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us_spanish · United States

US Spanish (Heritage Speaker Profile)

us_spanishintermediate

Reference-quality preset: a phonetic matrix and a short blurb, not a full flagship build-out. See a flagship variety (Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Panama) for situations, cultural context, sayings, and a guided path.

United States · Pan-regional / Second Generation

The heritage-speaker profile describes a widespread, well-studied pattern among second-generation US Spanish speakers: strong receptive competence and largely intact phonemic perception, alongside production that shows systematic English-influenced simplification -- English-timed rhythm and occasional final-consonant lenition. This is a documented bilingual-acquisition pattern, not a deficient or 'incomplete' Spanish; heritage speakers are full bilinguals with their own describable system.

Strong receptive phonology, English-influenced production (a documented bilingual pattern, not a deficiency)English-influenced stress-timed rhythmSome final-consonant lenition under English contactCore Spanish vowel/consonant contrasts retained despite English influence

Live example

Transformed live against this preset's phonetic matrix.

Transforming…

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A/B where you're starting from against this accent, for the same sentence. That first clip is your own accent when you've said how you speak, and your language's reference variety when you haven't — the player says which.

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Synthetic/robotic voice (espeak), not a native speaker.

Active features

Every phonetic parameter that deviates from this schema’s diffing anchor, with a plain-English gloss.

FeatureValueMeaningDrill
Mixed Languagesmixed_languagesDrill
Vowel Reductionvowel_reductioncrisp_openDrill
Syllable Timingsyllable_timingstress_timedDrill