The Spanish alphabet

Spanish uses 27 letters: the 26 of English plus ñ. Since 2010, ch and ll no longer count as letters.

Spanish is one of the easier languages to read aloud. Spelling and sound match closely, so once you know the letters and a handful of rules you can pronounce almost any word on a menu, a street sign or a train ticket, even a word you have never met. This first unit covers the alphabet itself and the names of the letters, which you need to spell your own name.

27 letters

The alphabet set out by the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language has 27 letters: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, ñ, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z. That is the English alphabet plus ñ, which comes right after n in dictionaries. The letters k and w appear mostly in words taken from other languages, such as kilo and web.

Letter names

Every letter has a name. Vowels are named by their own sound: a, e, i, o, u. Most consonants add an e: be, ce, de, pe, te. A few have longer names: hache for h, jota for j, equis for x and zeta for z. The letter ñ is eñe, r is erre and q is cu.

Some letters have more than one name in use. The RAE recommends uve for v, uve doble for w and ye for y, and many people still call y i griega, the Greek i. In much of Latin America v is called ve, ve corta or ve chica. Because b and v are pronounced exactly the same in Spanish, speakers there add a word to tell them apart: be larga or be grande for b, ve corta for v.

Spelling out loud

To ask how something is spelled, say ¿Cómo se escribe? (How is it written?). The answer goes letter by letter: Inés is i, ene, e con tilde, ese. Con tilde means the letter carries an accent mark. The digraphs keep their old names, che for ch and elle for ll, and you will also hear doble ele. You will use this at hotel desks, on the phone and whenever someone writes your name down.