Pronunciation
Spanish spelling tells you exactly how a word sounds, which English spelling does not. Learn these nine and you can read any Spanish word aloud correctly, including one you have never seen.
Each vowel has exactly one sound and it never changes. This is the single biggest thing Spanish gives you for free, because English vowels have about twenty.
The ny in canyon. It is a separate letter with its own place in the alphabet, not an n wearing a hat.
perro is dog and pero is but. Nobody will misunderstand you, but the pair is real, so it is worth the practice.
Like the ch in Scottish loch. Harder in Spain, softer and closer to an English h across much of Latin America.
Never pronounced. hola is o-la and hotel is o-tel. It is silent in every word, with no exceptions.
A y in most places, closer to the s in measure in Argentina and Uruguay. All of them are correct.
An s across Latin America. A th sound in most of Spain. This is the clearest single marker of which side of the Atlantic a speaker learned in.
They sound identical. Spanish speakers spell out loud with be larga and ve corta precisely because the ear cannot tell them apart.
The u is silent. queso is ke-so. Compare with English quick, where the u is pronounced.
Which sound is in this word? Nine rounds, and it resets each time.
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