All the Spanish Alphabet Pronunciation in a Single Sentence

You might be surprised, but I know it from experience: for a Spanish speaker, learning to correctly pronounce English can be a real pain. Just an example: How can the “ough” in “tough”, “though”, “thought”, “through” and “thorough” have so many different pronunciations? It just doesn’t make sense at all!

Fortunately for you, Spanish pronunciation is a lot easier: most of the letters of the Spanish alphabet have only one possible pronunciation each. Exceptions are: c, g, r and y, which can have different pronunciations depending on their position in a word.

A Spanish phonemic pangram

But it can be even easier: What if I tell you that in a single sentence you can find every possible pronunciation of each letter of the alphabet? Well, I proudly present what could be called the first Spanish phonemic pangram ever (hmm, well, as far as I know):

La cigüeña gigante bebió ocho copas de whisky, más quince jarras llenas de fría cerveza rubia, y enseguida huyó en un taxi.

Which means:

The giant stork drank eight glasses of whiskey, plus fifteen full mugs of cold pale ale, and escaped in a taxi right away.

Weird, isn’t it? Fine! In fact, its weirdness is a good thing, mnemonically speaking. Indeed, the more amusing and shocking a sentence is, the easier will be to memorize.

You can now play the following video to hear its correct pronunciation… But, as an exercise, I would suggest you to:

1. Read the rest of this article,
2. Try to guess the correct pronunciation by yourself,
3. Read the sentence aloud the best that you can, and
4. Only then, play the video and learn from your mistakes.

Composition of the Spanish alphabet

The Spanish alphabet has 29 letters (all of the English alphabet, plus ch, ll and ñ). You may have read that, since an agreement adopted by the Association of Spanish Language Academies in 1994, the digraphs ll and ch no longer belongs to the Spanish alphabet. That is not entirely true. That resolution only affected to the alphabetic ordering of words. The composition of the alphabet still remains exactly the same as in 1803, when ch and ll were incorporated.

Letter	Name	Plural name
A	A	Aes
B	Be or Be larga	Bes or Bes largas
C	Ce	Ces
Ch	Che	Ches
D	De	Des
E	E	Es or Ees
F	Efe	Efes
G	Ge	Ges
H	Hache	Haches
I	I	Íes
J	Jota	Jotas
K	Ka	Kas
L	Ele	Eles
Ll	Elle	Elles
M	Eme	Emes
N	Ene	Enes
Ñ	Eñe	Eñes
O	O	Oes
P	P	Pes
Q	Cu	Cus or Cúes
R	Erre or Ere	Erres or Eres
S	Ese	Eses
T	Te	Tes
U	U	Úes
V	Uve or Ve corta	Uves or Ves cortas
W	Uve doble or Doble ve	Uves dobles or Dobles ves
X	Equis	Equis
Y	I griega	Íes griegas
Z	Zeta	Zetas

Pronunciation rules

These are some easy rules that will help you with the pronunciation of any Spanish word:

• There are five vowels in the Spanish alphabet, the same as in English: a, e, i, o and u. However, they have only one possible pronunciation each. To remember their sound, try this: “part, pet, pit, port, put”. Or also: “bath, bet, bit, bought, boot”. Note: in Spanish there is no distinction between short and long vowels as there is in English (e.g., as in “bit”/”beat”).
• The letter z may sound like s in “see” (Hispanic American accents) or like th in “thin” (standard Spaniard accent).
• The letter c sounds like the Spanish z (i.e, like s or th, depending on the country) when it comes before e or i, and like c in “cat” in any other case. Therefore, ca, ce, ci, ic, co, cu sounds exactly like ka, ze, zi, ik, ko, ku.
• The letter q always sounds like c in “cat”. Almost always, it is followed by a silent u, and is used with i or e only. Exceptions are some Latin or foreign words such as quórum, quid pro quo, Iraq (Irak) or quark (quark), in which the u is either not silent or not written at all. Rare exceptions apart, ca, que, qui, co, cu and ka, ke, ki, ko, ku sound exactly the same.
• The letter j may sound like h in “hot” (Hispanic America) or like ch in the Scottish word “loch” (Spain).
• The letter g sounds like the Spanish j when it comes before e/i, and like g in “got” in any other case. So, ga, ge, gi, ig, go, gu and ga, je, ji, ig, go, gu sound exactly the same. Also:
  • For g to sound like g in “got” before e/i, it must be followed by a silent u, as in guitarra (guitar).
  • But… what if we want to force the pronunciation of the u in gue/gui? Then, you must put a diaeresis (¨) over it, as in pingüino (penguin).
• The letter h is always silent. So, Hola (hello) and ola (wave) have exactly the same pronunciation.
• The letter y sounds like j in “jet” when it is placed at the beginning of a syllable: yo (I), mayo (May), and like y in “very” in any other case: y (and), muy (very).
• The letter ll also sounds like j in “jet”, although in some regions may have a sound similar to y in “yet”.
• The letter r sounds like tt in “matter” (with USA accent) when:
  • it is not at the beginning of a syllable, e.g., brazo (arm), tren (train), or when
  • it is placed between two vowels: pero (but), Corea (Korea).

  In any other case it sounds as a strongly trilled r (again, Scottish style), i.e., at the beginning of a word, and after n, l, s, or some prefix: rápido (fast), honrado (honest), alrededor (around), Israel (Israel), subrayado (underlined).

• The digraph rr is used to force a strongly trilled r between two vowels, e.g., perro (dog), correa (leash).
• The letter w is only used in foreign words, and its sound resemble the original foreign sound. Basically, it may sound like a Spanish B (Wagner) or like an English W (Washington).
• The letter ñ represents a nasal palatal phoneme, which is a sound that does not exist in English. It is commonly said that ñ is pronounced like n in “canyon” or in “onion”. Unfortunately, that is just a useful approximation, at best. Actually, you could think of the ñ as a new variety of n. It is not like n in “son”, because you don’t use the tip of your tongue. It is not like n in “song” either, because you also do not use the back of your tongue. Ñ is a sort of middle term between those, that is, you should press the roof of your mouth with the middle of your tongue (the tip of it could simply rest behind your lower teeth). Only then, in this position, you could try a short /ny/ sound that sort of blends with the next vowel.

The Stress

One last thing you should learn is how to identify the stressed syllable in any word you read. Three simple rules will suffice:

1. If the word ends in a vowel, vowel+n or vowel+s, then the next to the last syllable must be stressed: epiSOdio (episode), LIbro (book), INgles (groins).
2. Otherwise, the last syllable is stressed: caLOR (heat), verDAD (truth), roBOTS (robots).
3. If the word contains an acute accent mark, or tilde (´), then ignore the previous rules, as an accent mark always indicates the stressed syllable: HÁbito (habit), LÁser (laser), BÍceps (biceps), liBRÓ ( (he/she/it) saved (sb from sthg) ), inGLÉS (English).

Well, the truth is that sometimes the syllabification of a word does not seem obvious at all: how do I know it is e-pi-SO-dio? Why not e-pi-so-DI-o?

Simply because I know that io is always a diphthong, i.e., a sequence of two vowels that are pronounced in a single syllable. In order to identify diphthongs, you have to know some things:

1. Spanish vowels can be divided into two phonetic groups: open (a, e, o) and close (i, u).
2. The combinations (open vowel)+(close vowel) and (close vowel)+(open vowel) are always diphthongs, unless the close one has a tilde. So, are diphthongs: ai, ái, au, áu, ei, éi, eu, éu, oi, ói, ou, óu, ia, iá, ua, uá, ie, ié, ue, üe, ué, io, ió, uo, uó. Some examples: a-CEI-te (oil), A-gua (water), a-BUE-lo (grandfather), BES-tia (beast).
3. Finally, any (close vowel)+(other close vowel) combination is a diphthong as well, i.e.: iu, íu, iú, ui, úi, uí, üi, üí. For example: HUI-da (escape), ciu-DAD (city).

Any other combination is called a hiatus, i.e., a sequence of two vowels which belong to separate syllables: ma-ÍZ (corn), pe-TRÓ-le-o (oil/petroleum), al-co-HOL (alcohol).

Note that, since h is silent in Spanish, it cannot separate two syllables by itself. So, for example, AHI is considered the same diphthong as AI. E.g., ahi-JA-do (godson), ahu-MA-do (smoked).

Practice makes perfect

Or, as we say in Spain, la práctica hace al maestro (practice makes the master). There is a great difference between knowing the pronunciation rules of a language and actually being able to correctly pronounce a language. So, now that you know the rules, the next step is to practice, practice, practice.

You can begin by reading Spanish texts aloud: newspapers, websites or anything else that falls into your hands. It does not matter if you still do not understand a word. Here are some sentences to begin with:

La jirafa cazadora bebía gazpacho muy frío y cantaba bajo la lluvia.

El victorioso guerrero llevaba un hacha que pesaba nueve kilogramos.

Una ballena llamada Wagner emergió para respirar aire enriquecido con oxígeno.

Un frágil zorro pedigüeño viajó ayer en taxi.

Tu amigo japonés prepara agua, arroz y guindas en la cocina.

What do you think?

OK, that is all you have to know about the Spanish alphabet pronunciation. All you have to do is to internalize a couple of simple rules. Easy, isn’t it? Or not? Please let me know what do you think. And of course if you have any doubt, please don’t hesitate to leave comments and/or questions.

¡Gracias!

External resources

• The Alphabet Pronounced, Special Audio Edition, at RollingRs.
• Wikipedia article about the Spanish alphabet.
• Wikipedia article about the Spanish pronunciation.
• Even more Spanish Alphabet Resources, at Home Education Resources.

Oct.14.2007 :: Pronunciation :: 16 Comments »

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