Spanish for Beginners | Lesson 2: Spanish Pronunciation – Speak Clearly from Day One

Welcome to this first lesson of the course. The first thing that we're going to do is break down how Spanish sounds. The great news is that Spanish pronunciation is very consistent, meaning that once you learn the sounds, you can read most words exactly as they're written. This is a stark contrast to English, where the sounds the letters make can be quite different depending on the word. With Spanish, you won't find too many surprises. This makes pronunciation in Spanish very easy. It's just a case of learning the sounds. On top of this, many letters sound identical to how they are pronounced in English. The key difference is that they'll take on a cleaner and softer sound in Spanish. Now, bubbles are your best friend. You'll find at least one of these in every single word in the language. So, let's cover those first and look at some examples. Here we have a word with a. Casa This is the word for house. Casa Don't worry about remembering these words right now, just focus on the pronunciation. Listen to how I say it and repeat after me. Casa Here's a word with i. Leche This is the word for milk. Amigo is the word for friend, and as you can see, contains the letter i. Which brings us on to our first main point, which is that the letter i in Spanish will take on more of the double e sound. So we get Amigo Amigo Loco This has two o's. Loco You've probably heard it before somewhere and this means crazy. Loco Lastly, we have the word for world, which has a u. Mundo We have a little bit of a distinctive difference here. Because the u in Spanish is pronounced as a double o. So we get this u sound. Mundo Here's another word. Vino I want to draw your attention to this v, as very often, at least in Latin America, you'll hear this take on more of a soft b. So the pronunciation that we have here is Vino This is the word for wine. Vino Now, the next key thing that I want to point out is that the h is sile in Spanish. You can see this happen with Hola We're basically skipping over the h in our pronunciation of the word. Hola Let's look at some of the unique sounds that we have in Spanish. There's really only a couple. Here's the word for key and as you can see, we have this double l appearing at the start of the word. Whenever you have a double l in Spanish, it will take on a y sound. Llabe Also, once again, notice how this v sounds like a soft b. Llabe Take a look at this next word. Mañana So what is the odd n with the swervy line up of it? This is a special character which is still an n, but it's almost like it has a y immediately followed by it. So we get this n sound. Mañana This means tomorrow. Mañana In this next word, which is the word for car, you can see this double r. Now, whenever you come across a double r, you'll roll it. So we have Ca Ro Carro Jugo is the word for juice. Jugo Notice how the letter j doesn't sound like a j at all. It takes on this sort of breathy h sound. And this is uniform throughout the whole language, so it's always going to be pronounced this way. Jugo Now, the key to being understood in Spanish is understanding where the stress of the word is placed. This doesn't really matter in English, but it does in Spanish. For most words, the stress is placed on the second last syllable. This is sort of the default rule. You can hear this with words we have covered so far in the lesson. Mañana Amigo If it's only a two-syllable word, then that means the stress will come up front. Llabe Leche Something you'll see with Spanish words is accents. This is where you have a letter in the word that has this line above it. This is what is called an accent. What this is telling us is that rather than following the default rule where we stress the second last syllable, we'll instead place the stress right here, this letter with the accent. Telefono Let's break it down. So we have Te Le Fono Telefono Here is the key takeaway. Sounds in Spanish are very consistent, far more than English. Once you learn that a j takes on a h sound, or that the letter u sounds like a double o, that's it. You've learned it. That's not going to change or trip you up as we continue throughout the course and learn new words. You can always hold on to these rules. Don't worry if you still feel like you aren't totally confident with pronunciation yet. That's completely normal. Just keep listening and repeating as we go throughout the lessons and you'll naturally pick it up as we go along. I'll see you in the next video.