Alphabet and Pronunciation El Alfabeto y la pronunciación

The Spanish Alphabet  The Spanish alphabet has 27 letters; 1 more than the English alphabet.  The letter combinations of ch, ll, and rr were once considered separate letters.  For the purpose of this class, we will view them as separate letters.  The vowels in Spanish have one distinct sound and are always pronounced the same.

10 Rules for Pronunciation  Rule 1: “b” and “v” are both pronounced “be” but not as hard as in English.  Rule 2: If “c” comes before “a,” “o,” or “u,” it is pronounced like the English “k.”  Rule 3: If “g” comes before “e” or “i,” it is pronounced like the letter “h.” It is pronounced like the letter “g” before an “a”, “o,” or “u.”  Rule 4: Never pronounce the letter “h.”  Rule 5: The letter “j” is always pronounced like “h” or a spitty “g.”

10 Rules For Pronunciation  Rule 6: The letter “ll” is pronounced like the English “y”.  Rule 7: The “” is pronounced “ny”.  Rule 7: The “ ñ ” is pronounced “ny”.  Rule 8: The letter “q” is pronounced “k” but the “u” following the “q” is not pronounced.  Rule 9: The “rr” is trilled. The letter “r” is trilled at the beginning of a word and when it come after “l” or “n”.  Rule 10: The letter “z” is always pronounced like the letter “s”.

Practicing Pronunciation  The best way to better your pronunciation is to practice every day.  Find something written in Spanish and read it along or record yourself to see how you improve.  Practice writing some sentences phonetically to help with longer, harder words.  Listen to heritage speakers so you will know how the words are suppose to sound. You can do this by watching your favorite movie in Spanish, the Spanish-speaking channels, or simply listening to the many heritage speakers we have here in school.

Stress and Accent  Where a word is stressed influences how it is pronounced.  If a word ends in a vowel, n, or s, the natural stress is on the next to last syllable.  If a word ends in a consonant, other than n or s, the natural stress falls on the last syllable.  If a word does not follow the two above rules, the word has a written accent to denote the stressed syllable.  If the stress falls on the third or fourth to last syllable, there is always a written accent.  Some words have accent marks to denote meaning that is different from its counterpart without an accent (ej. sí: yes; si:if)