Internet Explorer® recommended
Introduction
Phonemes are really important for establish language and
communication. It is well known that phonemes are one
of the primitive manners of communication for human beings. Today,
phonemes allow us constructing words that make up our languages,
which have diverse phonemes and even different numbers of them. In
this webpage, Latin American Spanish phonemes are covered, which sound different from
other languages, even Spanish from other parts of the globe.
In order to surf through this page, you can start watching the
classification of Spanish Phonemes diagram (see below), and then you
can look at the different categories and phonemes by following the
links provided.
Besides, in this page you will find many interesting resources, such
as plots of the phonemes (spectrogram, magnitude spectrum, time
representation, 3D plots, etc.), words that illustrate how they
sound, an application (filter) that will show you how a telephone
channel changes the characteristics of your voice and even the
MATLAB® codes that make it possible.
Diagram of the General Classification of Spanish Phonemes
The phonemes appear between “/” and the word(s) that accompany them are examples of using those phonemes. You can click in the word to see several graphical representations of it and the related phoneme. Also, you can click on the speaker icon to listen to the word. You can download all of the audiofiles that appear in this website here.
Note: If you want to know more about Spanish Phonemes, you can go over the refererence resources that were used to make this website. You can find it in the bottom of this page here.
| /a/ | carro |
 |
||
| /e/ | verdad |
|
||
| /i/ | kilo, hoy |
|
||
| /o/ | señor |
|
||
| /u/ | mucho |
|
| /ʧ/ | chico |
|
|
| /j/ | ya |
|
|
| /ʎ/ | llama |
|
| /ai/ | hay |
|
|||||
| /au/ | causa |
|
|||||
| /ei/ | seis |
|
|||||
| /eu/ | deuda |
|
|||||
| ia/ | criada |
|
|||||
| /ie/ | tiene |
|
|||||
| /io/ | odio |
|
|||||
| /iu/ | ciudad |
|
|||||
| /oi/ | hoy |
|
|||||
| /ou/ | lo humano |
|
|||||
| /ua/ | cuarto |
|
|||||
| /ue/ | bueno |
|
|||||
| /uo/ | cuota |
|
|||||
| /l/ | leche |
|
| /gw/ | whisky |
|
| /m/ | mesa |
|
||||||
| /n/ | nada |
|
||||||
| /ɲ/ | niño |
|
||||||
| /b/ | bebé |
|
||||||
| /g/ | jugo |
|
||||||
| /p/ | papá |
|
||||||
| /t/ | taza |
|
||||||
| /k/ | casa, quien |
|
||||||
| /ks/* | excelente |
|
||||||
| /d/ | día |
|
||||||
| /r/ | perro |
|
||||||
| /ɾ/ | fruta |
|
||||||
| /f/ | café |
|
||||||
| /s/ | vaso |
|
||||||
| /x/ | México |
|
||||||
| /ks/* | excelente |
|
||||||
| /∅/ | hola** |
|
||||||
*: /ks/ is formed by the phonemes /k/ and /s/. Also, this represents the sound that is generated by the consonant 'x', which is really important in Spanish language. For those reasons, this phoneme appears in two categories.
**: The phoneme /∅/ is muted or silent, which means that it does not sound.
Phonemes Reference
In order to construct this webpage, several sources of information were used. You can research more about Spansh Phonemes by following the links provided.
1. The University of Iowa Phonetics Resource Center: http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/#/
2. University of Nebraska Kearney Spanish Phonemes guide:
http://www.unk.edu/uploadedFiles/academics/coe/platte/SpnEngPhonetics.pdf3. Tisch School of the Arts Phonemes Page: http://asterisk.itp.tsoa.nyu.edu/asterisk/lumenvox/programmers_guide/SRGS/phonemes/spanish_phonemes.htm
4. Automatic Phonetics Transcriber online: http://www.aucel.com/pln/