Spanish

Español – /espaˈɲol/; Castellano – /kasteˈʝa.no/

Spanish is a Western Romance language in the Indo-European family of languages. Even though Spanish originated from Europe in what is modern-day Spain, it is Mexico that has the largest number of speakers today (with around 114 million native speakers). You can also find Spanish speakers throughout North and South America and even in Africa.

Spanish is one of the most widely spoken languages of the world. Around 512 million Spanish speakers exist; 442 million of these are native speakers of Spanish with another 70 million speaking it as a second language.

Quick Facts

*Spanish in not officially recognized in the United States, except in the territory of Puerto Rico. However, around 13% of the United States population speaks Spanish. To put this in perspective, this makes the United States one of the top five Spanish speaking countries in the world. Also, over 50% of the population of Belize speaks Spanish.

Writing System

The Spanish alphabet has 27 letters and is based on the Latin script. It has all the same letters as the English alphabet plus the letter {ñ}. The following table lists the letters in alphabetical order. It also shows the upper and lower case versions as well as the native name and the phonetic name of each letter.

1. Certain letters of the Spanish alphabet go by various names depending on the country or region in question. Alternative names include: {b} = be larga, be grande, be alta, be de burro; {i} = i latina; {v} = ve, ve corta, ve chica, ve baja, ve de vaca; {w} = uve doble, doble uve, doble ve, doble u; {y} = i griega.
2. Letters {k}, {w}, and {y} are typically only used in foreign words.
3. Letters {ch} and {ll} used to be part of the official Spanish alphabet, but are no longer. You might see them listed as letters in older material or dictionaries.

Digraphs

The following digraphs are not official letters of the Spanish alphabet. However, they make a unique sound when used together in a word.

• {ch} = /tʃ/
• {gu} = /g/
• {gü} = /gw/
• {ll} = /ʝ/ (Latin Am.), /ʎ/ (European)
• {qu} = /k/
• {rr} = /r/

Diacritics

Spanish uses two diacritic marks. The first one is the acute accent mark. It is used on all vowels (á, é, í, ó, ú) primarily to indicate word stress. It can also be used to differentiate certain words with the same sound but different meaning. The accent mark never changes the actual sound of the vowel. The second one is the diaresis mark and it is only used with the {gü} digraph. This mark specifies that those letters make a /gw/ sound rather than a /g/ sound. This mark is somewhat rare.

Sound System

Spanish consists of 32 fundamental sounds (5 vowel and 27 consonant sounds). The standard varieties of European Spanish (as found in most of Spain) and of Latin American Spanish (as found in central Mexico) are very similar. The phonetic differences are pointed out in note #1 in the table below.

Hover over each IPA symbol below, to see the name of the sound and click on the link for more information on how to pronounce the sound.

1. The /ʎ/ sound is mostly only used in the northern and rural areas of Spain and minimally in highland areas of South America. The /θ/ sound is found in most Spanish varieties used in Spain (including those prevalent in media) but not in Latin America.
2. The realization of the /d/ and /t/ sounds are dentalized in Spanish. This means the tip of the tongue is placed behind the upper teeth when articulating these sounds (which is different from English). To indicate this, these sounds could be written in narrow transcription as [ d̪ ] and [ t̪ ] respectively.
3. The /ʝ/ sound can be realized as the [j ~ ʝ ~ ɟʝ] sounds in standard varieties of Spanish. It can even be realized as the [ʃ ~ ʒ] sounds in the prominent Rioplatense accent (of Argentina and Uruguay). The /x/ sound can be realized as the [h ~ x] sounds.
4. The following sounds are allophones of other phonemes. /ð/ = allophone of /d/ (and of /θ/ in European Spanish) , /z/ = allophone of /s/, /ŋ/ = allophone of /n/, /β/ = allophone of /b/, /ɟʝ/ = allophone of /ʝ/, and /ɣ/ = allophone of /g/.

Sound Summary

European Spanish

European Spanish has 32 total sounds (5 vowels and 27 consonants). Of the 32 sounds, 15 are the same as English and 10 are similar to English. In other words, there are only 7 sounds that are truly foreign.

Latin American Spanish

In Latin American Spanish, there are 30 total sounds (5 vowels and 25 consonants). Of the 30 sounds, 14 are the same as English and 9 are similar to English. Thus, there are only 7 sounds that are truly foreign.

Diphthongs

In addition to single vowels, Spanish vowels can be combined to create diphthongs. All diphthongs are created by combining the /j/ and /w/ sounds with other vowels or with each other. They fall into one of two categories: rising (the shorter sound comes first) and falling (the shorter sound comes second).

• Rising = /ja, je, jo, ju, wa, we, wo, wi/
• Falling = /aj, ej, oj, aw, ew/

Orthographically, the /j/ sound is always made with the vowel letter {i} and the /w/ sound is always made with the vowel letter {u}.

Stress

Stress in Spanish is word-based, or phonemic. In other words, each word has a specific syllable that is stressed. The rules for stress are very predicable in Spanish and are built in to the writing system. See the following rules as a guide.

• Rule 1 – words ending in a vowel, {n}, or {s} will be stressed on the second-to-last syllable. This rule accounts for about 80% of all Spanish words.
• Rule 2 – words that don’t end in a vowel, {n}, or {s} will be stressed on the last syllable.
• Rule 3 – words that do not conform to Rule 1 or Rule 2 will be marked with an accent mark and that syllable with the accent mark is stressed.

Rhythm

Both European and Latin American Spanish can be classified as “syllable-timed” languages. This means all syllables are fully articulated (even though stressed syllables are a little longer that non-stressed syllables). In other words, Spanish syllables are never reduced.

Grammar

Related to Nouns

Related to Verbs