Vowels in Spanish

Las Vocales

by Sra. Dominguez

a e i o u

Vowels in Spanish do not always have the same sound as in English. They also only have one sound. (Vocales tienen un solo sonido, no siempre es el mismo sonido que en ingles. (lets pronounce them together)

English has long vowels and short vowels. In Spanish the sound is almost always a short vowel sound. We do not have different sounds for vowels. We do however, have accent marks which do change the sound of a word. We will talk about accents marks later, they are very important.

In English vowels have two sounds, a long sound and a short sound. Take a look at the following words.

apple eel igloo odorugglyalien egg island octupus

unique

Note: the Spanish U has a unique sound therefore can’t be equally compared to english. It is more of “oooooo”. Like when you say mooo, a cow says mooo?

Now you try writing some English words that have the short vowel sounds.

We will write some on the board. Then go over the Spanish alphabet.

Then discuss punctuation a bit.

Most Beginers of Latin Based Languages Struggle with Pronounciation and Spelling of “e” vs. “i”!!! You won’t have this problem if you do your homework and practice practice.

What is an accent mark?Accent marks are in Spanish for two different purposes: to indicate where the stress or emphasis falls on a word when it is pronounced, and to help differentiate between identically spelled words.

They are only used over vowels, and are written as a short diagonal line, from upper right to lower left.

á é í ó ú