Hi! Miguel from Spanish Input here.

I've just released a new video for you: It's titled "Which Spanish accent...?". You can watch it here:

https://youtu.be/dNBlKKuXBPg

This video tries to answer several frequent questions people often ask about my videos, my lessons and about learning Spanish:

Which Spanish accent do you speak?
Which country are you from?
Which Spanish dialect should I learn?
Which Spanish accent is more elegant?
If I learn Spanish with you, can I use it in Colombia/Spain/etc?

In case you're unable to watch the video right now: I'm from Ecuador and the two sides of my family have very different accents from different parts of the country. But I've decided not to speak like any of my relatives; instead, I've spent years cultivating a "General Spanish" accent. For this, I've spent a ridiculous amount of time studying books on Spanish phonetics that compare different accents, and an even more ridiculous amount of time carefully listening to people from different countries. For me, meeting people or visiting other cities/countries is like walking into a candy shop: I write down my observations about their speech patterns, ask questions and ask them to read sentences aloud to confirm my hypothesis.

But I digress. The whole point of the video is: Forget about trying to adopt a dialect. As a learner, you have only two goals:

Understand other people
Be understood

And you don't need to adopt a local accent to achieve this. Trying to imitate a regional accent can sometimes even make it more difficult to understand you. So I recommend you instead spend more time polishing your General Spanish.

If you can read Spanish, grab your popcorn 🍿 and read the comments by native speakers. Some native speakers, particularly Spaniards, say I sound obviously Mexican, thus implying that I'm lying when I say I'm Ecuadorian, while Mexicans say I don't sound Mexican. These comments actually prove that I've achieved my goal of cultivating a non-regional accent.

If you want to improve your General Spanish, I'm creating lessons on Spanish phonetics that teach you exactly this. They're in this playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNDr0kknnWpaHflmKQn-l74ygZ0Zl77-t

These lessons are members-only. You can join as a member here:

https://www.youtube.com/spanishinput/join

Happy pronunciation practice,

-Miguel

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