Alphabet & Pronunciation
Alphabet & Pronunciation
Spanish spelling is far more consistent than English's — once you learn a handful of sound-to-letter rules, you can pronounce almost any word correctly on sight, unlike English, where the same letter combination can sound completely different from word to word.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
Spanish is phonetic; English mostly isn't
Como se escribe, así (casi siempre) se pronuncia.
How it's written is (almost always) how it's said.
English spelling is famously unpredictable — 'though', 'through', and 'tough' all end in '-ough' but rhyme with nothing alike. Spanish has almost none of that: a vowel always makes the same sound, and once you learn a handful of consonant rules, you can read almost any Spanish word aloud correctly on first sight. This is one of the more forgiving parts of learning Spanish for an English speaker.
Sounds English doesn't have
ñ, the rolled rr, j (breathy 'h') — none of these exist in English
no equivalent in English
Spanish ñ adds a nasal 'ny' sound with no single English letter for it (English writes the same sound with 'ny' or 'ni', as in 'canyon'). The rolled rr is a rapid multiple-tap of the tongue tip that English speakers have to train from scratch — English 'r' never involves a tongue-tip trill. And Spanish j is a breathy throat sound (Juan sounds like 'hwahn'), closer to a strongly aspirated 'h' than to English 'j', which is why English speakers often mispronounce it like the 'j' in 'jam' at first.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
| Spanish | Pronunciation | English |
|---|---|---|
| ñ | 'ny' as in canyon | as in mañana ('tomorrow') |
| j | breathy 'h' | as in Juan |
| ll | like English 'y' | as in llamar ('to call') |
| rr | strongly rolled 'r' | as in perro ('dog') |
| h | always silent | as in hola ('hello') |
| c (before e, i) | soft 's' sound | as in cinco ('five') |
| c (before a, o, u) | hard 'k' sound | as in casa ('house') |
| g (before e, i) | breathy 'h', like j | as in gente ('people') |
| z | soft 's' sound | as in zapato ('shoe') |
| v | same as 'b' in most dialects | as in vaca ('cow') |