This new mini-series of articles will deal with distinctions in the pronunciation of the letters of the alphabet between the Spanish and Portuguese languages.

It’s not only words spelt the same way in Spanish and Portuguese but with different meanings that can cause confusion for learners of these languages, the pronunciation varies significantly in over half of the letters of the alphabet.

The Spanish letter “C” has two sounds depending on where you are from. Either a soft “ss” sound if you’re southern Spanish, from the Canary Islands or Latin America. Throughout most of Spain, it has a “th” sound, a soft sound like that in the English “with” rather than a harder sound as in “the”. In Portuguese, the letter “C” is soft. In both languages it is pronounced “say” or “seh”, or alternatively, with the “th” sound.

The first five letters of both languages’ alphabets are pronounced in pretty much the same way: ah, beh, seh, deh, eh. We come to “F” and Portuguese is the same as English whereas Spanish pronounces this letter “efeh”.

The next letter has a completely different sound in both languages however. This is where the almost guttural sound of Spanish is first heard in this language. “G” is pronounced as a guttural/aspirate “hay” or “geh” much like the Scottish “ch” in “loch”. Portuguese pronunciation of this letter is a much harder sound and is pronounced as “gay” or “geh”. A distinguishing feature of the Portuguese “G” is that when it is pronounced in an acronym, for example, when referring to the Portuguese GNR, or “Guarda Nacional Republicana”, almost equivalent to the regular police patrol officers of the UK, “G” is pronounced more softly as in “George”.

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