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Spanish to IPA converter
Convert Spanish text to IPA phonetic transcription. See the IPA, hear the word, and turn it into review-ready flashcards — without leaving what you are reading.
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Spanish in IPA
9 worked examples, each chosen for a sound the spelling hides.
butterfly — single tap r
but — one tap
dog — a trill; the only difference
thank you — Latin American seseo
year — palatal nasal
ham — velar fricative, written stress
key — yeísmo plus soft b
water — g softened between vowels
sky — /ˈθje.lo/ in Castilian
Spanish sounds to know
The symbols that come up most often in Spanish transcription, and what each one actually asks your mouth to do.
| Letter | Example | IPA | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| ñ | año | /ɲ/ | A palatal nasal — one sound, not n plus y. año and ano are different words. |
| rr, r- (initial) | perro | /r/ | A true trill, several taps of the tongue. Word-initial r is trilled even when written single. |
| r (between vowels) | pero | /ɾ/ | A single tap, the sound in American English butter. The pero / perro pair rests on this alone. |
| j, ge, gi | jamón | /x/ | A voiceless velar fricative. Softer, closer to /h/, in the Caribbean and much of Central America. |
| ll, y | llave | /ʝ/ | Most of the Spanish-speaking world merges ll and y (yeísmo); Rioplatense says both as /ʃ/ or /ʒ/. |
| z, ce, ci | cielo | /s/ | In Latin America /s/; in Castilian /θ/, the th of English think. This is the single biggest dialect split in Spanish. |
| b, v (between vowels) | lava | /β/ | Lips close but do not touch. b and v are the same phoneme in Spanish — spelling alone tells them apart. |
| d (between vowels) | nada | /ð/ | Softens to the th of English this. At the end of a word it can vanish entirely. |
| g (between vowels) | agua | /ɣ/ | The soft partner of /ɡ/, a fricative rather than a full stop. |
| ch | mucho | /t͡ʃ/ | A single affricate, the same sound as English ch in church. |
How Spanish writing maps to sound
Spanish is close to one letter per sound, which is why the tricky part is not decoding the spelling but knowing what the letters do between vowels: b, d and g soften to /β/, /ð/ and /ɣ/ there, and the spelling never shows it. Stress is written with an accent only when it breaks the default pattern.
Which Spanish do these transcriptions show?
IPAtics transcribes a neutral Latin American standard: seseo, so c before e or i and z are both /s/. Castilian (peninsular) Spanish instead uses /θ/ there, distinguishing casa from caza. Rioplatense Spanish says ll and y as /ʃ/ or /ʒ/, and Caribbean varieties weaken syllable-final s to /h/ or drop it.
Why guess Spanish pronunciation?
Spanish spelling is famously close to its pronunciation, but a few details still trip learners: regional differences in the c/z sound, the b/v merger, and the contrast between the tapped and trilled r all affect the transcription.
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