Pronunciation: Spanish Alphabet

Letter	Sound in Spanish		Letter	Sound in Spanish

a		swat	n		need
b		bat, sometimes is softer sound like the letter v	ñ		longer sound held with tongue, like in onion
c		cow, in Spain it has th sound before e or i	o		so
ch		chore	p		pen
d		dime	q		k sound in kit, always followed by silent u
e		men	r		combine D and L sounds
f		freeze	rr		r sound is trilled with tip of the tongue
g		give *	s		sang
h		silent	t		take
i		ee sound in street	u		ou sound in you or too
j		thick h sound in hello	v		violet, sometimes is harder sound like the letter b
k		kill	w		wall, rarely used
l		live	x		exit, or sh sound in show
ll		y sound in year	y		yellow, rarely used-llis more common
m		many	z		zebra, in Spain it sounds like the th in thick

* The letter G can also sound like an h at the beginning of a word or after n
for example, gigante is pronounced hee-GAHN-teh.

Note: Vowels are never silent; each is pronunciated. This makes it fairly simple, just pronounce the double vowel sounds like fuego (fooAY-go), invierno (een-vee-EHR-no), or río (REE-oh).

In most cases, the natural stress is on the second to last syllable, and in many of the exceptions an accent mark is placed over the vowel of the syllable that should be stressed. When words end in consonants (other than N or S) the stress is usually on the last syllable. For example, verbs like hablar and bailar have the stress on the last syllable.