A Guide to Spanish - The Spanish alphabet

What's the Spanish alphabet like?

The Spanish alphabet is called
You are trying to view Flash content, but you have no Flash plugin installed.
To find out how to install a Flash plugin, go to the WebWise Flash install guide.
el abecedario, from the name of the first four letters, a b c d.
Between 1803 and 2010 it used to have 29 letters, including ch, ñ and LL, which were considered
letters of the alphabet in their own right. However, in 2010, the Academy of the Spanish Language
agreed that ch and LL would no longer be considered separate letters, bringing the Spanish alphabet
more in line with the universal Latin alphabet. As their status as letters is still engrained in general
usage after more than two hundred years, they’re included below.
You may well have to spell out your name and perhaps your address in Spanish. Here is the alphabet
and how to pronounce it
Download mp3 - right click and choose 'save target as'
You are trying to view videoplayer content, but you have no videoplayer plugin installed.
To find out how to install a videoplayer plugin, go to the WebWise Flash install guide.

What's significant about the Spanish alphabet?

 Ñ is a letter in its own right, separate from n and sounds like the ‘ni’ in the English ‘onion’. It started life
when medieval scribes wrote a small n above a bigger one, reflecting the original Latin spelling of a
word, e.g. ‘annum’, year, which in Spanish became
You are trying to view Flash content, but you have no Flash plugin installed.
To find out how to install a Flash plugin, go to the WebWise Flash install guide.
año. Nowadays, the letter even has its own separate key on Spanish keyboards.
Ñ has become a significant symbol as it appears in the name of the language itself,
You are trying to view Flash content, but you have no Flash plugin installed.
To find out how to install a Flash plugin, go to the WebWise Flash install guide.
español
 Consonants
As a phonetic language, you read it as it’s written. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? However, a few consonants
could prove a bit of a challenge at first
There are two r sounds. When the letter sits between vowels in a word, it’s pronounced in a single roll of
the tongue. In all other instances, or when it’s a double ‘r’ between vowels, it’s a multiple trill.
You can hear both in the words
You are trying to view Flash content, but you have no Flash plugin installed.
To find out how to install a Flash plugin, go to the WebWise Flash install guide.
carrera, race or career, and
You are trying to view Flash content, but you have no Flash plugin installed.
To find out how to install a Flash plugin, go to the WebWise Flash install guide.
carretera, road
You may be familiar with the famous ‘th’ sound of a word like

You are trying to view Flash content, but you have no Flash plugin installed.
To find out how to install a Flash plugin, go to the WebWise Flash install guide.
cerveza, beer. However, in parts of Southern Spain, the Canary Islands and in Latin America, that sound
doesn’t exist and the letters are pronounced the same as the English ‘s’
B and v are pronounced the same. So, mixing the two letters up is one of the first spelling mistakes
Spanish children have to overcome at school:

You are trying to view Flash content, but you have no Flash plugin installed.
To find out how to install a Flash plugin, go to the WebWise Flash install guide.
Barcelona, Valencia, Sevilla, Ibiza
 Accents
There are also a few accents to get your head around:

You are trying to view Flash content, but you have no Flash plugin installed.
 To find out how to install a Flash plugin, go to the WebWise Flash install guide.
á, é, í, ó, ú, ü
The acute accent is used on vowels to indicate the stressed syllable of a word.
If there’s no accent on the final letter of a word ending in a vowel, ‘n’ or ‘s’, the penultimate syllable is
stressed:

You are trying to view Flash content, but you have no Flash plugin installed.
To find out how to install a Flash plugin, go to the WebWise Flash install guide.
carne, meat.
But if there is an accent, you stress the final syllable:

You are trying to view Flash content, but you have no Flash plugin installed.
To find out how to install a Flash plugin, go to the WebWise Flash install guide.
carné, ID card
The language features opening question and exclamation marks, which are upside-down and
compulsory:

You are trying to view Flash content, but you have no Flash plugin installed.
To find out how to install a Flash plugin, go to the WebWise Flash install guide.
¿Qué tal? - How are you?

You are trying to view Flash content, but you have no Flash plugin installed.
To find out how to install a Flash plugin, go to the WebWise Flash install guide.
¡Gracias! - Thank you!
 Email and website conventions
When giving an email or website address the conventions are:

You are trying to view Flash content, but you have no Flash plugin installed.
To find out how to install a Flash plugin, go to the WebWise Flash install guide.
@ arroba

You are trying to view Flash content, but you have no Flash plugin installed.
To find out how to install a Flash plugin, go to the WebWise Flash install guide.
. punto, dot

You are trying to view Flash content, but you have no Flash plugin installed.
To find out how to install a Flash plugin, go to the WebWise Flash install guide.
/ barra, forward slash

You are trying to view Flash content, but you have no Flash plugin installed.
To find out how to install a Flash plugin, go to the WebWise Flash install guide.
- guión, hyphen