Pronunciation Reader: Type It, Hear It, See Why

Paste or type any Spanish text below. The page will read it aloud, and break every word into syllables, mark which one carries the stress, and show a broad phonetic transcription. Click any word in the text to hear just that word.

Word Analysis

WordSyllablesStress typeBroad transcription

How the Rules Work

Spanish spelling is close to phonemic: with a handful of rules you can predict, from the letters alone, where a word breaks and which syllable is stressed. That is why this page can analyse text it has never seen — nothing here is looked up in a dictionary.

Where the stress falls

Words stressed on the third-from-last syllable are esdrújulas, and they always carry a written accent — which is why the first rule is enough to catch them.

Where the syllables break

About the transcription

The transcription is broad: it shows the phonemes and the most important allophones, not every fine detail of a given speaker. Notably it marks the softening of b, d and g between vowels (abrir/aˈβɾiɾ/), the difference between the tap ɾ and the trill r (pero vs perro), and nasal assimilation (banco/ˈbaŋko/, but once/ˈonse/, because that c is an /s/).

Switching the dialect to Castilian changes c before e/i and z from /s/ to /θ/corazón becomes /koɾaˈθon/.