La cigüeña voló sobre la casa.

the house

Breakdown of La cigüeña voló sobre la casa.

• volar: to fly
• sobre: over
• la cigüeña: the stork

Questions & Answers about La cigüeña voló sobre la casa.

How do you pronounce cigüeña in Spain?

In standard Peninsular Spanish, cigüeña is pronounced roughly thee-GWEN-ya.

A few helpful parts:

• ci sounds like th in think in most of Spain.
• güe sounds like gwe.
• ñ sounds like ny in canyon.

So the whole word is approximately thee-GWEN-ya.
In many parts of Latin America, the first part would sound more like see-GWEN-ya.

What do the two dots over ü mean in cigüeña?

They show that the u is pronounced.

In Spanish:

• gue and gui normally have a silent u.
  • Example: guerra = the u is not pronounced.
• güe and güi mean the u must be pronounced.
  • Example: cigüeña, pingüino.

So güe is pronounced gwe, not just ge.

Why is it la cigüeña and not el cigüeña?

Because cigüeña is a feminine noun, so it takes la.

That is a matter of grammatical gender. It does not automatically mean the bird is biologically female. In Spanish, animal names often have a grammatical gender even when the actual sex is unknown or irrelevant.

If you specifically wanted the masculine form, you could say el cigüeño.