Welcome back! Today is a little intense, but stay with me! It's well worth the effort. Don't forget to use the websites forvo.com and wordreference.com for pronunciation help. If you look up the words, they can be pronounced for you out loud in Spanish! I especially like forvo because it often offers recordings of the words used in a sentence, so that you don't just hear the individual word, which might be pronounced with too much 'overpronunciation' (they overdo it), you also hear a whole sentence and I believe the speaker speaks more naturally.
Okay, so let’s keep working on pronunciation. We have covered vowels already. I’ll delve into the consonants now...
The letter B (letter name = b). When it comes at the beginning of a sentence you are uttering, like you’ve just taken a breath and you’re beginning to talk and the first word of the first sentence you are going to speak is a word that begins with the letter B, it’s a regular, good old-fashioned ‘b’. Like in ‘butter’ or ‘ballistic’ or ‘bassoon’. Same deal when B follows M or N. But elsewhere, it’s weak, almost like it’s not even there. You lips go to form the ‘b’ but they barely touch, and you aren’t cutting off all of the oxygen flowing from your mouth, but letting your lips (for just an instant, with a sound that is softly, barely there) make this beautiful frication, letting them buzz together in a gorgeous, soft & vibrating bbbbbbbbbb. so ‘boli’ (at the beginning of the sentence) and ‘mambo’ are words with STRONG b and ‘lobo’ and ‘Alba’ and ‘lesbiana’ are words with that weak b. B at the end of an oration is, I believe, just a regular B. But B doesn’t come at the end that often.
Just remembering to one more time tell you that I recommend a website called forvo.com where you can look up these words and they can be pronounced for you in Spanish. So that you can make the two ‘b’ sounds and sound very talented and informed indeed ;)
The letter C (letter name = ce). Before a/i/o/u --or before a consonant-- it’s a hard K sound, but BE CAREFUL because in English so many of our hard K sounds are what’s called ASPIRATED, so there’s all of this air that comes along with the sound, and this is NOT A THING in Spanish. It helps to compare the English words CAT and SCAT. CAT has this aspirated K sound we DO NOT want, and SCAT does not contain an aspirated K sound (because there is an ‘s’ at the beginning of the word). So, we always want an unaspirated K sound like the sound of the letter ‘c’ in the word ‘scat’. --- Now before e/i the ‘c’ sounds different. In the Americas, as well as certain regions of Spain (on the Canary Islands and in much of Andalusia and Extremadura [two southern regions of Spain]), the ‘c’ before e/i sounds just like the S in the word ‘kiss’. So enlace is ‘en-LA-say’ and cidra is ‘SEE-dra’. This is the way I pronounce it. Elsewhere in Spain, the ‘c’ before e/i sounds like the the ‘th’ in the word ‘think’. So, ‘en-LA-thay’ and ‘THEE-dra’ (oh, but not THEE like the English word thee; THEE like in the word cathedral!) -- And this is the way that Manu and his family and friends pronounce it. Seeing as the first way is the way people in the Americas pronounce it, and you are, in fact, someone who lives in the Americas (and are also, in fact, receiving guidance from me, and I pronounce it that way), my recommendation is for you to pronounce it that way. You’ll be understood by everyone regardless of which way you pronounce it. I am reminded of how some people pronounce syllable-final R in English and others do not (for some, ‘car’ is CAR (like, for us it’s that way) and for others ‘car’ is ‘CAH’ (like, for many Brits, Bostonians, and New Yorkers it’s that way). FUN!
The letter D (letter name = d). Oh my goodness, the letter D. At the start of an oration (or at the very end of one), it’s like a D in English but it’s what we call dentalized, so you put your tongue on the back of your teeth and away you go. You make this same sound when D follows the letter M or N OR when it follows the letter L -- cuando, aldea, den (this last one only, of course, at beginning of oration). Find a D anywhere besides oration-initial or after those letters and this D is like the ‘th’ in ‘weather’, though perhaps a tad softer than its English counterpart (examples espada and cenado)
The letter F (letter name = efe). As in English!
The letter G (letter name = ge). Let’s see. Before a/o/u it’s just your average hard G sound (amigo, gusto) IF at the beginning of an oration or after N or M. If mid-oration and not following N, it’s soft, barely there, a faint whisper on your velum. Gasolina, mango compared with lago, algo, orgánica. Make sure to listen to some sample pronunciations; suffice it to say G softens, paralleling B in a way. --- But G before e/i is like a hard, strong H sound, like in Arabic, so, with plenty of frication. This sound can vary; in Mexico sounds like the h in the word heard -- that’s softer than what I’m talking about; I’m talking about a velar fricative (velar sounds happen in the VELUM, that place where you make your hard G’s and K’s). Examples girar, gente. So let’s say you want to make a hard G sound before the vowels ‘e’ or ‘i’. This is a problem since I’ve just told you that g plus e and g plus i make a velar fricative (like a hard H sound), NOT a hard G sound. This is why in Spanish (the same as in Galician and Portuguese) you add a ‘u’ between the ‘g’ and ‘e’ or ‘i’ - pague, guisante, sounds like PA-gay, ghee-SAHN-tay. The ‘u’ only serves to turn the soft G into a hard G; it has no phonetic value; you don’t pronounce it. ---- Oh no, another problem! What if you want to have a word that has ‘gue’ or ‘gui’ in it, but we actually WANT the ‘u’ to be pronounced as a weak vowel, like to make the sound ‘gway’ or ‘gwee’? Well, not to worry! We put an umlaut over the ‘u’ so that it is pronounced. Example: lingüista, pengüino.
The letter H (letter name = hache). Is silent. The letter H is silent. The exception is when preceded by the letter C, when it becomes a ‘ch’ just like the ‘ch’ in English ‘chocolate’ (in Spanish it’s chocolate, pronounced cho-ko-LA-tay. Can you tell me why the stress falls on the penultimate syllable?!)
The letter J (letter name = jota). Remember G before e/i? It’s that hard H sound. That is the way the J is pronounced always. Jirafa, jefa, jalar, caja, Josefina, jubilación (confusingly, jubilación actually means ‘retirement’ haha).
The letter K (letter name = ka). A hard K sound, found in loan words such as kilo and koala.
The letter L (letter name = ele). Which is like the ‘l’ in ‘love’. Sometimes in English we pronounce the ‘l’ with velarization (that is, the velum gets involved and it’s not just the front part of our tongue touching the alveolar ridge which hangs out behind our teeth; it’s also the back part of our tongue touching the velum). We want to avoid velarizing the ‘l’ if at all possible. I guess it’s like an ‘l’ in singing, very clear and unharmed. --- AH but DOUBLE L is a different thing. Once it was pronounced like the ‘ly’ type sound in ‘million’, but now only very old speakers in certain regions of Spain still pronounce it that way; that pronunciation is DYING OUT; I pronounce this double L like the J in ‘Joe’ ; it’s nowadays pronounced the same way that you pronounce the Y in the Spanish word ‘yo’, that word I was talking about all those sentences ago... so Argentinians might make a ‘sh’ or ‘zh’ sound like the ‘ss’ in pressure or like the ‘s’ in ‘measure’, and for many speakers it’s like the ‘y’ in ‘you’. I sometimes make a hard J sound like in JOE or I make a sound like the ‘y’ in ‘you’. It’s up to You... But I recommend one of those.
The letter M (letter name = eme). As in English.
The letter N (letter name = ene). As in English... sometimes. But before F it’s like an M made with your teeth touching your bottom lip instead of your upper lip touching your bottom lip (e.g. énfasis). And before ‘p’ or ‘b’ it’s pronounced like ‘m’ like in the phrases en plan, con besos. And before M it becomes like an extra M and is NOT pronounced like an N (inmunidad, calumnia). Before a hard K sound or a hard G sound it’s velarized, meaning it sounds like an ‘ng’ in English ‘sing’ (tango, ronca). The same sound, that ‘ng’ sound, is made before the letter j or -gi / -ge, since those letters make a velar sound, that fricative on your velum, that khhhhhhh sound. Examples: monje, fingir, falange.
That letter Ñ (ñ in lowercase letters) (oh, and letter name = eñe). This is like the ‘ny’ in ‘canyon’. In Spanish the letter ñ can even start words, as in the word ñu (meaning gnu!) -- Examples are cañón, mañana, caña, señal.
The letter P (letter name = pe). Like the ‘p’ in ‘spot’, NOT the ‘p’ in ‘pot’. You’ll notice that like the hard K sound in English, we aspirate the p at the beginning of words, so that there is a little puff of air, a little aspiration after the p. Fun thing you can do it hold a piece of paper in front of your lips and when you say ‘pa’, the paper will move greatly because of the aspiration, but if you say ‘spa’ it barely moves at all. I did that in a linguistics class once!
The letter Q (letter name = cu, and what’s funny is this means ‘ass’ in Portuguese; in Portuguese this letter is called ‘quê’). Except in a situation like the country Qatar, the letter ‘q’ is only ever followed by ‘ue’ or ‘ui’ in Spanish. Why is that, you ask? Well, to answer the question I need to revisit the letter ‘c’. Remember how we pronounce the ‘c’ after ‘e’ or ‘i’? C before e/i is NOT pronounced like a hard K, though it is pronounced that way before a/o/u. So, the question is, how do you write words that have a hard K followed by the letter e/i? The answer is to put a ‘qu’ before them, since putting a C in front of them will not give you the desired sound. The ‘u’ is not pronounced at all. So tranquila is trahng-KEE-la, and aquel is ah-KELL.
The letter R (letter name = erre). First let me explain how to pronounce it at the beginning of a word. It’s ROLLED at the beginning of a word, a fun little trill. Rico, roja, redentora. It’s also rolled if it is followed by a consonant and also begins that syllable (as in enrollar, alrededor). In Spanish it’s very easy to divide syllables; there are very easy rules. I’m gonna explain them later, so not to worry! --- Now, the letter R is not rolled when in the middle of the word as well as unaccompanied by a second R or followed-by-a-consonant-and-also-beginning-that-syllable (in other words, if it isn’t either of the things I mentioned earlier, and also is not followed by another R, it isn’t rolled). So if it isn’t rolled, what the frick is it? The answer: it’s pronounced like the ‘tt’ in ‘butter’ (but not the way you’ll hear it pronounced in Britain. Well, you’re not in Britain, so no worries). So it’s this little tap you put in the middle of the word. You can also find it at the end of the words (remember infinitives? They are a fine example of this phenomenon). Just remember that tap in ‘butter’, that little double t, and you’ll do just fine. Examples: araña, cabra, amar, creación.
The letter S (letter name = ese). This letter is pronounced like the ‘s’ in ‘sip’ like in the words sombra, cosa, toallas, lástima. In Spain sometimes you’ll hear some people say it a little bit differently, a little more fronted; that is, the sound is made by pushing your tongue even further front up the alveolar ridge so that it’s even closer to the teeth. But that’s just some fun knowledge for you. You WILL hear the ‘s’ being pronounced like the ‘z’ in ‘zip’, but ONLY when the ‘s’ is followed by a consonant that is VOICED (that is, when you make that consonant sound your throat vibrates). This is optional; you can also pronounce the ‘s’ like the ‘s’ in ‘sip’. Examples of this are mismo (either MEEZ-mo or MEESS-mo), limosna (lee-MOHZ-na or lee-MOHSS-na), las nubes (either laz-NOO-bayss or lahss-NOO-bayss), las rocas (laz-RRO-cahss or lahss-RRO-cahss). Also note: there are words like consciente where you’ll notice there’s an S with a C right next to it. If you pronounce the S and the C the same (as in, like I do, not like Manuel does), then it’s like you’re just making an ‘s’ sound, even though there is both an S and a C there, so it’s like con-SYEN-te. Manu would pronounce it like cons-THYEN-te since he does that with his C before e/i.
The letter T (letter name = te). Like D at the beginning of a sentence or after a nasal consonant (that is, M or N), T is dentalized, so you make the T sound while pressing your tongue against the back of your teeth. Also, it’s like the ‘t’ in ‘stop’, NOT the ‘t’ in ‘top’, the latter example of which (you guessed it) is ASPIRATED as in the case of the hard K sound and the hard P sound.
The letter V (letter name = uve) This letter is identical in pronunciation to the sound B in all cases, absolutely no difference! bello and vello are homonyms. Please refer to the entry on the letter B. --- Also note: the use of the name ‘uve’ is an Iberian Peninsula thing; in the Americas they say ‘ve’, not ‘uve’ , and in speaking differentiate between the two letters (which of course sound identical) by saying ‘be alta’ (tall ‘be’) and ‘ve chica’ (little ‘ve’).
The letter W (letter name = uve doble (European Spanish); doble ve (Spanish of the Americas). Like the W in ‘win’ and used only in loan words like wifi (pronounced WEE-fee) -- bet you can’t guess what wifi means.
The letter X (letter name = equis). Pronounced like ‘x’ in ‘axis’ (éxodo, taxi). Sometimes you’ll hear some speakers pronounce it like an ‘s’.
The letter Y (letter name = i griega, meaning Greek ‘i’ cause like, we I guess owe the existence of this letter to the Greek language) -- Pronounced like LL (so please visit the entry on LL). However, as you already know, if it follows a vowel it slides into that vowel and makes it a diphthong. So the Spanish word ‘ley’ is pronounced like the word ‘lay’ in English, like an ‘ay’ kind of diphthong thing.
AND FINALLY. The letter Z. To understand the letter Z, which deserves a bit of explaining, let’s revisit the letter C before e/i. Remember how this letter is pronounced? If not, please revisit the ‘C’ entry.
Have your revisited the ‘C’ entry? Good! So, let’s just remember that for Manu and his family and friends, C plus e/i makes a TH sound like the TH in think. So what if you want to make this sound with the other three vowels (a/o/u)? Well, you cannot use the letter C because C plus a/o/u makes the hard K sound. For this reason the letter Z exists. Now also remember that in my Spanish as well as many other Spanishes (Latin American Spanish, the Canary Islands, etc.) the C plus e/i is pronounced the same way as the S. The word casa is NOT pronounced the same way as the word caza in Manu’s Spanish, but in mine it is. --- So now if Z is pronounced the same way as S in my Spanish, then we must recall what S sounds like (please revisit the S entry if your memory needs jogging). Remember that S before a voiced consonant can (but does not HAVE to, and sometimes does not does this, randomly in Spanish speech) make the Z sound like in the word ZIP? Well, if you pronounce the Z like S in Spanish, then you can VOICE the Z before voiced consonants just like you would voice the S. So ‘mismo’ can sound like MEEZ-mo and ‘llovizna’ can sound like joe-BEEZ-na. -- If you speak like Manu, then the words CAZA and CASA do NOT sound the same; the first has a TH sound (CA-tha) and the second has an S sound (CA-sa) and he would say mismo like MEEZ-mo or MEESS-mo and say llovizna like joe-VEETH-na or, voicing the Z, joe-VEEDH-na, with that voiced TH we find in the word WEATHER.
Fun things: this process of the consonant being voiced if it is in front of a consonant that is voiced is called regressive assimilation. The concept of pronouncing the C before e/i and the Z before a/o/u the same way as the S is called ‘el seseo’, and the concept of pronouncing the C before e/i and the Z before a/o/u DIFFERENTLY from the S is called ‘la distinción’ (in English, ‘distinction’ or ‘differentiation’). There is this third thing which is called ‘el ceceo’ where people pronounce C before e/i and the Z before a/o/u and the S with that ‘TH’ sound, and this phenomenon can be observed in certain regions in the south of the Iberian peninsula.
Now, because the Z before a/o/u does the job C does before e/i, the use of Z before e/i is NOT permitted. The name for the letter Z is ‘ceta’. So can you tell me why even though it is the name of the letter Z it is spelled with a C at the beginning, instead of a Z?
By the way, all letters in Spanish are feminine. It's easy for me to remember this because la letra, which means 'the letter', is a feminine word. So it's la ceta, la eme, la ene, la o, la cu, la i griega, la jota, etc. (In contrast, in Galician-Portuguese, the letters are masculine).
One other thing I wanted to make sure became known to you is ... well, let me see if I can explain this well. When you find two of the same consonants put together or two of the same vowels put together, the sound is simply elongated. So if the Spanish word le is one syllable, then the Spanish word lee is two syllables (like imagining the English word LAY being compared with imaginary word LAAY). And innecesario has two N’s and you sort of just elongate that N. You know how in Italian they have this thing called gemination which literally means ‘twinning’ (think GEMINI) where you pronounce a consonant twice as long if there are two of them? (In the word PIZZA you sort of hold onto the Z one beat longer, you know?) Well it’s the same in Spanish.
So now you know how the letters are pronounced! HOW FANTASTIC!
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