The purpose of this tape is to demonstrate the features of the Spanish sound system as described in the book, Spanish Pronunciation: Theory and Practice, by John B. Dalbor (3rd. edition, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1997). The tape presents examples from the descriptive portions of the book and is illustrative in nature; thus, it is not intended to serve as a basis for student drill. Other tapes have been prepared for this purpose and are available for purchase from the publisher.

     Most of the examples on tape are either from General American Spanish or are features which are virtually the same in all or most dialects of American Spanish. Such typical examples are not identified by country or region. However, there are examples of pronunciation features that are common only to certain dialects of American Spanish, and these are identified by country. The taped examples of features follow the same order in which their description occurs throughout Spanish Pronunciation and in most cases even the same order found within a single chapter.

     The examples -- all spoken by native Speakers of Spanish -- have been taken from readings, live interviews, personal conversations, radio broadcasts, and telecasts. In only a few cases did the speakers know their speech was being recorded specifically for phonetic and dialectal analysis. Thus, the material, for the most part, can be presumed to be a natural and faithful representation of the normal features of these speakers' dialects. When it was felt that speakers hypercorrected or read in a stilted, unnatural way, these sections of the recordings were not used for examples. Nevertheless, it is always possible that a few features presented as typical of natural General American Spanish are really more representative of a reading style rather than a completely conversational one.

     Each example is introduced by a brief statement in English, which is also presented in this script. Most examples of individual phonetic features are recorded two or three times in succession so the student can capture the sound even in a rapid burst of speech. The entire context -- usually at least a phrase or a sentence -- is also found in regular orthography in the script. The letter representing the feature itself is underlined, and the feature is transcribed phonetically in square brackets after the word. For example,

     Larger segments illustrating such matters as intonation and rhythm are normally recorded only once and are found only in regular orthography in this script.