Spanish Alphabet

The Spanish alphabet consists of the following 27 letters:
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, , O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z
It has the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet plus the letter , representing a voiced, nasal palatal sound. Since is a separate letter, and not an accented character, it is alphabetized after N. So, in English piata comes before ping-pong ( is considered in English to be an accented n), but in Spanish, ping-pong comes first (again, because is a separate letter in Spanish). K is not often found in Spanish words, and W still less; they only appear in words taken from other languages. There are three sounds in the Spanish language which are represented by digraphs, namely ch, ll and rr. Traditionally ch and ll were alphabetized after c and l respectively. In 1994 the Spanish Academy dropped this custom joining other dictionary makers. It made alphabetization too different from other European languages making it difficult for foreigners to understand. It also can be noted that it is linguistically incorrect to identify graphs with sounds. By default, the stress in a word falls on the penult if the word ends with a vowel, n, or s, and on the ultima otherwise. Wherever the stress does not follow this rule, it must be indicated with an acute accent (, , , , , called acento agudo or simply acento in Spanish) over the relevant vowel. The acute accent over a stressed vowel also acts as a diresis to prevent the formation of a diphthong, as in pas, which has two syllables, not one. In addition, the acute accent distinguishes interrogative pronouns from their relative counterparts (dnde? but donde) and various other words that are otherwise spelt the same (si 'if' but s 'yes'). Spanish also uses the diresis (diresis) over u () in the two combinations ge and gi to indicate that the u is pronounced (gwe and gwi), as it would ordinarily be silent in gue and gui. Occasionally it occurs in poetry over the first vowel of a diphthong to indicate an irregular disyllabic pronunciation required by the metre (vuda, to be pronounced as three syllables).

Letter names

style="width:1.5em;" | A style="width: 8em;" | a style="width:1.5em;" | J style="width: 8em;" | jota style="width:1.5em;" | R erre
B be K ka S ese
C ce L ele T te
D de M eme U u
E e N ene V ve
F efe ee W doble ve, doble u, or uve doble
G ge O o X equis
H hache P pe Y i griega, or ye
I i Q cu Z zeta

See also

External links

  • Spanish Alphabet - Interactive Spanish Alphabet. You will learn how to pronounce all the letters by themselves and in several words.
  • http://spanish.allinfo-about.com/pronunciation/pr-alphabet.html - Site including .wav files with the pronunciations of all of the traditional 30 letters of the Spanish alphabet.
*http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Pronouncing_Spanish_words - Wikibook with extensive coverage of the Spanish letter pronunciation.

 

<< PreviousWord BrowserNext >>
oxford records
tooth fungus
visvesvaraya industrial and technological museum
polypore
magna veritas
in nomine
the majestic
1,1,1 trichloroethane
hannah callowhill penn
vim records
jelly fungi
pra esperanto
laurie holden
luckey roberts
wyclef jean
pierre mertens
coral fungi
mukdahan province
miff mole
allard
claude gaspard bachet de mziriac
immigration act
avanor
pskov
rosaura revueltas
ivan
frostating
joint resolution to authorize the use of united states armed forces against iraq
the dam busters
linley's dungeon crawl
dublin corporation
william shatner's version of "lucy in the sky with diamonds"
mandarin promotion council
ivan lendl
list of municipalities in jan
mike hoare
list of municipalities in la rioja
commission on the unification of pronunciation
vombatiformes
enciso, la rioja
false morel
wolverine (comics)
commodore max machine
list of municipalities in len