The Spanish pronunciation system is remarkably straightforward and consistent, with only five, very pure vowel sounds (English has many more than this). Only a few sounds tend to cause problems for foreigners, most notably the rolled double R and the common R which, though not rolled, is pronounced in a subtly different way to its English counterpart. A general rule of thumb is to make sure you articulate words clearly and put more effort into pronunciation than you would in English: observation of native speakers will make you realize that speaking Spanish involves a much more obvious articulation of facial muscles than English, which often appears to foreigners to be mumbled through barely open lips. Another characteristic of Spanish is that there is no audible gap between words within a breathgroup; thus Buenos Aires is pronounced BWE-no-SAI-res and not BWE-nos-AI-res. Failure to observe this detail produces a very stilted Spanish. A blessing for foreigners is the fact that Spanish is spelt exactly as it sounds - or sounds exactly as it is spelt. If this seems a minor point, imagine the problem for foreigners in working out the pronunciation of English words through, though, rough and slough