The Spanish Alphabet: 27 Letters That Always Say the Same Thing

Spanish has 27 letters — the English 26 plus ñ — and one enormous advantage over English: the letters almost always say the same thing. Once a child knows the sounds, they can read any Spanish word aloud correctly, including words they have never seen and do not understand. English never offers that.

Start with the five vowels, because they never change. a as in father, e as in bet, i as in machine, o as in more, u as in flute. Five sounds, five letters, no exceptions, no silent e. An English-speaking child needs a few days to stop stretching them into English diphthongs, and after that Spanish spelling is nearly solved.

The letters that surprise English speakers. h is silent (hola = "ola"). j is a throaty h (jugar). ñ is the ny in canyon. ll sounds like y. rr is rolled — and it is worth practising because pero (but) and perro (dog) differ only there. v and b sound nearly identical, and c is hard before a, o, u but soft before e, i.

Then syllables, immediately. Spanish words split cleanly into consonant-plus-vowel: ma-má, ca-sa, pe-lo-ta. Children who learn to read Spanish by syllable are reading real sentences within weeks, far sooner than in English, because there is nothing irregular waiting to trip them.

Accents do one job: they mark which syllable is stressed — ma-má, lá-piz. They never change the vowel's sound.

Continue with Spanish for kids, Spanish words for kids, learn to read English and games for 6 year olds.