Spanish grammar guide for English speakers 1:

Pronunciation:

Vowels:

In written English there are only five vowels, but in spoken English they reach the amount of fifteen (if I remember well). Instead, in Spanish vowels are always the same five, no matter if we are talking about spoken or written Spanish.

So, the sounds are always the same, independently of the word construction, and those sounds are:

A: It sounds as the a in astonish

E: It sounds as e in eclectic.

I: It sounds as i in intelligent.

O: It sounds as o in obsessive

U: It sounds as u in Uganda.

There are no other vowel sounds in Spanish except for the ones above explained.

Consonants:

The Spanish alphabet has almost the same letters as the English one, with some exceptions, but the sound of the letters is not always the same.

B: It sounds as b in borrow

C: With a, o, and u, it sounds as K in kilo. With e and i it sounds as c in ceiling or s in sailor. To obtain the K sound with e and i, we use the letter q followed by u, which is mute in this case, and we will see it under q key again.

CH: This letter has the same sound as the same English construction ch, but as it sounds in chair and chalk, never as it sounds in chore (never as a k)

D: It sounds as d in door.

F: It sounds as f in front or ph in philosophy.

G: With a, o and u it sounds as g in gall or w in war, with e and i it sounds as h in hotel, so the sound is an aspirated one “gesta” is read as “hesta” “gimnasia” is read as “himnasia” with the h sound of heart and hotel. To obtain the gall sound with e and i, we put a mute u after the g and before the vowel, as in “guerra” and “guirnalda” that have to be read with the same g sound as in gall and gomit. When the u precedes e and i and sounds (it is no mute) it has two points above itself, in this way: güira. Remember that if there is no dieresis (dieresis is the Spanish name of the two points over the vowel u) the u is mute.

H: In Spanish the H is mute; it has no sound at all, never. So habitación has to be read as abitación.

J: The J in Spanish is called jota (hotta) and has the same sound as the H in hotel and heart, with all the vowels, so it is not difficult to understand why so many people make mistakes when they write words with j instead of g or vice versa. Remember that ge and gi have the same sound as h in English, that is the same sound as je and ji.

It is an error to write 2girafa” instead of “jirafa” (the last one is correct)

So you will write jefe, but never gefe and general, but never jeneral.

K: The K has the same sound as in English in kilo and Kentucky.

L: Same sound as in Leonard and lake.

LL: This is a tricky letter; it sound is something between the y in you and the L itself. We call it elye, so Llanero has a sound similar to yanero, but with your tongue touching both sides of your superior maxillae.

M: Same sound as in English.

N: Same as English.

Ñ: This one is also tricky, it has an unique sound that it can be related at the sound of niy- followed by a vowel, the middle of your tongue has to touch your palatal ceiling, name is read as niyame, but the niy part must sound as one unique sound.

P: Same sound as English in potato, par, etc.

Q: The q in Spanish is only used to give us the k sound with the vowels e and i, as we already said in letter C, it is always followed by a mute u, so that the sounds are que- (ke) and qui- (ki).

Queso (keso) means cheese, quimioterapia (kimioterapia)

R: It sounds as r in English but with more strength, especially when is doubled as in carril, carro, cerro, etc.

S: It has the same s English sound as in space, souvenir, said, etc

T: Same as English in “time”. There is no explosive sound in Spanish for the t, as happens in “construction”, and there is no smooth sound as the one in “the”; either. T sounds always like the t in time and taste.

V: In Spanish there is no sound difference between B and V , both sound as B in brother, bar, and beach. This is not the case in Italian, French and English were V has its own sound as in vacation, with the inferior frontal teeth touching the superior leap.

But in Spanish they both are labial, so they sound the same.

W: This letter is not very much used in Spanish, except for words that are foreigners and had entered Spanish language, as Whisky for instance.

X: Sounds like English, (ecs- or egs- or eks-)

Y: This letter has two sounds, the i sound when it is a conjunction as in: “La madre y sus hijos” in this case it sounds the same way as i in Spanish 8as the I in intelligent).

The other sound is like y in the English word you, for instance: yate, yodo, yugo.

Z: This letter has a sound that it’s made by putting your tongue between your frontal teeth and blowing air among the complex. It reminds a little the f letter and a little the s one, because it has a sound in between them.

But in Latin-American countries the Z has acquired the same sound of the S, only in Spain it conserve its original sound.

Stress:

Anglican languages and Neo Latin ones stress words in different ways.

In English the syllable stressed tell you what kind of word you are confronting, so if the stress is given in the first syllable you maybe have a verb, the same word with the stress in the second syllable maybe an adjective or a noun as we can see in present (gift) and to present (verb).

It is also common than the stress is situated in the first syllable in English, no matter how long is the word. And the non stressed syllables have a smooth sound or even no sound at all.

So, if an English speaker tries to say murciélago, he maybe will say something like murséilgo, and that is wrong.

Let see; first of all in Spanish all letters have their own sound and all of them sound always, so you have to say mursiélago likewise.

Second of all, in Spanish you only can find stress in the first syllable with words that have three or less syllables, because in Spanish stress is always put in the last syllables.

Third of all, in Spanish the stress is given by the accent that can be written (orthographic accent) or not (acento prosódico)

There are four kinds of words depending on the syllable that receive the accent (so the stress):

Acute words: The accent falls on the last syllable as in león, paral, divan.

The accent is written when the word ends in vowel, n or s. If it is not ended in this letters must not be written.

Grave words: The accent falls on the next to last syllable, as in joya, barco, alma, etc. Here the accent is written if the word does not end in vowel, n or s. If it ends in these letters must not be written.

Proparoxytone words (palabras esdrújulas): The Accent falls on the last but two syllable, and the accent is always written, as in murciélago, penúltimo, etc.

The fourth group of words is called sobreesdrújulas, and the accent falls on the last but three syllable, but these words are very uncommon.

The way Spanish speakers distinguish among verbs, adjectives, nouns, etc, has nothing to do with the stress but rather than that it has to do with the endings of the words, and this is a matter that I will be treating in the next article.