Spanish/Pronunciation

Pronouncing Spanish based on the written word is much simpler than pronouncing English based on written English. This is because, with few exceptions, each letter in the Spanish alphabet represents a single sound, and even when there are many possible sounds, simple rules tell us which is the correct one. In contrast, many letters and letter combinations in English represent multiple sounds (such as the ou and gh in words like cough, rough, through, though, plough, etc.).

Letter-sound correspondences in Spanish
The table below presents letter-sound correspondences in the order of the traditional Spanish alphabet. (Refer to the article Spanish orthography in Wikipedia for details on the Spanish alphabet and alphabetization.)

One letter, one sound
Pronouncing Spanish based on the written word is much simpler than pronouncing English based on written English. Each vowel represents only one sound. With some exceptions (such as w and x), each consonant also represents one sound. Many consonants sound very similar to their English counterparts.

As the table indicates, the pronunciation of some consonants (such as b) does vary with the position of the consonant in the word, whether it is between vowels or not, etc. This is entirely predictable, so it doesn't really represent a breaking of the "one letter, one sound" rule.

The University of Iowa has a very visual and detailed explanation of the Spanish pronunciation.

Here is another page with links to the audio files of the letters.

Only five letters may be doubled, and they are the ones in CLEAR.

Examples: Accento, amarillo, leer, Isaac, and arriba.

Word stress
In Spanish there are two levels of stress when pronouncing a syllable: stressed and unstressed. To illustrate: in the English word "thinking", "think" is pronounced with stronger stress than "ing". If both syllables are pronounced with the same stress, it sounds like "thin king".

With one category of exceptions (-mente adverbs), all Spanish words have one stressed syllable. If a word has an accent mark (´; explicit accent), the syllable with the accent mark is stressed and the other syllables are unstressed. If a word has no accent mark (implicit accent), the stressed syllable is predictable by rule (see below). If you don't put the stress on the correct syllable, the other person may have trouble understanding you. For example: esta, which has an implicit accent in the letter e, means "this (feminine)"; and está, which has an explicit accent in the letter a, means "is." Inglés means "English," but ingles means "groins."

Adverbs ending in -mente are stressed in two places: on the syllable where the accent falls in the adjectival root and on the men of -mente. For example: estúpido → estúpidamente.

The vowel of an unstressed syllable should be pronounced with its true value, as shown in the table above. Don't reduce unstressed vowels to neutral schwa sounds, as occurs in English.

Rules for pronouncing the implicit accent
There are only the following rules for pronouncing the implicit accent. The stressed syllable is in bold letters:


 * If a word ends with a vowel or with n or s , the next-to-last syllable is stressed. Examples:
 * cara (ca-ra) (face)
 * mano (ma-no) (hand)
 * amarillo (a-ma-ri-llo) (yellow)
 * hablan (ha-blan) (they speak)
 * martes (mar-tes) (Tuesday)


 * If a word ends with a consonant other than n or s, the last syllable is stressed. Examples:
 * farol (fa-rol) (street lamp)
 * azul (a-zul) (blue)
 * español (es-pa-ñol) (Spanish)
 * salvador (sal-va-dor) (savior).


 * A syllable usually contains exactly one vowel. If there are two adjacent vowels, they count as two distinct syllables if both are one of a,e and o. If, however, at least one of them is i or u, they count as only one syllable. If, according to the two rules above, that syllable is stressed, the first of the two vowels is stressed if it is one of a, e and o, while the second vowel is stressed if the first one is one of i and u. Examples:
 * correo (co-rre-o) (mail)
 * hacia (ha-cia) (in the direction of)
 * fui (fu-i) (I was) (Note that this word has only one syllable.)

Any exception to these rules is marked by writing an acute accent (máximo, paréntesis, útil, acción). In those exceptions, the stressed syllable is the one where the acute accent (called tilde in Spanish) appears.

The diéresis ( ¨ )
In the clusters gue and gui, the u is not pronounced; it serves simply to give the g a hard-g sound, like in the English word gut (gue → [ge]; gui → [gi]).

However, if the u has a the diaeresis mark (¨), it is pronounced like an English w (güe → [gwe]; güi → [gwi]). This mark is rather rare.

Examples:
 * pedigüeño = beggar
 * agüéis (2nd person plural, present subjunctive of the verb aguar). Here, the diaeresis preserves the u (or [w]) sound in all the verb tenses of aguar.
 * argüir (to deduce)
 * pingüino = penguin

İspanyolca/Söyleyiş