A1 · Alphabet and pronunciation
The alphabet
Twenty-seven letters, and one of them is new.
The Spanish alphabet has 27 letters: the 26 you know from English plus ñ. It comes between n and o and is a letter in its own right, not an n with decoration: año (year) and ano are two entirely different words.
The letters have their own names, and you need them the moment you spell your name: a, be, ce, de, e, efe, ge, hache, i, jota, ka, ele, eme, ene, eñe, o, pe, cu, erre, ese, te, u, uve, uve doble, equis, ye, zeta. Watch the vowels above all: the letter e is said like the e in «bet», and the letter i like «ee» — the exact opposite of what an English speaker expects, and the commonest spelling mistake on the phone. In Latin America v is often called ve corta and b be larga. The letters are feminine: la eñe, la hache.
Because b and v sound the same and h is silent, Spanish speakers say which letter a word takes when they spell it: con be, con uve, con hache. A written accent is a tilde: o con tilde. ch and ll are no longer letters of their own; they are spelt ce hache and doble ele. And questions and exclamations get a mark at the start as well, upside down: ¿Cómo te llamas?, ¡Hola!
The form
| the letter English does not have | ñ — eñe |
| h, j, q | hache, jota, cu |
| v, w | uve, uve doble |
| x, y, z | equis, ye, zeta |
| two letters making one sound | ch, ll, rr |
| question and exclamation | ¿Cómo te llamas? ¡Hola! |
The rules one by one
The form this topic is about
ñ is a letter of its own and comes after n.
Tengo veinte años.I am twenty years old.
When spelling, you say whether a word has b or v.
Vicente, con uve.Vicente, with a V.
A written accent is named when spelling.
Ramón, con tilde en la o.Ramón, with an accent on the o.
Questions and exclamations sit between two marks, the first one upside down.
¿Cómo se escribe tu nombre?How do you spell your name?
How to spot it
- ñ
- ch
- ll
- rr
- ¿
- ¡
Example sentences
Me llamo Begoña, con eñe.My name is Begoña, with an ñ.
¿Cómo se escribe tu apellido?How do you spell your surname?
Herrera: hache, e, doble erre, e, erre, a.Herrera: H, E, double R, E, R, A.
¡Hola! ¿Qué tal?Hi! How are things?
The trap English speakers fall into
Watch out
An English keyboard has no ñ, so it tends to become a plain n. That is not a cosmetic slip: año means «year», and without the tilde you get a different word you would not want in a sentence about your age. The upside-down question mark at the start belongs to the sentence just as much as the one at the end.
ñ is a letter of its own, not a decoration.
Your turn
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