Say this out loud, slowly: La casa de mi amigo está cerca del río. If you gave every vowel one short, clean sound, you were already close to right. That is the first piece of good news about Spanish: the spelling is an almost reliable code for the sound, so once you know the code you can read any word aloud, even one you have never met.
The second is that the code is small. Five vowels, about a dozen consonant spellings that differ from English, and one stress rule that tells you which syllable to lean on and when a word needs an accent mark. This piece teaches the code, gives you a pronunciation card and a stress trainer to make it automatic, and ends with the mistakes English speakers make most. It is the first of four Spanish pieces on this path.
Your device has no Spanish voice, so the play buttons are hidden.
- Who it is for
- English speakers starting Spanish from zero. Close to 500 million people speak Spanish as a first language and more than 600 million at some level (Instituto Cervantes, 2024); it is an official language in about twenty countries.
- After this piece you can
- Read any Spanish word aloud; split it into syllables; say where the stress falls and whether the word takes an accent mark; and tell pero from perro and sí from si.
- Comes after
- Nothing is required. The method is in How Memory Builds a Language (37/01) and How a Language Grows (37/02); easier neighbours are Phonetics & the IPA (26/01) and Learning a Language as an Adult (26/07).
- Leads to
- Spanish 2: The Present Tense (37/04), where the sounds and the stress rule meet the first verbs.
- Honest line
- A page cannot hear you. You will have the code and a way to practise it; a tutor, a partner or a recording of yourself is what tells you whether it worked.
Sounds: five vowels and a few consonants that surprise you
English has a dozen or more vowel sounds and slides between them. Spanish has five, and they stay put. a as in father, e as in bed, i as in machine, o as in more, u as in food. Say them without the little glide English adds: say no and notice your lips closing into a “w” at the end; in Spanish the o stays an o. Two vowels next to each other are usually both sounded, quickly: ciudad is two syllables, país is two.
Consonants are mostly familiar. The differences are few, and a table is the quickest way to hold them. The play button on each row reads its examples aloud, if your device has a Spanish voice.
| Spelling | Sounds like | IPA | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| a e i o u | father, bed, machine, more, food; short and pure | /a e i o u/ | casa, mesa, vino, solo, luna |
| r between vowels, final r | one quick tap, like the tt in American “butter” | /ɾ/ | pero, hablar |
| rr, and r at the start of a word | a trill | /r/ | perro, rosa |
| j; g before e, i | a breathy h, rougher or softer by region | /x/ | jamón, gente |
| g before a, o, u; gu before e, i | a hard g; the u is silent in gue, gui | /ɡ/ | gato, guerra |
| ll, y | y as in “yes” for most speakers | /ʝ/ | llave, yo |
| c before e, i; z | s in Latin America; th as in “think” in most of Spain | /s/ or /θ/ | cena, zapato |
| c before a, o, u; qu | k | /k/ | casa, queso |
| b, v | the same sound, softer between vowels | /b/ [β] | vaca, lavar |
| h | silent | none | hola |
| ñ | ny, as in “canyon” | /ɲ/ | año |
| d between vowels, final d | soft, a little like th in “this” | /ð/ | nada, ciudad |
| ch | ch as in “church” | /tʃ/ | chico |
Two differences carry meaning from day one: pero is “but” and perro is “dog”; caro is “expensive” and carro is “cart” or “car”.
Reading and writing are not symmetrical. From spelling to sound the code is very reliable. From sound to spelling it is not, because several letters share a sound: b and v, ll and y, s, c and z (in Latin America), g and j before e and i, and the silent h. Expect to misspell vaca or hacer for a while even when you say them perfectly. Native children go through the same thing.
One language, many accents
No variety is the correct one. The table teaches a neutral Latin American baseline, because most Spanish speakers live there. Each difference below is a fully native norm, and speakers understand each other across all of them.
- z and ce/ci. Most of Spain says them as “th” (distinción); Latin America and southern Spain say “s” (seseo).
- ll and y. Most speakers say them like y in “yes” (yeísmo), but around the Río de la Plata both sound like “sh” or the s in “measure”.
- Final s. In the Caribbean, in parts of southern Spain and in Chile it weakens or disappears, so estás may sound like “etá”.
- j. Rougher in much of Spain and Mexico, a soft h in the Caribbean.
Which one to copy? The one you will hear most: the speakers you plan to talk to, the films you will watch. Stay with it for the first months. You will understand the others sooner than you expect.
Pronounce it
Fifteen words that cover the surprises. Tap a word, read the respelling and the IPA, then say it aloud before you play it.
Without JavaScript, use the table above: it has the respelling cues and the IPA for every row.
Syllables: how to cut a word
Stress is counted in syllables, so you need to find them. Spanish is kind here, because every syllable has exactly one vowel sound at its centre, and the cutting rules are short.
- One consonant between vowels goes with the vowel after it: ca-sa, to-ma-te, ha-cer.
- Two consonants are split, one on each side: pan-ta-lón, es-pa-ñol, gus-to.
- Unless the second one is l or r after p, b, c, g, f, t, d: the pair stays together and moves forward: a-pren-der, ha-blar, li-bro, a-brir.
- ch, ll and rr act as single letters: mu-cho, ca-ba-llo, pe-rro.
- Vowels: a, e and o are strong; i and u are weak. A weak vowel next to another vowel joins it in one syllable (ciu-dad, bue-no, tie-ne). Two strong vowels split (ca-er, le-o). A stressed weak vowel splits from its neighbour and takes an accent mark (dí-a, pa-ís).
Try it on trabajar: tr is a pair and stays together, so tra-ba-jar, three syllables.
Stress and accent marks: one rule, a few exceptions
Every Spanish word of two or more syllables has one stressed syllable, and the spelling tells you which with two rules and a mark.
- A word that ends in a vowel, n or s is stressed on the second to last syllable: ca-MI-no, ha-BLAN, lu-NES.
- A word that ends in any other consonant is stressed on the last syllable: ha-BLAR, ciu-DAD, a-ZUL.
- A word that breaks its rule carries a written accent on the stressed vowel: ca-FÉ (ends in a vowel, stressed last), LÁ-piz (ends in z, stressed second to last), TE-LÉ-fo-no. Words stressed on the third syllable from the end or earlier (sábado, música) always carry a mark.
So the accent mark is not decoration. It is a stress flag, and a word without one is stressed exactly where the rule says. One-syllable words take no mark (pan, sol), and there is one more case: when a weak vowel (i or u) is stressed next to a strong one, the pair splits into two syllables and the mark shows it: día, río, maíz.
A word appears without its accent mark. Tap the stressed syllable, then say whether the written word needs an accent. Then see the reason.
Without JavaScript: camino ends in a vowel, so it is stressed ca-MI-no with no mark; papel ends in l, so it is stressed pa-PEL with no mark; lápiz ends in z but is stressed on the first syllable, so it needs á.
Accent marks that tell words apart
A second job for the mark: separating one-syllable words that look alike and mean different things. The accented one is usually the stressed, “content” word.
| With mark | Means | Without | Means |
|---|---|---|---|
| sí | yes | si | if |
| tú | you | tu | your |
| él | he | el | the |
| más | more | mas | but (literary) |
| sé | I know | se | himself, herself, themselves; also a stand-in for “to him/her” |
| té | tea | te | you (object) |
| mí | me (after a preposition) | mi | my |
Question words carry the mark too: ¿qué?, ¿dónde?, ¿cómo?; without it they are connectors (Creo que sí). Questions and exclamations open with ¿ and ¡. Since 2010 the Real Academia Española has recommended writing solo and este without the old marks, so you will meet both spellings.
Read it aloud
A short passage that uses nearly everything above. Read it aloud first, slowly, cutting each word into syllables if you need to. Then play it and compare.
Me llamo Ana y vivo en una ciudad pequeña, cerca del río. Mi casa es azul y tiene un jardín. Por la mañana tomo café y camino al trabajo. ¿Y tú? ¿Dónde vives?
My name is Ana and I live in a small city, near the river. My house is blue and has a garden. In the morning I have coffee and walk to work. And you? Where do you live?
Check as you read: does every vowel stay clean, and is ciudad two syllables with the weight at the end?
Mistakes English speakers make
- Gliding vowels. English turns o into “ow” and e into “ay”. Hold the vowel still.
- Mumbled unstressed vowels. English reduces them to a weak “uh” (the last vowel of “banana”). In Spanish casa, mesa and banana all keep a full vowel in every syllable.
- Puffs of air. English p, t, k start with a small burst of breath. Spanish ones do not. Hold a hand in front of your mouth and say pero: you should feel almost nothing.
- An English j or h. Jamón starts with a breathy h, not “j” as in “jam”. And hola has no h at all.
- English stress. English hammers one syllable and squashes the rest. Spanish syllables are closer in length. Say teléfono with a clear beat on lé and no squashing of the others.
Fix one a week: record yourself saying five words and listen back. A recording does what the page cannot.
What sticks
- Spelling is a reliable code: five pure vowels, and a few consonants (rr, j, ll, z, h, ñ, d) to learn once.
- Reading from spelling to sound is dependable; writing from sound to spelling is not (b/v, h, ll/y, s/c/z).
- No accent is the correct one: seseo, yeísmo and a weak final s are all native norms.
- Syllables: one consonant goes forward, two split, and l or r after another consonant stay together.
- Stress follows one rule (vowel, n or s: second to last; other consonants: last), and a written accent is a flag for a break from it.
- Some accent marks separate words: sí/si, tú/tu, él/el, más/mas.
Spanish rewards a small amount of upfront work on sound. Learn the code once, keep the vowels clean and put the stress where the rule says, and you can read anything aloud and be understood from the first week.
Try this: read the passage above aloud once a day for three days, and record the third reading. Compare it with the first. Choose the single mistake from the list that you heard yourself make.
Sources. Instituto Cervantes, El español en el mundo 2024; Real Academia Española, Ortografía de la lengua española (2010) for accents, stress and syllable division; RAE and ASALE, Fonética y fonología (2011) for the sounds and regional variation.
- 🌐 Diccionario de la lengua española (RAE)
- 🌐 Language Transfer: Complete Spanish, a free audio course that trains the ear
- 📘 John Butt, Carmen Benjamin and Antonia Moreira Rodríguez, A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish (Routledge, 6th edition, 2019)