The Yellow Jello Problem - An Accent Mystery

Recently, I was contemplating why a lot of my Spanish Speaking Clients have a Y-J problem when they study accent reduction. (They always get them mixed up.) They say "y" words as "j" words and visa-versa. I call it the "Yellow Jello" problem. I looked on the internet for artwork of yellow jello, and to my delight and amazement, I discovered a bizarre trend. People around the country are putting their staplers in yellow jello and serving it at the office. I'm not kidding. Why are they doing that? It's a huge mystery.

I have learned that Spanish speakers are perfectly capable of saying both sounds. It's exactly like Chinese speakers mixing up "R"s and "L"s.

So I've reached the conclusion that some wires are crossed in the language penthouse of the brain, and we have to do some cerebral re-wiring of thought. I took a poll among my Spanish speaking students and clients and they said, "Jes, it true, Ms. Yeffery, we yust do it!"

Apparantly, it's out of habit that the mistake is made again and again. And that makes it very easy, because "jou see," bad habits can be broken, and good habits can be formed. So how do jou do it?

Here are some tips:

1. Start by making your brain aware that you are doing it. Try to catch yourself and keep "score" in your daily agenda. Make a competition with your friends of who gets the highest score.
2. After keeping score for several days, begin to correct yourself every time you notice the mistake. This eventually becomes a habit, and it slowly begins to change.
3. Just for fun, practice PURPOSELY switching the sounds. This also makes jour brain aware, and sounds so funny, jou can actually have fun. Yust keep doing it!

A Bonus: It might help if make some yellow jello and serve it to your friends. I'm not sure about this one, but it's worth a try!