The Spanish Alphabet

1. El alfabeto español (The Spanish Alphabet)

¡Hola! Hello! In starting this course, you have launched into an exciting adventure that will take you around the world of the Spanish language. Spanish is spoken by over 430 million people worldwide, and by 41 million people in the United States alone. Learning this new language will enable you to travel and explore other cultures as well as enhance your career prospects.

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First, you can start with the basics of the alphabet. The following chart presents each letter of the Spanish alphabet on the left, with its corresponding pronunciation on the right. Letters with an asterisk are pronounced the same in Spanish as they are in English. There are 27 total letters.

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While ch, ll, and rr are no longer considered official letters of the Spanish alphabet, many Spanish speakers treat them as such.

For the most part, Spanish sounds as it looks. Each vowel has the same pronunciation in every situation, with the exception of the silent u in some cases. Additionally, there are only three stress rules in Spanish. By contrast, a book on English pronunciation contains a section on English stress rules which is 35 pages long! Once you have learned the sounds and rules presented in this and the following lesson, you will be able to pronounce any word in Spanish.

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How is the Spanish pronunciation of the alphabet different from the English pronunciation?

2. Las vocales (Vowels)

You'll now focus specifically on las vocales, or vowels.

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The key to sounding as authentic as possible is to keep the vowels short. Spanish vowels are very choppy; they are never drawn out as in English. In English, vowels are sometimes silent; in Spanish, vowels are almost always pronounced, with the exception of the letter u at times (as in the word queso).

There is typically only one way to pronounce each vowel in Spanish. Each is pronounced as follows:

Two strong vowels next to each other create two separate syllables.

EXAMPLE

mu-se-o (museum)

Otherwise, two vowels combine to form one syllable.

EXAMPLE

ciu-dad (city), vie-jo (old)

3. Las consonantes (Consonants)

Finally, you must learn how to pronounce and use las consonantes, or consonants, in the Spanish alphabet.

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The following tables show the pronunciation of the consonants in the Spanish alphabet. Consonants with an asterisk have the same sound as in English.

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