The five vowels

Spanish has five vowel sounds, and each one keeps the same sound in every word.

If you can say the five Spanish vowels well, you are halfway to clear pronunciation. The vowels are written a, e, i, o, u, and each letter keeps its sound wherever it appears. Take banana: Spanish says three identical a sounds. In English, the three a’s of banana are three different sounds. That steadiness is what makes Spanish easy to read and, at first, a little hard to say naturally.

The five sounds

a is open, as in father but shorter: casa (house), mapa (map). e is like the e in bed, said a little tighter: mesa (table), leche (milk). i is like the ee in see, but short: sí (yes), libro (book). o is like the o in more without the r: oso (bear), solo (alone). u is like the oo in food: uno (one), luna (moon).

Two English habits cause most of the trouble. First, English long vowels glide: say in English slides from e toward i, and go slides from o toward u. Spanish vowels hold still. The Spanish words se and no stop cleanly, with the mouth frozen until the sound ends. Second, English weakens unstressed vowels into a quick uh. Spanish never does. In chocolate all four vowels are full: cho, co, la, te.

Reading a new word

Because each vowel letter has only one sound, you can read words you have never seen. Try murciélago (bat), a word that happens to contain all five vowels: mur, cié, la, go. Every vowel is said in full, the ie joins into one syllable, and the accent mark shows where the stress falls. Even a long word is a chain of short, clear syllables.

Two vowels in one syllable

Spanish groups its vowels into strong ones (a, e, o) and weak ones (i, u). A weak vowel next to another vowel usually joins it in one syllable, which is called a diphthong: bueno (good), siete (seven), aire (air), ciudad (city). Two strong vowels stay in separate syllables, as in museo (mu, se, o) and leo (le, o). When the weak vowel carries the stress, the pair also splits, and a written accent shows it: día (di, a, day), país (pa, is, country). Unit 7 comes back to this.