Spanish Vowels: How to Pronounce the Five Pure Vowels

Spanish has five vowels and English has more than a dozen, so the vowels should be the easy part. They are not, because English speakers carry two automatic habits into Spanish: they glide their long vowels, and they reduce unstressed vowels to a neutral schwa. Both make an accent instantly recognisable as English.

The five vowels

Each Spanish vowel is pronounced with the tongue and lips in one position, held steady for the whole vowel. Listen to each one on its own and in a word:

Habit 1: the glide

Say English say slowly. Your tongue starts at [e] and slides up toward [ɪ]. Say go: your lips start at [o] and close toward [ʊ]. These glides are so automatic that English speakers do not notice them, but Spanish listeners do. Spanish se and lo stop exactly where they start.

A good test is to say the vowel while watching your mouth in a mirror, or with your fingertip lightly on your lower lip. For Spanish [o], nothing should move until the sound has finished. If your lips close at the end, you have added an English [ʊ].

Habit 2: reducing unstressed vowels

English unstressed syllables collapse into schwa. The second syllable of chocolate, animal and capital is barely there. Spanish does the opposite: every vowel is fully pronounced, stressed or not.

Words that look the same in both languages are the hardest, because the English pronunciation is already in your head. Practise cognates deliberately: read them aloud and check that every vowel sounds like one of the five.

Vowels that change meaning

Because there are only five vowels, each one does a lot of work. These sets differ only in their vowel, so a glided or reduced vowel can produce a different word:

• paso (step), peso (weight), piso (floor), poso (I pose), puso (he put)
• mesa (table), misa (mass), musa (muse), masa (dough)
• dado (die, given), dedo (finger), dudo (I doubt)
• cara (face), cera (wax), cura (cure, priest)

Unstressed vowels next to other vowels

There is one situation in which Spanish vowels do change: when an unstressed i or u sits next to another vowel, it becomes a glide and forms a diphthong. bien is one syllable, [bjen], and cuando is two, [ˈkwan.do]. This is a Spanish rule, not a reduction, and it is covered in the diphthongs and hiatus guide.

Practice routine

1. Say the five vowels in a row, a e i o u, holding each for two seconds without movement.
2. Read the cognates in the table above, checking that no vowel becomes schwa.
3. Do the listening drill until you score 9 out of 10 twice in a row.
4. Record a sentence such as La casa de Ana está en la plaza. and count the [a] vowels. Every one should sound the same.

Frequently asked questions

Does Spanish have long and short vowels?

No. Vowel length does not change meaning in Spanish. Stressed vowels are a little longer and louder than unstressed ones, but the quality stays the same.

Why do Spanish vowels sound "clipped" to English speakers?

Because English long vowels usually end in a glide: say is [seɪ] and so is [soʊ]. Spanish vowels hold one position from beginning to end, so they sound shorter and crisper.

Is the Spanish e like English e in bed?

It is close, but slightly higher, between the vowels of bed and bait, and without the glide at the end of bait. In closed syllables such as papel it can be a little more open.

Sources and further reading

• Hualde, J. I. (2005). The Sounds of Spanish, chapter 7. Cambridge University Press.
• Martínez-Celdrán, E., Fernández-Planas, A. M. and Carrera-Sabaté, J. (2003). Castilian Spanish. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 33(2), 255–259.
• Cobb, K. and Simonet, M. (2015). Adult second language learning of Spanish vowels. Hispania, 98(1), 47–60.

Read More in This Topic

• Spanish Pronunciation for English Speakers: The Complete Sound Guide
• Spanish Diphthongs and Hiatus: When Two Vowels Make One Syllable
• The Schwa Sound and Unstressed Syllables in English

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