People who want to learn Spanish often start with Spanish vocabulary and grammar. Of course, mastering those is important in order to express yourself in this language, but it's far from the only thing you should focus on. Pronunciation is every bit as important. If you can't make yourself understood in Spanish, having a conversation with a Spaniard is going to be quite the challenge. This is reason enough to work on your Spanish pronunciation. Because many people don't know where to get started, Translation Agency Perfect is pitching in to help. This page is all about everything you need to know about Spanish pronunciation.
What to look out for when it comes to Spanish pronunciation?
Are you pronouncing Spanish words incorrectly? If so, a Spaniard may not understand you properly. They might even raise an eyebrow at you because they don't have a clue as to what you're trying to say. This alone is a good enough reason to focus on your Spanish pronunciation.
If you want to make yourself understood in Spanish, you need to know that some letters are pronounced in a very specific way. Take, for example, the letter ‘g’. It can be pronounced with a hard sound and a soft sound. Spaniards use a ‘soft g’ if the letter comes before ‘e’ or ‘i’. They use a ‘hard g’ in combinations such as ‘ga’, ‘gue’, ‘gui’, ‘go’ and ‘gu’. In European Spanish, the pronunciation of ‘c’ and ‘z’ is different as well. The letters are often pronounced like an ‘s’, except in combinations such as ‘za’, ‘ce’, ‘zo’ and ‘zu’. In those cases, they're pronounced more like ‘th’ in the English word ‘think’.
If you think only consonants are pronounced differently, you would be mistaken. Spaniards pronounce some vowels a little differently than you might expect. There is no distinction between short and long vowel sounds in Spanish. The letters ‘a’, ‘e’ and ‘o’ all have a ‘medium vowel length’, as it were. The ‘i’ is pronounced like a shorter version of English ‘ee’, and the ‘u’ as a shorter version of ‘oo’. There are letter pairings in which ‘u’ isn't pronounced at all, such as in ‘que’ and ‘qui’. Further down this page you will find a handy overview of how to pronounce all the letters in the Spanish alphabet. This is sure to help you when it comes to learning Spanish.
Stress in the Spanish language
In order to determine how exactly to pronounce a Spanish word, you need to look at the word stress. If you don't yet know a lot about Spanish, it might be difficult to guess where to put the stress in a given word. Thankfully, it is fairly easy to determine this in Spanish. You can tell by the letters a word ends in. Spanish words that end in ‘-s’, ‘n’ or a vowel have their stress on the penultimate syllable. If a word ends in a different letter, the stress falls on the final syllable. The following table shows you some examples of this. In order to make it even clearer, we've underlined the stressed syllables.
| Stress on penultimate syllable (ends with an ‘-s’, ‘-n’ or vowel) | Stress on final syllable (ends with a different letter) |
|---|---|
| banco (bank) | ordenador (computer) |
| lata (canister) | hotel (hotel) |
| zapato (shoe) | salud (health) |
| bandera (flag) | bailar (to dance) |
| dentista (dentist) | Madrid (Madrid) |
| libros (books) | cantar (to sing) |
Just as with many other rules pertaining to Spanish vocabulary and grammar, there is an exception to this rule. Many Spanish words have accents (a so-called ‘acento agudo’) on their vowels. If they do, the stress is always on the syllable with the accented letter. The list below has some examples of words where this is the case. As before, we've underlined the stressed syllable for your convenience.
- fútbol (football)
- teléfono (telephone)
- información (information)
- lápiz (pencil)
- inglés (English)
- interés (interest)
Spanish pronunciation of the alphabet
Even though Spanish uses the same alphabet used in English, many letters are pronounced differently. In order to be able to communicate well with Spaniards, it's good to know what the Spanish pronunciation of the different letters is. In the table below we've explained how to pronounce the letters in the Spanish alphabet. We're starting with the vowels and then we'll move on to the consonants. Finally, we'll deal with a few special cases.
Vowels
The Spanish alphabet has five vowels in total, namely ‘a’, ‘e’, ‘i’, ‘o’ and ‘u’. Whereas these vowels have long and short sounds in some languages, this is not the case in Spanish. In Spanish they all have a medium-length sound. Below you will find how to pronounce all the different letters.
| Letter | Pronunciation |
|---|---|
| a | like a short ‘ah’ |
| e | like a short ‘ay’ |
| i | like a short ‘ee’ |
| o | like a short ‘oh’ |
| u | like a short ‘oo’ |
Consonants
The majority of the Spanish alphabet consists of consonants. These, too, are sometimes pronounced differently from what you might be used to in English. For this purpose, we've created the following table that shows you how to pronounce each of the consonants in (European) Spanish.
| Letter | Pronunciation |
|---|---|
| b | same as English ‘b’. |
| c | as a ‘k’ when it comes before ‘a’, ‘o’ or ‘u’. as the English ‘th’ when it comes before ‘e’ or ‘i’. |
| d | same as English ‘d’. At the end of a word, the ‘d’ in Spanish is often omitted. |
| f | same as English ‘f’. |
| g | like the ‘ch’ in Loch Ness when it comes before ‘e’ or ‘i’. in other cases it's the same as in ‘goal’. |
| h | the letter ‘h’ is silent in Spanish. |
| j | like the ‘ch’ in Loch Ness, but slightly softer. |
| k | same as English ‘k’. |
| l | same as English ‘l’. |
| m | same as English ‘m’ |
| n | same as English ‘n’ |
| p | same as English ‘p’ |
| q | same as English ‘k’ |
| r | with a strong trill at the start of a word or after ‘l’, ‘n’ or ‘s’, but has minimal trill at the end of a word. |
| s | same as English ‘s’. |
| t | same as English ‘t’. |
| v | same as the letter ‘b’. |
| w | (often) like a ‘v’. |
| x | same as in English. |
| y | same as in ‘you’ when at the start or in the middle of a word, but pronounced like a short ‘ee’ when in isolation. |
| z | depending on region and accent, either the same as ‘s’ or the same as ‘th’ in English. |
Special cases
In addition to the vowels and consonants, the Spanish language has a few other special cases regarding pronunciation. For example, words may have ‘ch’, ‘ll’ or ‘ñ’. If you want to work on your Spanish pronunciation, you need to know how to pronounce these. So we've included them as well for your convenience.
| Letter | Pronunciation |
|---|---|
| ch | like in English ‘child’. |
| ll | similar to ‘y’ in ‘yellow’. |
| ñ | a combination of English ‘n’ plus ‘y’, similar to ‘strenuous’. |