Sounds and spelling of Spanish

This post summarises the spelling and pronunciation of Spanish. I discuss below mainly standard Spanish of Spain (Castilian), but point out a few of the differences for Spanish regions and Latin America.

Spanish Alphabet

The Spanish alphabet includes:

• 26 letters also used in the English alphabet (though <k> and <w> are rare, used mainly in words borrowed from other languages
• the letter <ñ>
• 5 digraphs: <ch>; <ll>; <rr>; <gu>; and <qu>.

I give below some hints on differences between Castilian and British pronunciation, and also transcribe sounds using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
Written letters are enclosed in angled brackets <>.
Simple (phonemic) transcripts of sounds are in slanted brackets // and detailed (phonetic) transcripts are in square brackets [].
For more on the difference between phonemic and phonetic analysis, please see Phonemes and allophones – Language Miscellany

Quick tips for English speakers

• Except after a pause or after (/n/, /m/):
  –  <b> is pronounced as a weak /v/
  –  <d> as a weak <th> (like English then)
  –  <g> like a blend of English <g> and <h>.
• Spanish <v> is just another way of writing <b>.
• <h> is usually silent.
• <c> and <g> are sometimes (before /a/, /o/ or /u/) pronounced hard (as /k/, /g/) and sometimes (before /e/ or /i/) soft—for <c> like <th> in English thin, for <g> like a strong /h/.
• <z> is another way to spell soft <c> and <j> is another way to spell soft <g>.
• <ñ> is like <ni> in English onion
• <ll> is like <lli> in English million or (for many speakers) like <y> in English yes.
• <rr> is trilled more strongly than <r>
• If they are not stressed, Spanish vowels do not change their sound, but unstressed English vowels do change their sound.
• Spanish does not have long vowels distinct from short vowels. Spanish vowels are longer than English short vowels and shorter than English long vowels.

I gave below more details on the above points and others.

Vowels

Spanish has 5 vowels. They differ in 3 ways from English vowels:

• Spanish vowels are pure vowels: a single sound with the tongue staying in the same position throughout. English vowels are diphthongs: the tongue moves from one position to another.
• English vowels can be short or long, but Spanish vowels are always short (though a little longer than English short vowels).
• unstressed Spanish vowels always sound the same as the stressed vowels. On the other hand, unstressed English vowels sound very different from stressed vowels. Most unstressed English vowels are pronounced as the neutral vowel called /ə/ (‘schwa’). An example of shwa is the first vowel in English about, see Schwa, the vowel with no letter of its own – Language Miscellany

Table 1 shows the 5 Spanish vowels, including for each vowel:

• a word containing that vowel, and the pronunciation of that word (using the IPA); and
• an English word containing a somewhat similar vowel, and the pronunciation of that word (using the IPA).

Table 1. Spanish vowels

Notes on table1:

1. The vowels are highlighted in bold type. The English vowels (except <a>) are all followed by a semi-vowel /ɪ/ or /w/. English speakers must avoid producing similar semi-vowels in Spanish.
2. For <a>, table 1 gives the English word la, the word for a musical note on the do-reh-mi scale.
3. When <y> is used as a vowel (eg in y ‘and’), it is pronounced in the same way as <i>,

Diphthongs

Spanish has several diphthongs: sequences of a semi-vowel followed by a vowel (rising diphthong), or a vowel followed by a semi-vowel (falling diphthong). Semi-vowels are /j/ (pronounced like <y> in English yes) and /w/.

Table 2. Spanish diphthongs

Spanish also has some triphthongs, as in buey (‘ox’).

More detail on Spanish diphthongs is given in Alphabet, spelling, pronunciation, chapter 2 of A Reference Grammar of Spanish, RE Batchelor and Miguel Ángel San José (2010).

Consonants

Some Spanish consonants are pronounced more or less like the English consonants spelled with the same letters: <f> <l> <m> <n> <r> <s> <v> <w> <y>. (though there are some regional differences)

Other consonants are pronounced differently from their related English consonants.

• after a pause or after a nasal consonant (/n/, /m/), the letters <b>, <d> and <g> are pronounced as stops (like English <b>, <d> and <g> with the lips or tongue closing the airway totally). (after a lateral /l/, /d/ is also pronounced as a stop).
  In other positions they are pronounced without full closure (as ‘approximants’:
  /β/ (with lips not closed fully, like weak /v/)
  /ð/ (like a weak version of <th> in English then)
  /ɣ/ (like a blend of English /g/ and /h/, with tongue not fully touching back of the mouth.)
• <v> always spells /b/ or <β>, the same sounds as <b>. The distinction between the spellings <v> and <b> now exists for historical reasons only.
• <p>, <t> and <k> are pronounced almost the same as in English. The English sounds (but not the Spanish sounds) come with a strong puff of air (‘aspiration’), except after sp-, st- and sk-).
• <h> is usually silent
• some Spanish sounds are written with digraphs:
  – <ch> spells /tʃ/ like <ch> in English cheese
  – <ll> spells /ʎ/ like English <lli> in million. Or, in parts of Spain and most of Latin America, /j/ (like <y> in English yes) or /ʝ/ (like <s> in English treasure)
  – <ñ> spells /ɲ/ like <ni> in English onion
  – <rr> spells a more strongly trilled version of /r/
• <c> and <g> are sometimes pronounced hard (as /k/, /g/) and sometimes soft (as /θ/, /χ/). Also:
  – the digraphs <qu> and <gu> always sound like hard <c> and <g>;
  – <z> and <j> always sound like soft <c> and soft <g>.
  I say more about <c> and <g> just below.

Hard and soft pronunciations of <c>

Spanish pronounces <c> as:

• hard /k/ before a back vowel, such as /a/, /o/ or /u/. 
• soft /θ/ before a front vowel, such as /e/ or /i/.
  [θ] is roughly the sound spelled <th> that begins English <think>.
  In Southern Spain and Latin America, [s] is used instead of [θ].

Spanish uses:

• <z> to replace soft <c> before /a/, /o/ or /u/, to spell /θ/.
• the digraph <qu> to replace hard <c> before /e/ or /i/, to spell /k/.

Table 3a shows how the spellings <c>, <z> and <qu> link with the sounds /k/ and /θ /. 

Table 3a. hard and soft <c>

Hard and soft pronunciations of <g>

Spanish pronounces <g> as:

• hard /g/ before a back vowel, such as /a/, /o/ or /u/. 
• soft /χ/ before a front vowel, such as /e/ or /i/.
  [χ] is like a strong /h/—roughly the sound at the end of the English word loch, when pronounced the Scottish way.

Spanish uses:

• <j> to replace soft <g> before /a/, /o/ or /u/
• the digraph <gu> to replace hard <g> before /e/ or /i/. The /u/ is not pronounced.
• the digraph <gü> in the sequences <güe> and <güi> to show that the vowel /u/ is pronounced after the hard <g>.

Table 3b shows how the spellings <g>, <j> and <gu> link with the sounds /g/ and /χ/. The pattern of these links is the same as in table 3a.

Table 3b. Hard and soft <g>

I’ve discussed before:

• how Spanish came to have the patterns shown in tables 3a and 3 b.
  Why did two Spanish sibilants end up as /θ/ and /x/? – Language Miscellany
• similar patterns in other Romance languages (Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian)
  Romance languages: pronouncing C and G – Language Miscellany

List of all Spanish consonants

Table 4 lists the Spanish consonants

Table 4. Spanish consonants

Stress

Spanish generally stresses:

• the next-to-last syllable on most words ending in a vowel, or in -n or -s;
• the last syllable in most words ending in other consonants;
• otherwise, the vowel marked with a written acute accent ⟨á é í ó ú⟩.

The written acute accent also distinguishes some pairs of words sounding the same (‘homophones’). Table 5 gives some examples.

Table 5. Some words distinguished only by written accent

In the last 6 examples in table 5, question words (and words in exclamations) bear an accent but there is no accent on the same words in relative clauses (eg viene cuando puede, ‘he / she will come when she can’).

Punctuation

One unusual feature of Spanish punctuation is the use of upside-down question marks ⟨¿ … ?⟩ and exclamation marks ⟨¡ … !⟩ at the start of a question or exclamation, as well as the normal English-style marks at the end.

Initial capital letters

Unlike English, Spanish does not use initial capital letters on:
– adjectives derived from proper nouns (eg español, derived from España)
– words in book titles after the 1^st word (eg El amor en los tiempos del colera).

Alphabetical lists

Until a decision in 1994 by the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language, <ch> and <ll> were treated as letters separate from <c> and <l>. For example, chico appeared in alphabetical lists after ciudad . Since that decision, ⟨ch⟩ and ⟨ll⟩ are treated as ordinary sequences of letters—with chico now appearing before ciudad.

Official spelling regulator

Unlike English, Spanish has an official body that governs linguistic rules, including spelling: the Royal Spanish Academy (Real Academia Española; RAE).

Sources

Castilian Spanish [illustration of the IPA], Eugenio Martínez-Celdrán, Ana Ma. Fernández-Planas and Josefina Carrera-Sabaté, Journal of the International Phonetic Association, Volume 33 , Issue 2 (December 2003)

The Sounds of English and Spanish, Robert P Stockwell and J Donald Bowen (1965)

15-Minute Spanish, Ana Bremón (2005)

The Basis and Essentials of Spanish, Charles Duff (revised edition 1969)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_orthography

a useful guide at Collins https://blog.collinsdictionary.com/ipa-pronunciation-guide-spanish/

Further reading

The Cambridge Handbook of Spanish Linguistics, edited by Kimberly L Geeslin (2018)

Alphabet, spelling, pronunciation, chapter 2 of A Reference Grammar of Spanish, RE Batchelor and Miguel Ángel San José (2010)

The Sounds of the World’s Languages, Peter Ladefoged and Ian Maddieson (1996)