Chapter 5 of 16 · Explore the Spanish path
Optional reference · Chapter 5 of 16
Look up a letter or an accent
Open this when a letter or an accent stops you. Every letter and letter pair has a card with its sound, an example word and a hook to make it stick.
≈ 7 min of reading · Practise at your own pace
What’s in this chapter
- 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, one card each
The same five vowels again, one card each. Find the one that stopped you and say its example word aloud.
- 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 sharing one beat
Two vowels side by side are still two sounds, packed into one beat. Find the pair in front of you and copy the English word beside it.
- 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
Each card carries the sound, an example, and a hook to help it stick. Take the letter you came for and go back.
- 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
Two letters, one sound. Reading each pair as a single letter saves you guessing at the word.
- 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 that need no new work
Nothing here needs relearning. Check the list when you want to be sure a letter is doing its ordinary English job.
| 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 año
How c and g change with the next vowel
c and g each have two sounds, and the vowel after them decides which. Read the grid across, one letter at a time.
| 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: casa
Read a whole word, rule by rule
Try the spelling on the left and say it, then check the sound on the right. The note names the rule each word turns on.
When an accent is the only difference
Four pairs where a written accent is the only difference. Look here when a familiar word turns up carrying a mark.
| With accent | Without |
|---|---|
| sí | si |
| él | el |
| tú | tu |
| qué | que |
Both words in each pair sound identical. The accent is for the eye, not the ear — and question words always carry one.