Lesson 1 — ¿Cómo te llamas?

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5. The Spanish Alphabet

The Spanish Alphabet

Here is the traditional Spanish alphabet. The current Spanish alphabet is made up of the letters with numbers above them, and is also sorted in that order. Please read the notes and sections below. (Blue and red letters are a part of the normal English alphabet).

Spanish Alphabet
Letter Listen Letter Listen Letter Listen
a j s
b
k t
c
l u
ch
m v
d
n w
e
ñ x
f
o y
g
p z
h
q
i r



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abcchdefghijklllmnñopqrstuvwxyz
Notes about Ñ

N and Ñ are considered two different letters. They are alphabetized as separate letters, so Ñ always comes after N, regardless of where it appears in the word. Ex: muñeca comes after municipal.

Notes about CH and LL

CH and LL are no longer distinct letters of the alphabet. In 1994, the Real Academia Española (Spanish Royal Academy) declared that they should be treated as digraphs for collation purposes. Accordingly, words beginning with CHand LL are now alphabetized under C and L, respectively. In 2010, the Real Academia Española declared that CH and LL would no longer be treated as letters, bringing the total number of letters of the alphabet down to 27.

Notes about K and W

K and W are part of the alphabet but are mostly seen in foreign derived words and names, such as karate and whiskey. For instance, kilo is commonly used to refer to a kilogram.


Consonants

Although the above will help you understand, proper pronunciation of Spanish consonants is a bit more complicated:

Most of the consonants are pronounced as they are in American English with these exceptions:

  • b like the English b at the start of a word and after m or n, (IPA: /b/). Elsewhere, especially between vowels, it is softer, often like a blend between English v and b. (IPA: /β/)
  • c before i and e like English th in "think" (in Latin America it is like English s) (European IPA: /θ/; Latin American IPA: /s/)
  • c before a, o, u and other consonants, like English k (IPA: /k/)
  • The same sound for e and i is written like que and qui, where the u is silent (IPA: /ke/ and /ki/).
  • ch like ch in “cheese” (IPA: /tʃ/)
  • d at the start of a word and after n, like English d in "under" (IPA: /d/)
  • d between vowels (even if these vowels belong to different words) similar to English th in "mother" (IPA: /ð/); at the end of words like "universidad" you may hear a similar sound, too.
  • g before e or i like the Dutch g (IPA: /x/)
  • g before a, o, u, like g in “get” (IPA: /g/)
  • The same sound for e and i is written like gue and gui, where the u is silent (IPA: /ge/ and /gi/). If the word needs the u to be pronounced, you write it with a diaeresis e.g. pingüino, lengüeta.
  • h is always silent (except in the digraph ch)
  • j like the h in hotel, or like the Scottish pronunciation of ch in "loch" (IPA: /h/ or /x/)
  • ll is pronounced like gli in Italian "famiglia," or as English y in “yes” (IPA: /ʎ/)
  • ñ like nio in “onion” (or gn in French cognac) (IPA: /ɲ/)
  • q like the English k; occurs only before ue or ui (IPA: /k/)
  • r at the beginning of a word; after l, n, or s; or when doubled (rr), it is pronounced as a full trill (IPA: /r/), elsewhere it is a single-tap trill (IPA: /ɾ/)
  • v is pronounced like b, there is no distinction whatsoever between B and V. (IPA: /b/)
  • x is pronounced much like an English x, except a little more softly, and often more like gs. (IPA: /ks/)
  • z like the English th (in Latin America, like the English s) (European IPA: /θ/; Latin American IPA: /s/)

Vowels

The pronunciation of vowels is as follows:

  • a [a] "La Mano" as in "Kahn" (ah)
  • e [e] "Mente" as in "hen" (eh)
  • i [i] "Sin" as the ea in "lean" (e)
  • o [o] "Como" as in "more" (without the following 'r')
  • u [u] "Lunes" as in "toon" or "loom" (oo)

The "u" is always silent after a g or a q (as in "qué" pronounced keh).

Spanish also uses the ¨ (diaeresis) diacritic mark over the vowel u to indicate that it is pronounced separately in places where it would normally be silent. For example, in words such as vergüenza ("shame") or pingüino ("penguin"), the u is pronounced as in the English "w" and so forms a diphthong with the following vowel: [we] and [wi] respectively. It is also used to preserve sound in stem changes and in commands: averiguar (to research) - averigüemos (let's research).

The y [ʝ] "Reyes" is similar to the y of "yet", but more voiced (in some parts of Latin America it is pronounced as s in "vision" [ʒ] or sh in "flash" [ʃ]) At the end of a word or when it means "and" ("y") it is pronounced like i.

Acute accents

Spanish uses the ´ (Acute) diacritic mark over vowels to indicate a vocal stress on a word that would normally be stressed on another syllable; Stress is contrastive. For example, the word ánimo is normally stressed on a, meaning "mood, spirit." While animo is stressed on ni meaning "I cheer." And animó is stressed on mó meaning "he cheered."

Additionally the acute mark is used to disambiguate certain words which would otherwise be homographs. It's used in various question word or relative pronoun pairs such as cómo (how?) & como (as), dónde (where?) & donde (where), and some other words such as tú (you) & tu (your), él (he/him) & el (the).

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