Ortografía española: visión general

Spanish has one of the most learner-friendly spelling systems among the major European languages. Once you know the alphabet and a handful of rules, you can pronounce any written word, and you can spell any spoken word with maybe 90% accuracy. The remaining 10% is concentrated in a few well-defined trouble spots — b vs v, ll vs y, g vs j, the silent h, and the four "decorations" (ñ, accent marks, ü, inverted ¿ and ¡). This page surveys the whole system and tells you which corners need closer study.

The big picture: Spanish is mostly phonemic

A phonemic orthography is one where each letter corresponds to one sound, and each sound corresponds to one letter. Spanish isn't quite perfect, but it comes much closer than English (where ough spells five different sounds in though, through, cough, rough, bough).

This means two extremely useful properties for learners:

1. If you can hear a Spanish word, you can usually spell it. The exceptions are well-defined: silent h, b/v, ll/y, g/j, and the c/z–s distinction (which peninsular Spanish actually makes phonetically transparent — see below).
2. If you can read a Spanish word, you can pronounce it. Always. There is no Spanish equivalent of colonel or Worcestershire. Stress is marked when it deviates from the default; everything else falls out of the spelling.

This page outlines the rules. The dedicated subpages handle each tricky pair in detail.

The alphabet

Spanish uses the same 26 Latin letters as English, plus ñ (a distinct letter, not a variant of n). Historically the digraphs ch and ll were counted as separate letters of the alphabet and got their own sections in dictionaries (a ch section after c, an ll section after l); the 1994 alphabetization reform absorbed them into the c and l sections, and the 2010 RAE Ortografía formally reclassified them as mere digraphs.

The vowels: five pure sounds, always

Spanish has exactly five vowel sounds, no more, no less. Each vowel letter (a, e, i, o, u) always corresponds to its own sound, and never reduces or changes quality based on stress or position. This is a massive simplification compared to English, French, or Portuguese — and it's the single biggest reason Spanish pronunciation is approachable.

The English speaker's instinct to reduce unstressed vowels to a schwa (the "uh" sound in banana) must be actively suppressed. Plátano is /ˈplata.no/, not /ˈplætə.noʊ/.

The silent h

The letter h is always silent in Spanish. There are no exceptions in native vocabulary. It exists purely for etymological reasons (preserving the Latin or Arabic origin of the word) and has no audible effect.

The flip side: when you hear a Spanish word starting with a vowel sound, you can't immediately tell from the sound whether it's spelled with or without h. Spelling-dependent traps exist (hola vs ola = "hello" vs "wave"), but they are rare enough that they're worth memorizing individually. The full list of high-frequency h-words lives on the h-words page.

C and G: the soft/hard switch

Spanish c and g each have two pronunciations, depending on the following vowel. This is the single most important spelling rule to internalize.

To keep the hard sound before e or i, Spanish uses helper letters:

• /k/ before e/i: write qu — queso /ˈke.so/, quince /ˈkin.θe/.
• /g/ before e/i: write gu — guerra /ˈge.ra/, guitarra /gi.ˈta.ra/.

To keep the /gw/ sound before e or i (rare but real), Spanish writes gü with a diaeresis (two dots):

• vergüenza /berˈɣwen.θa/ (shame)
• pingüino /pinˈɣwi.no/ (penguin)
• lingüística /linˈɣwis.ti.ka/ (linguistics)

The peninsular /θ/ — a phonetic advantage

In peninsular Spanish, the letter z and the letter c (before e/i) are pronounced /θ/ — the th sound of English think. This is called the distinción, and it makes Spanish spelling more phonetically transparent in Spain than in Latin America.

In Latin America (and in southern Spain, parts of the Canary Islands), this distinction has collapsed: c before e/i and z are both pronounced /s/, identical to plain s. This phenomenon is called seseo. Speakers with seseo have to memorize whether a word is spelled with c/z or with s — because the sounds are identical — while peninsular speakers can hear the difference and write accordingly.

For peninsular Spanish, these word pairs (cocer/coser, caza/casa, abrazar/abrasar) are clearly distinct in sound. For most Latin American speakers, they're homophones. Detailed treatment lives on the c/s/z page.

B and V: same sound, two letters

This is the only major case in Spanish where two letters spell exactly the same sound. There is no audible difference between b and v in modern Spanish (despite a common myth among English speakers that v should be pronounced like English v — it should not). Both letters represent /b/ at the start of a word and /β/ between vowels.

Because the sound is identical, you cannot tell from listening whether to write b or v. This is a pure spelling problem with no phonetic guidance, and it's the single biggest source of native-speaker spelling errors. The detailed rules live on the b vs v page.

LL and Y: yeísmo

Historically, ll and y spelled two different sounds — ll was a palatal lateral /ʎ/ (a sound like English million), and y was /j/ (like English yes). Almost all modern peninsular speakers — and essentially all younger ones — pronounce them identically as /ʝ/ (a sound somewhere between English y and j). This collapse is called yeísmo, and it is now the standard.

A few older speakers in northern Spain and some Andean varieties still distinguish ll /ʎ/ from y /ʝ/, but they are now a small minority. For practical purposes, peninsular Spanish has merged the two sounds — meaning, like b/v, you can't tell from listening whether to write ll or y. The major patterns: ll tends to appear in core vocabulary (llamar, lluvia, llano), and y tends to appear in inflectional endings (hay, voy, hoy) and a small set of nouns (yodo, yegua, yate).

J and the soft G: the /x/ sound

The letter j always spells /x/ — a velar fricative, like the ch in Scottish loch or German Bach. The letter g before e/i spells the same /x/ sound.

Because j and soft-g both spell /x/, you can't tell from listening whether to write j or g before e/i. Detailed rules live on the g vs j page.

Q, K, W: the rare letters

• q appears only in the combinations qu*e and *qu*i (silent *u) to spell /k/. Que, queso, quince, quizás. Never qua, quo in modern native vocabulary (replaced by cua, cuo: cuando, cuota).
• k is essentially never used in native vocabulary, only in loanwords: kilo, karaoke, kayak. Even kilo has a tolerated alternative spelling quilo (rare).
• w appears only in loanwords: web, whisky, sándwich, hawaiano.

X: the variable letter

The letter x is the most context-dependent letter in Spanish.

The /x/ pronunciation of x in México is the original Spanish value; the /ks/ pronunciation in taxi is a later overlay. Both spellings México and Méjico coexist, but México is overwhelmingly preferred (and is the only official form in Mexico).

Accent marks

Spanish uses one diacritic for stress — the tilde (acute accent: ´). The full theory lives on the pronunciation/written-accent-marks page; here's the one-paragraph summary:

The tilde does three jobs: (1) mark stress when a word breaks the default stress rules, (2) distinguish monosyllabic homophones like tú/tu, él/el, sí/si, and (3) mark interrogative and exclamative wh-words like qué, dónde, cómo. The tilde never decorates — it always carries information. Omitting it is a spelling error.

Punctuation: the inverted marks

Spanish uses inverted opening punctuation for questions and exclamations: ¿…? and ¡…!. These are obligatory in writing — omitting the inverted opener is a spelling error, exactly like omitting a closing question mark in English.

The opener can appear mid-sentence when the question or exclamation begins mid-clause. This is a peculiarity worth noting:

Full coverage on the punctuation page.

Ñ: the distinctive letter

The letter ñ is a full member of the Spanish alphabet, not a decorated n. It spells /ɲ/, the palatal nasal — the sound in English canyon, onion. It is iconic enough that the Instituto Cervantes uses it as its logo, the Spanish keyboard has a dedicated ñ key, and the European Union granted Spain the right to use it in EU-wide systems (notably in .es domain names) after a long political fight.

Writing n where ñ is required is a spelling error and often a meaning error: año (year) vs ano (anus); campaña (campaign) vs campana (bell); niño (child) vs nino (no such word, but the meaning is lost). On English-default keyboards, ñ is typed by holding Option+N on Mac (then n) or with the alt code 0241 on Windows.

Common Mistakes

Key takeaways

• Spanish is mostly phonemic: each letter has one or two predictable sounds, and stress is always either default (no accent) or marked with a tilde.
• The five vowels never reduce — a, e, i, o, u sound the same stressed and unstressed.
• The silent h never affects pronunciation but is etymologically obligatory in spelling.
• C and G each have a hard pronunciation before a/o/u and a soft one before e/i. Use qu/gu to keep the hard sound; use gü to keep the u audible before e/i.
• Peninsular Spanish keeps the /θ/ sound for z and soft c, making spelling more phonetically transparent than seseo-speaking varieties.
• B and V spell exactly the same sound — pure spelling memorization, no phonetic help.
• LL and Y have merged (yeísmo) — also pure spelling memorization for most words.
• J and soft G both spell /x/ — another pure memorization point.
• The inverted ¿ and ¡ are obligatory; omitting them is a spelling error.
• The letter ñ is its own letter; writing n in its place is always an error and often a meaning error.
• The tilde and diaeresis carry information and are not decorative.