{"id":9581,"date":"2016-03-21T10:00:17","date_gmt":"2016-03-21T14:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/spanish\/?p=9581"},"modified":"2016-03-20T20:53:07","modified_gmt":"2016-03-21T00:53:07","slug":"spanish-orthography-101-5-tricky-spanish-letters-and-how-to-pronounce-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/spanish\/spanish-orthography-101-5-tricky-spanish-letters-and-how-to-pronounce-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Spanish Orthography 101: 5 Tricky Spanish Letters and How to Pronounce Them"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a recent post about the things that are making you sound super gringo<\/i> in Spanish<\/a>, someone asked in the comments\u00a0about the letter x<\/i> in Spanish. This is just one of the many\u00a0tricky little symbol with a few different pronunciations, and using the wrong one in the wrong place\u00a0can sound a bit ridiculous at times.<\/p>\n

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Image via Pixabay<\/a> under CC0 (creative commons).<\/small><\/p><\/div>\n

Of course your small mistakes like these aren’t\u00a0always a bad thing<\/a>, but if you’re tired of just guessing how to pronounce letters like the\u00a0x,\u00a0<\/em>there’s hope.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, language is a pretty well-organized thing most of the time, and Spanish orthography, or the letters used to write the language, is no exception. There are countless local, national, and regional dialects of Spanish<\/a>, all of which have their own preferences for pronunciation, which can often confuse learners, but letters’ pronunciations also differ depending on what kinds of other sounds occur in their environment. In short, Spanish orthography isn’t as straightforward as you might expect.<\/p>\n

These six letters are all known to confuse Spanish learners, but their pronunciation for the most part follows hard and fast rules that you can follow to determine the correct pronunciation.<\/p>\n

Weird Spanish Letter #1: X<\/i><\/b><\/h3>\n

The x<\/em> is a bit of an unusual letter in Spanish. It somehow almost feels like it doesn’t belong in the same alphabet, and when you come across it now and then, it always seems to stick out conspicuously among the crowd of more normal-seeming letters.<\/p>\n

In general, when you encounter\u00a0an\u00a0x<\/em>, your safest bet is to pronounce\u00a0it like the English -ks-<\/i> sound: examen, exito, conexi\u00f3n<\/i>, etc.\u00a0But other times, especially in Mexican words of Nahuatl origin, the letter is pronounced like an English h<\/i>, like in the word M\u00e9xico<\/i> itself and other forms of it (Mexicano, Mexicanas<\/i>).<\/p>\n