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us_spanish · United States

US Spanish (Salvadoran-American / LA-DC)

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 · Los Angeles & Washington DC-Maryland-Virginia

Salvadoran-American Spanish, concentrated in Los Angeles' Pico-Union/Westlake corridor and the DC-Maryland-Virginia area, retains El Salvador's voseo across second- and third-generation US-born speakers even as English becomes the dominant home language -- a striking case of a morphosyntactic feature outlasting heavy language shift.

Voseo retained across US-born generationsAspirated coda /s/ (Central American base)Central American sing-song intonation persists alongside English contactFrequent code-switching with US English

Live example

Transformed live against this preset's phonetic matrix.

Transforming…

Hear it

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.

Compare — Where you're starting from vs. the accent you're building

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
Intonation Contourintonation_contourcentral_american_singDrill
Syllable Timingsyllable_timingstress_timedDrill
Tuteo Voseotuteo_voseovoseoDrill