Lesson 1.1: The Spanish Script

Welcome to the first real lesson of the Spanish course! In this lesson, we will dive into the basic elements of the Spanish script: letters, accent marks, and punctuation.

You don’t need to memorize the information in this lesson unless you really want to. As you learn vocabulary, you’ll get used to all the characters and sounds of the language. This lesson is just here to help you be aware of all the building blocks of Spanish that you’ll be using in the future.

Letters

Spanish uses the same alphabet as English (called the Latin alphabet) with an added letter, Ñ, for 27 letters in total. A few of the letters have different sounds in Spanish than in English, but they’re mostly the same. Here’s a table of the letters, their Spanish names, and their Spanish pronunciations denoted with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA):

As you can see, there are only nine letters with totally different pronunciations in Spanish compared to English: E, H, I, J, Ñ, Q, R, V, and Z. The others can mostly be pronounced like in English.

Notice how the sounds of C and Z have a Castilian option and a Latin option. That’s because they’re pronounced differently in Castilian Spanish (Spanish spoken in Spain) and in Latin American Spanish.

Accent marks

Accent marks (“accents” for short) are little symbols that are placed above or below letters to change their pronunciation or to distinguish words that are spelled the same. English doesn’t use accent marks, but most other languages that use the Latin alphabet do, including Spanish.

There are two accent marks in Spanish. They are:

• Acute accent (á): placed on any vowel except for Y to emphasize the syllable where it’s found Examples: pájaro (bird); aquí (here); está (is)

  When a multi-syllable word doesn’t have an acute accent, the second-to-last syllable is emphasized.

• Dieresis (ü): placed on U to make it pronounced separately from neighboring letters Examples: pingüino (penguin) vs. pinguino; vergüenza (shame) vs. verguenza; lingüística (linguistics) vs. linguística

The tilde (~) over the letter Ñ is not considered an accent mark because it is part of the letter itself.

Punctuation

Spanish mostly uses the same punctuation rules as English, but there are a few differences. Here some of the most important ones:

• Inverted question and exclamation marks (¿ and ¡) are placed at the beginning of questions and exclamations Example: ¿Dónde estás? (Where are you?) Example: ¡Estás allí! (There you are!)
• Angle quotes (« ») are a Spanish alternative to quotation marks (though quotation marks are still sometimes used). Example: «¡Para!» él gritó. (“Stop!” he yelled.)
• Commas are used instead of periods in decimal numbers. Example: 3,14 (3.14)

And that’s it! Now you’ve seen all of the components of Spanish text, including letters, accent marks, and the basics of punctuation. Here’s an example passage that combines all the elements in this lesson: see if you can recognize what you’ve learned!

Un día después de la escuela, vi algo grande y marrón cayendo del cielo. Fui a investigar y encontré a todos mis profesores escondidos sospechosamente en el bosque al lado de la escuela. Les pregunté: «Disculpen, ¿qué hacen aquí?» «¿Cuántos años tiene?» dijo el profesor de ciencias. Cuando le dije que tenía dieciocho años, me respondió: «Seguro que eres demasiado mayor para ser ingenuo, así que ya debes saber la verdad. En secreto, soy Papá Noel. Mi hermana, yo y los demás profesores estamos ayudando a los ciervos de la lluvia a entrenarse para volar. Uno de ellos incluso vuela mejor que un pingüino en el agua. En 8,25 meses, podrán volar la noche antes de Navidad. ¡Pero no se lo digas a nadie!»