Learn Spanish Alphabet Phonetics Part 1: Learn your Alphabet

The first thing you should do before attempting to learn Spanish is to learn Spanish Alphabet phonetics, by starting to learn the Spanish Alphabet phonetically you will have a much better chance of pronouncing words correctly first time that you may not have heard spoken by a native speaker or a fellow student.

All the letters that you know from the English alphabet are used in the Spanish alphabet with the addition of three extra letters; these extra letters are basically accented or extended letters and their inclusion actually makes the task of pronounciation that much easier as they each represent a changing or different sound.

When you start to learn the Spanish alphabet, you'll probably find that pronunciation is a lot easier than you thought it would be, because unlike in English, you pretty much pronounce things as they are written! With all languages there will be exceptions, as is the case with Spanish, but it is very rare and something that you won't need to concern yourself with initially.

Personally, I think the best and quickest way to fully understand and learn the pronunciation of every letter of the Spanish alphabet is to listen to each letter being spoken but it won't do any harm to list the letters here along with their phonetic title; again, I cant stress enough you do need to hear the letters, and repeat them, to really understand how they work and how they're spoken.

Lets begin to learn Spanish alphabet phonetics, and we will start with the letters of the alphabet and what they are called in Spanish..

A (ah); B (bay);C (thay); CH (chay);D (day); E (ay); F ('eff-ay); G (Hay); H ('ah-chay); I (ee); J ('Ho-tah); K (kah); L ('ell-ay); LL ('ell-yay); M ('emm-ay); N ('enn-ay); Ñ ('enn-yay);
O (o); P (pay); Q (koo); R ('airr-ay); S ('ess-ay); T (tay); U (oo); V ('oo-vay); W ('oo-vay-'do-blay); X ('ay-kiss); Y (ee-gre-'ay-gah); Z ('thay-tah):

The extra three letters can be quite confusing for the newcomer to Spanish especially when looking up words that begin with them in a dictionary; the reason is that each of these letters has their own section in Spanish dictionaries, so if you were looking in the C section of a dictionary when looking for a word that begins CH you can be excused your frustrations when you can't find anything as this is a minor indiscretion that is part of the initiation into learning Spanish that all students are guilty when starting out.

I always recommend to new students and to those seeking a refresher course, that the easiest way to learn the Spanish language and alphabet is to use a good Spanish language software package or interactive online Spanish course. There are some great software packages available nowadays that are excellent value for money and superb quality to boot; in my opinion there is no need to spend $200 - $500 on a top of the range course when you can purchase a similar if not the same quality of product for much less.