El Alfabeto: Your Guide To The Spanish Alphabet

The Spanish alphabet is known as the “abecedario” or “alfabeto” and it is made up of 27 letters: 22 consonants and 5 vowels. It uses the Latin script and its words are simple to pronounce since they are easily implied based on their spelling.

For example, in the movie When Harry Met Sally, Harry tells Sally that he was up last night watching the show called Leave it to Beaver in Spanish. Because of that show, he learned the sentences “Buenos días, Señor Cleaver. ¿Dónde están Wallace y Theodore?” Now if you were to read those words without hearing how Harry pronounced them, there’s a huge probability that you’d be able to pronounce the saying just right. It doesn't sound too complicated, does it?

To help you kick off your Spanish ABC’s, here are some important points to keep in mind:
    ●    the letter H is always silent unless the letters C and S come before it
    ●    the letters B and V sound the same = both letters have a "b" sound
    ●    the Real Academia Española excluded the letters Ch and Ll from the Spanish alphabet
    ●    the letters with accent marks (á, é, í, ó, ú) are called rare dieresis and they are not part
       of the Spanish alphabet
    ●    every word that starts with the letter R is always trilled or rolled
    ●    there are four ways to say the letter W
            ◦    doble ve
            ◦    doble u
            ◦    doble uve
            ◦    uve doble
    ●    Spanish words that begin with the letters K, W, and X are rare
    ●    some places in Spain pronounce the letter C and Z as “th”