Spanish Pronunciation Generator — IPA Transcription Translator

transcripción ➔ /tɾans.kɾip.ˈsjon/
experto ➔ /eksˈpeɾto/

Links to online dictionaries:

mismo ➔ /ˈmizmo/
hay, auto, bien, cual ➔ /ˈaj | ˈawto | ˈbjɛn | ˈkwal/
ella ➔ /ˈeʝa/

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European Spanish
Mexican Spanish

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European Spanish
Mexican Spanish

Transcription under each paragraph of text

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European Spanish
Mexican Spanish

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Phonetic symbols cheat sheet

How to use this Spanish IPA translator and pronunciation generator

Introduction

This phonetic translator will help you obtain very accurate phonetic transcription of your Spanish text.

It uses the symbols of International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) — the most popular phonetic transcription system in the world.

If you need to copy the phonetic transcription into another program or print it, please read our FAQ.

Watch a tutorial "How to convert text to phonetic transcription and listen to audio recordings of words"

Number of audio recordings in our Spanish pronunciation generator

We hired professional voice-over artists to record the correct pronunciation of the most popular Spanish words. The number of the audio recordings is indicated in the following table. Click the buttons to listen to the sample words.

Adrian Mexican Spanish 10,000 words
Adrian

Karen Mexican Spanish 10,000 words
Karen

Premium features: high-quality computer-generated audio and automatic translation

The subscription Premium gives you access to some additional features in this phonetic translator:

  1. You will be able to generate the audio of your text using a selection of high-quality text-to-speech voices.
  2. You will be able to obtain an automatic translation of your text into your native language.

Please read our FAQ to learn more about premium features.

Create your own custom word lists

You can create your own custom word lists using this phonetic translator. Here's how you can do it:

  1. For the setting Transcription display options select the option "transcription above each word".
  2. In the section Choose what you will see when you click the word turn on the option " to word list".
  3. After submitting your text, click on the word you want to add to the word list and then click the button " to word list".
  4. You will be prompted to select the transcription and enter the meaning/translation of the word (the latter for most languages is optional).
  5. Once you finished adding words to your word list, click on My Account at the top of the page and then on My word lists. You will see the list of all your word lists.

There are so many things you can do with your word list:

  1. export it into a file (Word, Excel, plain text),
  2. print it from your browser,
  3. share it with other people (for example, your students),
  4. practice pronunciation of every word using the audio recordings of real people (if available) or high-quality text-to-speech voices.

Watch a tutorial "How to create custom word lists"

European Spanish and Latin American Spanish

This Spanish phonetic translator supports both European and Latin American Spanish.

If you are a beginner and want a quick solution, choose the following settings:

for European Spanish -
"Callo" and "cayo" are pronounced the same - off
"Caza" and "casa" are pronounced the same - off
The letter x before consonants is pronounced as - s

for Latin American Spanish -
"Callo" and "cayo" are pronounced the same - on
"Caza" and "casa" are pronounced the same - on
The letter x before consonants is pronounced as - ks

However there are exceptions to this "rule" in both Spain and Latin America. So, if you are more advanced student, you may want to learn more about Spanish phonology, including:

  • yeísmo - when the words such as "callo" and "cayo" are pronounced the same
  • seseo - when the words such as "caza" and "casa" are pronounced the same

Broad and narrow transcription

This phonetic translator can show both broad (phonemic) and narrow transcriptions. If you need phonemic transcription, please uncheck the following settings in the section Advanced options:

  • Display allophones for the phonemes /l/, /m/ and /n/
  • Display allophones for the phonemes /p/, /t/ and /k/
  • Display allophones for the phoneme /e/
  • Display tilde diacritic over nasal vowels

Highlighting of high-frequency Spanish words

In the section Advanced options you will find a special option that allows you to highlight high-frequency Spanish words. The words from different frequency intervals will be highlighted in the following colors:

1–1000 1001–2000 2001–3000 3001–4000 4001–5000

If you want to make the frequency analysis of your text and obtain the detailed statistics, please use Spanish word frequency counter.

Learning Spanish as second language: phonetic transcription can help you improve your Spanish pronunciation

Spanish pronunciation is relatively simple compared to other languages. The pronunciation rules in the Spanish language are quite strict.

Still, it may take you a while to learn how Spanish letters are pronounced depending on their position inside the word and the surrounding words.

This tool will serve you as an Spanish pronunciation guide and will help you save time. You will no longer need to look up the pronunciation of words in a dictionary.

If you use the phonetic transcription regularly in combination with Spanish audio and video recordings, your pronunciation and listening skills in the Spanish language will improve.

Do you learn or teach Spanish?

We know sometimes Spanish may seem complicated. We don't want you to waste your time.

Check all our tools and learn Spanish faster!

The algorithm of this phonetic translator is based on the Spanish pronunciation rules as they are described in the book Manual de fonética y fonología españolas. The book is in Spanish, and it's really one of the best you can find on the topic.

Check our Spanish phonetic subtitle converter and obtain something like this:

 

Greetings from the developer Timur

Find out how to activate your brain and learn faster (4 min.)

Timur Baytukalov. A Complete Guide to Language Learning. Part 1: Learning Pronunciation

Free Webinar "Phonetic transcription for fast language learning" (20 min.)

 


To develop this translator, we used information from different sources mentioned on this page. The phonetic transcription was taken from these sources in accordance with the Copyright Act of Canada (Paragraph 29, Fair Dealing for the purpose of education).

Alphabetical list of all words with audio or video recordings

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