Lessons for English speakers
Learn to read Spanish
A short, active path into reading Spanish: five vowels that never move, nine real words decoded before the alphabet, ser against estar, the verb ending that replaces the pronoun, and two short stories before your first book.
13 core sections · ≈ 34 min + 3 optional lookups · ≈ 50 min with everything
5
Letter lookup: the cards, the pairs, and the spelling grid
Optional lookup · ≈ 6 min
What you'll learn
- Open this when a letter or an accent blocks you; nothing after it depends on this section.
- The cards below carry the memory hooks the short table left out.
- c and g each do a hard and a soft job, decided entirely by the vowel that follows.
- The accented look-alike pairs and the Spain pronunciation of z live here too.
The five vowels
- aah, as in father — never the a of catcasaKAH-sah“house”
- eeh, as in bedverdeBEHR-deh“green”
- iee, as in machinemimee“my”
- ooh, as in moresolsohl“sun”
- uoo, as in rulelunaLOO-nah“moon”
Five sounds behind five letters, and a final -e is always said.
Two vowels together
- ai, aylike the English word eyehayeye“there is, there are”
- ei, eylike the English word sayseissayss“six”
- oi, oylike the English word boysoysoy“I am”
- iayahan i in front of another vowel is simply a y — ia, ie, io are ya, ye, yolluviaYOO-byah“rain”
- ieyehvientoBYEHN-toh“wind”
- ioyohadiósah-DYOHS“goodbye”
- uawahand a u in front of another vowel is simply a w — ua, ue, ui are wa, we, wiaguaAH-gwah“water”
- uewehbuenoBWEH-noh“good”
- ui, uyweemuymwee“very”
Both sounds survive; they simply share one beat.
The letters that are not what an English reader expects
- hnothing at all — h is silent in every word; only inside the pair ch is it part of a soundh is a letter on mute: it is written, and it is never heardholaOH-lah“hello”
- ja rasped h, further back in the throat than English hj is the sound of fogging a mirrorpájaroPAH-hah-roh“bird”
- gbefore e or i, the same rasped h as j; everywhere else, g as in goin front of e and i, g borrows j — one sound, spelled two waysgenteHEHN-teh“people”
- ñny, like the middle of canyonñ wears a little wave, and the wave is the sound in onionniñoNEE-nyoh“boy, child”
- lly, like the y of yestwo l leaning together stop being l at all and turn into ycaballokah-BAH-yoh“horse”
- yy as in yes; alone as a word, just eeyoyoh“I”
- rone light tap of the tongue, like the tt in butterone r is one flick of the tongue — say butter fast and you have made itperoPEH-roh“but”
- rra rolled r, held; r at the start of a word is rolled tootwo letters, twice as long: roll itperroPEH-rroh“dog”
- zsSpanish z never buzzes — it is a plain s wearing a foreign spellingzorroSOH-rroh“fox”
- cbefore e or i, s; everywhere else, kc softens in front of e and i, exactly as it does in English cent and citycincoSEEN-koh“five”
- vb — Spanish makes no difference between b and vv is b wearing a different hatvientoBYEHN-toh“wind”
- bb, and identical to vbosqueBOHS-keh“forest”
Letter pairs, read as one letter
- chch as in church, alwaysalways church, never school — Spanish ch has no second jobnocheNOH-cheh“night”
- lly as in yeslluviaYOO-byah“rain”
- rra rolled r, held longzorroSOH-rroh“fox”
- quk — the u is a spacer and is never saidthe u in qu is silent furniture, propping the k-sound hard in front of e and ibosqueBOHS-keh“forest”
- gubefore e or i, a hard g as in go — the u is a spacer againsame silent furniture, this time keeping g from softeningguerraGEH-rrah“war”
- güthe two dots switch the u back on: gwthe two dots are the switch that turns the silent u back onpingüinopeen-GWEE-noh“penguin”
The two dots on ü are rare — a handful of words — but they exist precisely because the u is otherwise silent in gue and gui.
Letters you can simply read as English
| Letter | Sound |
|---|---|
| d | d, but softer between vowels — near the th of this |
| f, l, m, n, p, t | as in English |
| s | the s of sun, not the z of rose |
| q | only ever appears as qu, and then it is k |
| x | ks; in a few place names it is the rasped h |
| k, w | only in words borrowed from other languages |
Spanish counts ñ as its own letter of the alphabet, sitting after n, so añoAH-nyoh“year” comes after anoAH-noh in a dictionary.
c and g: hard, soft, and hard again
| Hard | Soft, before e and i | Hard again, before e and i | |
|---|---|---|---|
| c | ca co cu — “k” | ce ci — “s” | que qui — “k” |
| g | ga go gu — “g” as in go | ge gi — the rasped “h” | gue gui — “g” as in go |
Read the grid across: casaKAH-sah“house” hard, cincoSEEN-koh“five” soft, bosqueBOHS-keh“forest” hard again. Spanish inserts that silent u whenever it needs a hard sound in front of e or i.
Spelling on the left, sound on the right
guerra“war”
“GEH-rrah”
the u only exists to keep the g hard; then rr is rolled
quién“who”
“KYEHN”
qu is k, and the u is silent
cinco“five”
“SEEN-koh”
the same letter c, twice, doing both jobs in one word
niño“boy, child”
“NEE-nyoh”
ñ is ny
búho“owl”
“BOO-oh”
two beats, and the h between them is silent
Same letters, different word
| With accent | Without |
|---|---|
| sísee — yes | sisee — if |
| élehl — he | elehl — the |
| tútoo — you | tutoo — your |
| quékeh — what? | quekeh — that, which |
Both words in each pair sound identical. The accent is for the eye, not the ear — and question words always carry one.