Chapter I  Alphabet, Phonetics and IPA

The pronunciation of Spanish is much simpler than that of English. If we take the letter a of English as an example, we can see that it can be pronounced in quite different ways like hat [hæt], amaze [ə´mez], and yacht [jɑt]. In Spanish, almost each letter represents a phonetic sound, except these two letters c and g followed by vowels a, o, u, i and e, in which c and g are pronunced differently. It is true that a Spanish learner can start to speak Spanish after a short time training. But to pronunce Spanish correctly, it is still indispensable to practice by reading aloud every sentence, every word, and even each letter of alphabet. Also, it is necessary to master the rules of pronunciation and apply them correctly without interference from the mother tongue.

In the following sections, first we introduce the capitalization and small letters. Secondly, we list the Spanish alphabet and its correspondent IPA. 

2. Spanish letters of the alphabet

In Spanish, there are some words of the same pronunciation but different spelling, for example, botar (which means ‘jump’) / votar (which means ‘vote’).  Another case is that, when we are speaking Spanish, especially on a phone call, sometimes it is not easy to recognize a voiced sound like /b/ from a voiceless one /p/, for instance, Palencia / Valencia. Palencia is the city situated in the north of Spain, and Valencia, on the east coast of the Iberian Peninsula. Thus, if you want to take a vacation at this port by the Mediterranean Sea, you have to  pronounce V (of Valencia) clearly as a voiced sound [b]. To avoid misunderstanding these letters or phonemes, first people will tell you they are going to the city Valencia, then say that the letter V of Valencia is the one of Venezuela, a country in South America. People use this way to make sure (that) what they say won´t be misunderstood.

In the following list, we use the names of some countries or cities to help you identify Spanish letters, of which its first letter is represented as the letters of Spanish alphabet.

   A a       A de América  B b       B de Barcelona  C c       C de Ceuta CH ch     CH de Chile

   D d       D de Dinamarca   E e       E de España F f        F de Francia G g       G de Ginebra

   H h       H de Honduras I i        I de Italia J j        J de Japón K k       K de Kuwait

   L l        L de Londres LL  ll       LL de Lleida M   m      M de México N n       N de Nicaragua

   Ñ ñ       Ñ de España O o       O de Óscar P p       P de Perú Q q       Q de Quito

   R r       R de Rusia S s       S de Sevilla T t        T de Taiwán U u       U de Uruguay

   V v       V de Venezuela W   w      W de Washington X x       X de xenófilo Y y       Y de Yugoslavia

   Z z       Z de Zambia 

3. Phonetic Symbol / A Comparative Study of Spanish and English Spelling Correspondences

In the following tables, we use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to represent the spelling correspondences for Spanish and English vowels and consonants. By this way, these sound correspondences can help us relate the orthography of both languages to their sound systems, and these tables can show a phonetic comparison between these two languages, which is useful for Spanish beginners to avoid the intereference from English.  

Every language has its own phonemes to represent its phonetic sound. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a language that can distinguish two words. For example, in these two sentences ＜He beat his brother for lying＞ and ＜The dog was pulling the newspaper to bits＞, beat [bit] and bit [bɪt] differ only in their vocal sounds /i/ and /ɪ/ but semantically they are different in their meanings.

The number of phonemes varies from one language to another. Spanish has 5 vowels and 19 consonants. English in our study is considered to have 14 vowels and 24 consonants. In English, vowels can be distinguished according to their length, i.e., short vowels and long vowels, known as phonetic features lax and tense. In Spanish, those 5 vowels are distinguished from each other in their positions in the oral cavity. That is why the word isla can be pronunced as [í:sla] or [ísla], both of which are of the same meaning.

Another term needs to be introduced is ‘allophone’, which is a variant of phoneme. We can take these two consonantal sounds [d] and [ð] as an example. In English, both of them represent two different phonemes. If we pronunce [de] and [ðe], a native English speaker can understand as day [de] and they [ðe], but to a native Spanish speaker, there is no difference in the meaning between these two sounds [de] and [ðe]. Pronuncing this Spanish preposition word de [d] with a fricative [ð] does not make it into another word, but it does in English as we see /d/ in day [de] and /ð/ in they [ðe] are two separate phonemes.

3.1. Phonetic Comparison of Vowels

Vowels can de described according to these phonetic features:  tongue height, tongue backness, roundedness of lip articulation, velum position and vibration of vocal cords. Please see the following phonetic description of each phoneme.

3.2. Phonetic Comparison of Consonants

Consonantal sounds can be distinguished by these three major phonetic features:

(1) Places of articulation include bilaials, labiodentals, interdentals, alveolars, lateral, palatals, velars and glottal.

(2) Manners of articulation include stops, nasals, fricatives, affricates, liquids and glides.

(3) ŽVibration of the vocal cords is used to distinguish voiced and voiceless sounds.