Spanish alphabet
Spanish alphabet is The Spanish Latin alphabet, 30 letters. 27 letters: the Latin alphabet plus ñ — and an h that never sounds. The characters are grouped: a letter of its own and three combinations, the letters that mislead, five vowels — and exactly five sounds. Every character on this page can be played: the sound is stored as a file and does not depend on the voices installed on your system.
A letter of its own and three combinations
ñ is the only letter Latin does not have by default. ch, ll and rr stopped being letters in 2010 but stayed sounds.
The letters that mislead
This is where Spanish departs most sharply from what an English reader expects — and where its most frequent beginner mistakes live.
Five vowels — and exactly five sounds
Spanish's main gift: only five vowels, they never reduce, and they sound the same stressed and unstressed.
Read exactly as they look
Nothing to learn here: the sound is exactly the one you expect.
What to know about this Latin script
There are 27 letters: the Latin alphabet plus ñ. Until 2010 the alphabet was counted at 29 — ch and ll were separate letters, and in dictionaries 'chico' stood after every word on c. The academy demoted them to letter combinations, but they sound the same as ever, and they are in this chart. Written stress is marked with the acute accent (á, é, í, ó, ú) — these are not separate letters, just the same vowel with a note about where the stress falls.
Test yourself
Five characters at random. No need to answer aloud — just pick; the answer appears at once.
- Which character reads as “ah”?
A clean 'ah'. Unstressed, it never fades toward 'uh' the way English vowels do
- Which character reads as “d”?
At the end of a word it almost disappears: 'Madrid' comes out close to 'Madri'
- Which character reads as “g, but a harsh h before e and i”?
To keep the 'g' before e and i, a silent u is inserted: 'guitarra' — 'gee-TAH-rrah', not 'hee-TAH-rrah'
- Which character reads as “harsh h”?
Sounds the same as g before e and i. 'jamón' — 'hah-MOHN', 'Jorge' — 'HOR-heh'
- Which character reads as “m”?
An ordinary 'm'
How to learn letters so they stay
You cannot learn a table by staring at it. What works: see a character, try to recall its sound, get it wrong, see the right answer — and come back to that character in a day, not in an hour.
- Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
- It is better to test yourself the next day than at the end of the same session. That is why a word comes back to you tomorrow.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · g = 0.82 when tested a day or two later, against 0.56 on the same day.
- Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many timesDonovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
That is why the alphabet in the app is learned a few characters at a time, not all at once: nobody holds 30 signs in one sitting.
Frequently asked
How many letters in the Spanish alphabet?
30 letters — The Spanish Latin alphabet. The characters have capital and small forms.
Can I listen to how the Spanish letters sound?
Yes. 30 signs on this page have sound: click a character to hear it. The sound works on any phone, and nothing needs to be installed.
How long does it take to learn the Spanish alphabet?
A few characters a day — one to two weeks, if you come back to what you covered. The whole alphabet crammed in an evening is remembered for an evening: without reviews the next day and three days later, the characters are almost entirely gone.
Where to start: letters or words?
Both at once: you can already read this script, so a separate letters course is not needed — a reference table is enough.