Quickly learn how to write and pronounce the alphabet in Spanish.
How to write the alphabet in Spanish
Now, the writing part might sound easy (They use the same letters as us, right?), but actually there’s a sneaky little surprise hidden in the middle of the Spanish alphabet. Let’s take a look:
| 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 |
The ‘Ñ’
It might look like a letter ‘N’ with an accent on top, but actually the ‘Ñ’ counts as a separate letter in the Spanish alphabet. On Spanish language keyboards it even has its own key:
Spanish linguists are very proud of the ‘Ñ’, so treat it with respect!
Other letters with accents.
All the other letters in the Spanish alphabet are the same as in the English alphabet. Accented vowels (é, ó, í, á, ú) do not count as separate letters in Spanish.
Pronunciation of the alphabet in Spanish
So, how do we pronounce the letters of the alphabet in Spanish? Let’s listen:
| 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 |
Pronunciation of Ñ
And here’s that extra letter again:
- ñ
The word ‘alphabet’
In Spanish you’ll hear two words used to refer to the alphabet. They are
- abecedario
- alfabeto
PH & F
Notice how the word ‘alfabeto‘ is almost the same as the English ‘alphabet’ except that the ‘PH’ in English changes to ‘F’ in Spanish. That’s quite a common difference between the two languages. ‘PH’ words in English tend to come from ancient Greek, but when they were incorporated into Latin or Latin-derived languages (like Spanish) the ‘PH’ was changed to an ‘F’. The pronunciation is basically the same though.
Learn more about Spanish pronunciation in our dedicated section.
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