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Pronunciation |
The Spanish pronunciation is not too difficult to learn because it follows strict rules which allow the reader to infer the pronunciation of a word from its spelling. Spanish has a few sounds which do not exist in the English language and thus appear unusual to an English speaker. We shall also see that the accent of the Spanish orthography serves two possible purposes.
In linguistics, phonetics is concerned with the production, transmission and perception of the sounds of speech while phonology describes the way how these sounds encode meaning. The smallest unit of interest is a phone, a distinct sound of speech. Given an oral language, the set of phones can be partitioned into subsets such that two phones belong to the same subset if they are perceived as equivalent by a native speaker of the language. Each such subset is called a phoneme. Thus, phonemes depend on the language under consideration but phones do not. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) establishes a mapping of certain symbols to phones and phonemes.
A vowel sound is a phone which is produced with an open vocal tract, all other phones are called consonant sounds. While this definition is stated in phonetic terms, vowel sounds are also relevant to phonology because in many languages, including Spanish and English, the stress of a syllable can only be on a vowel.
Given an encoding of an oral language as strings of characters over an alphabet, the characters that represent vowel sounds are called vowels, all others are called consonants. English and Spanish are encoded over almost the same alphabet (the Latin alphabet), and both languages have the vowels: a, e, i, o, u. Other characters may also represent a vowel sound in certain cases. For example, the character "y" corresponds to a vowel sound in the English preposition "by" but to a consonant sound in the word "yes". Another issue is that the same vowel may correspond to different vowel sounds. For example, the vowel "i" in "high" is pronounced differently than in "fit". In fact, even native English speakers can't necessarily tell the pronunciation of a word they don't know (e.g., the name of a village), given its spelling.
Fortunately, the relation between alphabet and phonemes is much simpler for the Spanish language. By following the pronunciation rules covered in this chapter, it is possible to infer the pronunciation of a Spanish word from the spelling. The converse operation, telling the spelling of a word given the pronunciation, is still not possible because more than one character correspond to the same Spanish phoneme (e.g., "v" and "b"). Moreover, there are silent characters which are not pronounced at all, making it impossible to tell from the pronunciation whether a word is spelt with or without a silent character.
Let us finally point out that besides phonemes there are other features of pronunciation such as stress and tone which can also change the meaning of speech. We will come back to this in the section on the accent symbol.
Although Spanish has the additional vowel ü, there are fewer Spanish than English vowel sounds. Moreover, for each Spanish vowel there is only a single way to pronounce it. This is in contrast to English where the pronunciation of a vowel depends on the adjacent characters and sometimes follows no logic at all (e.g., "woman vs. women" or "finite" vs. "infinite"). The following table lists for each Spanish vowel an English word with similar vowel sound.
| Vowel | Pronounced like | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| a | bar | Marta, sábado, hasta, mañana |
| e | eight | que, Pepe, teléfono, este |
| i | key | si, inglés, día, cinco |
| o | from | ocho, otoño, noche, doctor |
| u, ü | sue | uno, luz, mucho, lingüística |
Notes:
There is only one Spanish consonant which does not exist in English: ñ. Most other consonants are pronounced in the same way as their English counterparts. The consonants for which there is a significant difference between the Spanish and the English pronunciation will be discussed below. We also point out a few differences between the Spanish and the Latin American pronunciation.
Before we look at the individual consonants, let us state some general properties regarding the pronunciation of consonants.
Three distinct pronunciations are possible for the Spanish c. Which one is correct depends on the successive character. If c it is followed by either e or i, the pronunciation depends on the Spanish dialect:
Examples: cena, hacer, cierto, decir.
Second, if c is followed by h the combination ch is pronounced in the same way as in English, and there is no difference between the Spanish and the Latin American pronunciation. Examples: cuchara, leche, chico, chocolate, lechuga.
The third possible pronunciation applies if c is followed by a consonant or by a, o or u. In this case it is pronounced like the "k" in the English word "skull". Again, there is no difference between the Spanish and the Latin American pronunciation. Examples: crecer, escribir, café, nunca, como, poco, cuando, ocupado.
Regardless of the vowel that follows, the Spanish z is exactly pronounced like a c which is followed by e or i. That is, with a "th" sound in the north of Spain and with an "ss" sound in Latin America and some regions in the south of Spain. It is never pronounced with a buzzing sound like in the English words "zero" or "zoom". Examples: lápiz, taza, brazo azul.
Like the English "q", the Spanish q is always followed by u. The combination qu is pronounced like a Spanish c which is followed by a, o or u (i.e., like the "k" in "skull"). Examples: que, paquete, quiniela, mantequilla.
This Spanish consonant can not be illustrated with an English word because the corresponding phoneme does not exist in the English language. In particular, the Spanish j is never pronounced like the English "j" in "jar" or "join". Rather, it is a throat-sound which sounds somewhat like the "ch" in "Loch Ness". Examples: jabón, dejar, objeto, viaje, jueves, conjunto.
Similar to the Spanish c, the pronunciation of this consonant depends on whether or not the following character is e or i. If it is, the g is pronounced with a throat sound just like the Spanish j. Examples: gentil, Argentina, girar, registro.
Otherwise, when g is followed by a, o, u or a consonant, it is pronounced like the "g" in "gang", "gimmick" or "guy". Examples: delgado, riesgo, guapo, sangre. Between vowels the pronunciation is similar, but much softer. Examples: amigo, pregunta.
If g is followed by ue or ui, the u is silent. Examples: alguien, guerra. However, the u in gua is always pronounced. In particular, guasa and gasa are pronounced differently. A few Spanish words are pronounced with the non-throat g sound followed by the u vowel sound. This is where the additional Spanish vowel ü comes into play. It always follows a g and it is pronounced identical to the non-silent u. Examples: antigüedad, cigüeña, lingüística, ambigüedad, ungüento.
Note that the Spanish g is never pronounced like the "g" in the English word "gin" or "gipsy".
The Spanish h is always followed by a vowel, and unless it is preceded by a c or followed by ue, it is silent. Examples: vehículo, hermano, hija, ahora. The h in the combination hue is pronounced with a weak throat sound, almost as if it was a g. Examples: huerta, cacahuete, huevo.
The single-character word y ("and") corresponds to the vowel sound of i. That is, it is pronounced like the "y" in the English word "lady". Otherwise y is pronounced as a consonant sound like the "y" in the English words "yes" or "young". In this case it is always followed by a vowel. Examples: ya, ayer, yo, ayudar.
A single l is pronounced just like an English "l". Examples: algo, leche, feliz, flor, luz. However, a double l sounds like a y which is followed by a vowel. Examples: olla, belleza, Mallorca, capullo, lluvia.
This is the only consonant which does not exist in the English alphabet. It is pronounced like the "ny" in "canyon" or "Tanya". Examples: España, seña, año, pañuelo.
Like the Spanish j, this consonant is present in the English alphabet but its Spanish phoneme, the "rolling r", does not exist in the English language. Examples: tarde, hora, postre, teatro, fruta.
An r at the beginning of words and a double r between vowels is pronounced similarly, but with a stronger thrill. Examples: sierra, correr, rico, perro, ruido.
The Spanish t is a bit softer than the English "t", but the difference is marginal. It is pronounced like the "t" in the English word "star". Examples: otro, tarta, puente, tienda, gato, estupendo.
These two consonants are pronounced exactly alike. They sound like the "b" in the English word "somber". For the correct articulation the lips must not touch. Examples: uva, beber, vivir, volver, abuela.
Intonation refers to the variation in the pitch of the voice. Speakers use intonation to convey attitudes and to distinguish statements from questions. For example, the spoken sentence "it's 4pm" can be either a question or a statement, and only the intonation allows the listener to tell the speaker's intention. Hence intonation is important for conversational interaction.
Unfortunately, the Spanish intonation patterns are different from those in English:
The orthography of many languages, including Spanish but not English, employs diacritics, special glyphs which can be added above, below or between characters. One type of diacritics are the accent glyphs which are always placed above of a character. Diacritics have many functions, although not all functions may be relevant for a particular language. In particular, diacritics can
In an earlier section we already met the Spanish vowel ü. Strictly speaking this is no additional vowel. Instead, the two dots are a diacritic called diaeresis, which is applied to the vowel u to serve the first purpose of the above list. Similarly, ñ is not a distinct character but the tilde diacritic is applied to n to serve the second purpose listed above.
Besides the diaeresis and the tilde, the Spanish orthography knows about an additional diacritic: the acute accent glyph, simply called accent in what follows. It can only appear above vowels, which gives rise to the accentuated vowels á, é, í, ó and ú. The accent has two functions which correspond to the third and fourth item above. The two functions are discussed in the following subsections.
Each Spanish word contains a stressed syllable. This syllable is pronounced with a higher pitch or with an increased volume or vowel length. If a word is spelt without an accent, the stressed syllable is given by the following pronunciation rule:
The following words all follow this rule. The vowel of the stressed syllable is highlighted.
| Word | Stressed Syllable |
|---|---|
| manzana | next to last |
| chocolate | next to last |
| examen | next to last |
| guisantes | next to last |
| papel | last |
| arroz | last |
| salud | last |
The first function of the accent is to tell the reader that a word is not pronounced according to the pronunciation rule. Instead, the accent marks the stressed syllable. This happens in particular for all words whose stressed syllable is neither the last nor the next to last because the pronunciation rule always puts the stress on either of the two. Examples: relámpago, mérito, química, cómico, albúmina.
All words in the following table need an accent because the pronunciation rule would put the stress onto the wrong syllable.
| Word | Stressed Syllable |
|---|---|
| sofá | last |
| café | last |
| melocotón | last |
| entremés | last |
| águila | first |
| lápiz | next to last |
| césped | next to last |
The set of Spanish words can classified according to the location of the stressed syllable. The two classes which contain the words whose stress is on the last or on the penultimate syllable can be split further, depending on whether or not the word follows the pronunciation rule (i.e., whether or not it is spelt with an accent).
Two words which have different meanings but are pronounced alike are called homophones while two words which share the spelling despite having different meanings are called homographs. For example, "be" and "bee" are homophones while "wind" (movement of air) and "wind" (to twist) are homographs. Some English words are both homophones and homographs. For example, "left" can be the opposite of "right" or the past participle of "to leave". These words are sometimes called homonyms but we avoid this term because the literature is ambiguous about its exact meaning.
Besides being a pronunciation hint, the accent can disambiguate between the different meanings of a Spanish homograph. Note that this only works for words which follow the pronunciation rule.
One such homograph is el/él. If this word is spelt with an accent, it denotes the personal pronoun "he" or "him". Without the accent it denotes the definite article "the". Example:
| Personal Pronoun | Veo a él. | I see him. |
|---|---|---|
| Definite Article | Veo el hombre. | I see the man. |
As single words el and él are pronounced alike (i.e., they are homophones). Within a sentence, however, el tends to flow into the next word while él is always pronounced as a separate word as if it was followed by a comma or a full stop.
Another homograph is esta/está. If this word is spelt with an accent it corresponds to the verb estar and translates to "is". Without accent, it means "this". Example:
| Verb | Juan está listo. | Juan is ready. |
|---|---|---|
| Demonstrative Pronoun | Esta manzana es pequeña. | This apple is small. |
Unlike el/él the words esta and está are no homophones because the accent is also a pronunciation hint: esta is pronounced with emphasis on the e while for está the stress is on the á.
In both English and Spanish the question words ("who", "where", "when", etc.) coincide with relative pronouns. The Spanish orthography makes this difference explicit through the accent: Question words are spelt with an accent while relative pronouns are not. The following examples illustrate the difference.
| Question | ¿Qué tal? | How are you? |
|---|---|---|
| Relative Pronoun | la calma que precede a la tempestad | the calm which precedes the storm |
Highlight the stressed vowel of the following words: página, comienzo, ciruela, helado, mariposa, cómico, yogur, bocadillo, cariño, amistad, joven, arroz, zanahoria, sandía, casi, gratis.
| [Solution] |
Highlight the stressed vowel of the following words: página, comienzo, ciruela, helado, mariposa, cómico, yogur, bocadillo, cariño, amistad, joven, arroz, zanahoria, sandía, casi, gratis.
Solution:
página, comienzo, ciruela, helado, mariposa, cómico, yogur, bocadillo, cariño, amistad, joven, arroz, zanahoria, sandía, casi, gratis.| [Go Back] |