El alfabeto español

The Spanish alphabet has 27 letters: the same 26 as the English alphabet, plus the one truly Spanish letter, ñ. This page lists every letter, how it is named in peninsular Spanish, what sound it makes, and where Spain's letter names differ from Latin American ones. It also explains the 1994 reform that removed ch and ll as separate letters — a change that still confuses anyone who learned Spanish before then.

The 27 letters

Peninsular vs Latin American letter names

The letter names themselves differ between Spain and Latin America in three places. The Real Academia Española (RAE) officially prefers the Spanish names listed above as standard, but Latin American speakers will use their own forms — and you should recognise both.

The peninsular preference for uve solves a problem Latin America still has: in conversation, be and ve sound identical (since b and v are pronounced the same), so Latin Americans need disambiguating qualifiers (be larga, ve corta). In Spain, uve is distinct from be at the level of the letter name itself, so no qualifier is needed.

For y, the RAE officially recommended ye in 2010, but most Spanish speakers, both in Spain and Latin America, still use i griega in everyday speech. Both are correct. Ye is appearing more in school materials.

Pronunciation notes per letter

Most letters in Spanish are pronounced the same way wherever they appear. A handful change sound depending on context, and those are the ones to focus on.

Vowels (A, E, I, O, U)

Five letters, five sounds, no variation. A is always /a/, e always /e/, and so on, regardless of stress or position.

B and V

Both letters represent the same sound. After a pause or after m/n, it is a full /b/; between vowels or after other consonants, it softens to /β/ (lips approaching but not closing).

There is no English-style /v/ in Spanish. The b/v spelling is etymological, not phonological — it tells you where the word comes from, not how to say it.

C

Two pronunciations, depending on what follows:

• /k/ before a, o, u, l, r, or another consonant: casa, comer, cuna, claro, crema.
• /θ/ before e or i (peninsular distinción): cinco, cielo, cebolla, cintura.

To get /k/ before e or i, Spanish writes qu: queso, quien. To get /θ/ before a, o, u, Spanish writes z: zapato, zorro, zumo.

D

Two close variants: a full /d/ at the start of a word or after n/l (día, andar, falda), and a softer /ð/ between vowels (like English th in the): cada, todo.

G

Mirrors C:

• /g/ before a, o, u, l, r: gato, gusto, grande, gloria.
• /x/ before e or i: gente, gigante.

To get hard /g/ before e/i, Spanish writes gu with silent u: guerra, guitarra. If the u is actually pronounced, write ü with a diaeresis: pingüino, vergüenza.

H

Always silent. No exceptions. Hola sounds exactly like ola. The only role h plays is as part of the digraph ch.

J

Always /x/ — the strong, guttural Spanish jota. Peninsular speakers produce a particularly rough, scraping version; Latin American speakers use a softer variant closer to English /h/.

K and W

Rare letters, appearing almost exclusively in loanwords.

• K is found in kilo, kiosco, kayak — all borrowings. Native Spanish uses qu or c for the /k/ sound.
• W is found in whisky, kiwi, wifi, web — again, all foreign-origin. Pronunciation varies: /w/ in whisky, /b/ in Wagner (assimilated to Spanish phonology).

Ñ

The defining Spanish letter, with the wave (virgulilla or tilde) on top. Pronounced /ɲ/ — a single palatal nasal sound, not "n + y." English speakers approximate it with ny in canyon, but in Spanish it is one sound, not two.

The ñ originated as a scribal abbreviation: medieval scribes wrote nn and shortened the second n into a wavy mark above the first. Over centuries, this became its own letter.

Q

Always followed by a silent u, forming /k/. Que = /ke/, quien = /kjen/. There is no native /kw/ sound spelled with q; for /kw/ Spanish uses cu (cuándo, cuatro).

R

Two pronunciations:

• Single tap /ɾ/ between vowels and after most consonants: pero, caro, abre.
• Trilled /r/ word-initial, after n/l/s, and when written rr: rojo, perro, alrededor, Israel.

S

In peninsular Spanish, the apical /s̺/ — produced with the tongue tip raised toward the alveolar ridge. Slightly darker than English /s/. Always /s̺/ regardless of position.

X

Three pronunciations, depending on position:

• /ks/ between vowels: taxi, examen, próximo.
• /s/ before a consonant (common simplification): extraño often /esˈtɾaɲo/; exterior often /es.te.ˈɾjoɾ/. Formal speech can preserve /ks/.
• /x/ in some historic names: México, Texas, Oaxaca, Xavier (in Spain often respelled Javier). These are spelling fossils preserved for tradition.

Y

Two roles:

• Consonantal /ʝ/ at the start of a syllable: ya, yo, mayo, ayer. (Most peninsular Spaniards merge this with ll, called yeísmo.)
• Vocalic /i/ at the end of a word or syllable: hoy, ley, rey, soy, muy.

The single-word conjunction y (= "and") is pronounced as a vowel /i/: Juan y María = [xwan i maˈɾi.a].

Z

In peninsular Spanish, always /θ/. Zapato = /θaˈpato/, plaza = /ˈplaθa/. Latin American Spanish merges z into /s/ via seseo.

The 1994 reform: ch and ll are no longer separate letters

Until 1994, the Spanish alphabet had 30 letters, including the digraphs ch and ll as letters in their own right. They had their own dictionary sections, their own collation order, and were counted as single letters when teaching the alphabet to children.

In April 1994, the Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española agreed to align with international alphabetical sorting and removed ch and ll from the alphabet as separate entries. Since then, they are treated as digraphs — combinations of c+h and l+l — and they sort alphabetically as their component letters. Chico now sorts between ceniza and cigarro, where in pre-1994 dictionaries it would have appeared after cz in a separate ch section.

Importantly, the sounds did not change, only the alphabetical status. Ch still represents /tʃ/; ll still represents /ʝ/ (or in some conservative areas /ʎ/).

If you have a Spanish dictionary from before 1994, look for ch and ll as their own sections; in any post-1994 dictionary they're folded into c and l.

Spelling-out aloud: alphabets and codes

When dictating names, addresses, or codes over the phone, Spanish speakers use spelling alphabets — usually based on common Spanish first names or cities. There is no single official standard, but common conventions include:

• A de Antonio
• B de Barcelona (or Burgos)
• C de Carmen (or Cádiz)
• D de Dolores
• E de España
• F de Francia
• L de Lima (or Logroño)
• M de Madrid
• N de Navarra
• P de París

These are improvised and vary by speaker. Unlike the rigid NATO alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie...), Spanish speakers pick names as they go.

Common Mistakes

Key takeaways

• The Spanish alphabet has 27 letters — the 26 of the English alphabet plus ñ.
• Peninsular letter names differ from Latin American ones in four places: uve (V), uve doble (W), ye or i griega (Y), and the disambiguating qualifiers Latin Americans use for B vs V.
• Ch and ll are digraphs, not letters, since the 1994 reform. They sort alphabetically as their component letters.
• The peninsular distinción is visible in the alphabet: c before e/i and z both make /θ/, distinct from /s/.
• K and w are real letters but rare; almost all words containing them are loanwords.
• Most letters have one pronunciation; the contextual ones to learn are c, g, r, x, and y.
• H is always silent; the letter's name ("hache") is pronounced normally.