Spanish Pronunciation for American English Speakers

Spanish is perhaps the most-spoken and studied foreign language in the United States. This is due in no small part to the US' proximity to Mexico, the Caribbean, and all other Latino points due south.

Although Spanish employs the same alphabet as English, there are some decidedly different points of pronunciation. The following is a streamlined phonetic guide to pronouncing Spanish.

Consonants

Most consonants in Spanish are pronounced the same as they would be in English, although there are a few notable exceptions.

C + I or E = S (C + any other letter, except H = K.)

CH = CH (Same as in English.)

G + I or E = H (G + any other letter = G.)

H = Silent (In other words, don't say it at all!)

J = H (Except in certain words co-opted from English like los jeans.)

LL = Y (Although in some parts of Latin America this is pronounced like a J.)

ѐ = NY (Like the N in the English word onion.)

Q or QU = K (Never KW like it is in English.)

R = Gargled / Trilled (i.e. rolled off the tongue) when it's the first letter of a word.

RR = Gargled / Trilled (i.e. rolled off the tongue.) This is not a sound common to English; for us it's akin to growling in the back of the throat.

V = B (Although there are a few locales where it is still pronounced like a V.)

X = Often only used in aboriginal words (like those found in Mexico and Central America), and in those cases usually pronounced like an H.

Y = Y (when being treated a consonant; when treated as vowel it is pronounced EE), but most people pronounce it as a J, and in Argentina it's pronounced like an SH.

Z = More like S.

Vowels

All vowels in Spanish have a short sound. This is different from English where vowels can take on long or short sounds and/or combine to form vocalic diphthongs. As such:

A = ah

E = eh

I = ee

O = oh

U = oo

Y = ee (when acting as a vowel)

Accents

There are really only two common accent marks used in Spanish - the tilde and the acute accent:

The tilde is the little squiggle you occasionally see about the letter N. N by itself is pronounced normally, but ѐ is pronounced like an "NY" sound, such as the N sounds in the English word onion.

The acute accent is used only over the standard vowels (Á, É, Í, Ó, Ú; never over Y), and its only phonetic function is to force the speaker to really emphasize that particular letter or syllable in the word. (E.g. teléfono (telephone) is pronounced tel-AY-fo-no)

Note that certain words in Spanish can have their meaning changed entirely by the addition of an acute accent. (E.g. tu means "your," but tú means "you;" el means "the," but él means "he;" si means "if" but sí means "yes.")

* There is a third accent mark used in Spanish, that of the umlaut over the occasional U; however, this is not very common. It will only occur when the U is preceded by a G and followed by another vowel. Therein its function is to force the speaker to pronounce the U independently. An example would be the word pengüino (penguin), pronounced pin-GWEE-no.)

Punctuation

Spanish punctuates much in the same way English does, but with three minor exceptions:

Exclamation points and question marks will appear at the end of sentences right-side-up but will also appear at the beginning of sentences upside-down. (E.g. ¿Qué? ; ¡Hola!) This is just for added emphasis.

In numeric expression, decimals will replace commas and commas will replace decimals. (E.g. $2,500.75 = $2.500,75)

Quotations are written using what are called comillas, these things - « ». So instead of "Come here!" you would see «¡Ven acá!»

Cadence (i.e. Sounding It Out)

Under normal circumstances in Spanish, the cadence (or emphasis) in a word goes on the first-to-last syllable. So in the word computadora (computer), the first-to-last syllable is "dor" (com-pu-ta-DOR-a) and thus the word would be pronounced kohm-poo-tah-DOR-ah.

Note that this rule is broken anytime you see an acute accent over a vowel. When this happens, the cadence is shifted to that accented vowel.

* For a Spanish language travel guide which already includes phonetic pronunciations, I recommend Languages of the Americas: A Survival Guide to the Four Major Languages of the Americas - English, Spanish, Portuguese & French available on Amazon.com.