a common mistake even advanced Spanish students make.

It’s like the sound you make when you pronounce the word father.

Let’s practice with this D loaded chunks.

¿Dime, de dónde eres? (Tell me, where are you from?)
De Durango. (From Durango.)

Dile al mariachi que toque la del “niño perdido.”
(Tell the mariachi to play “niño perdido”.)

It’s important that you pay attention to the intermediate D.

It’s the hardest one for English speakers.

Tira los dados.
(Throw the dice.)

¿Ya conociste a Diego? ¿El nuevo novio de Diana?
(Have you met Diego? Diana’s new boyfriend?)

¡Ay, sí! Dudo que duren, es que él no tiene ni dos dedos de frente.
(Oh, yes! I doubt they last, he doesn’t even have a clue. Lit.: Two fingers of forehead.)

Learn more about the correct way to pronounce each letter of the alphabet in this video:

4. Common Spanish mistakes: using the wrong interjections

In Mexico we don’t “oh!” we say “¡ay!”.

Actually, one of the first telltale signs of a Mexican who’s spent some time living in the US is that they start saying “oh” in situations where a “regular” Mexicans would say “ay”.

No wonder why whenever someone tries to make an impression of a Mexican they would always say: “ay, ay, ay, ay, ay”.  You’re not far off! In one of our most representative songs, the chorus heavily features our “ay, ay, ay”.

¡Ay, ay, ay, ay, canta y no llores, porque cantando se alegran cielito lindo los corazones!

If you notice, you’ll see that when I play two characters in a dialogue I often use the interjection ¡ay! (oh!) Se usa exactamente como usarías “oh!” (It’s used exactly like you would use “oh!”)

5. Not being polite enough

In Mexico, we’re very courteous. We don’t simply ask people we don’t know questions, we always start with “disculpa” (excuse me). Otherwise, you’re considered “maleducado” (rude).

Which doesn’t mean uneducated, but ill-mannered or bad-mannered.

Disculpe, ¿aquí se toma el camión para Xel-Ha?
(Excuse me, here is where I take the bus to Xel-Ha?)

Sí, aquí es.
(Yes, it’s here.)

Disculpe, ¿dónde se toma el barco para Holbox?
(Excuse me, where do I take the boat to Holbox?)

Tiene que ir a Chiquilá y de ahí cruza.
(You have to go to Chiquilá and you cross from there.)

We’ve covered a lot of ground and I’m sure you’ll love to learn even more. You can do just that with next video about 100 typical Spanish mistakes.