¿Por qué "sol" y "do" suenan a veces diferente?

Learning the alphabet is the absolute basis to learning a language. In order to be able to read and write, you need to know how to pronounce different letters. Some languages, like English, have lots of different rules to memorize when it comes to pronunciation. In Spanish, every letter makes the same sound consistently, except for “g” and “c”, which sometimes sound different. Why is that? We’ll show you!

El español es una lengua fonética

El español es lo que los eruditos llaman una lengua fonética, lo que significa que puedes averiguar cómo pronunciar palabras by just looking at it. That’s also why accent marks are so useful! They tell you exactamente donde el estrés tiene que estar en las palabras que rompen las reglas de los patrones de acentuación.

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Of course, there always seems to be an exception, doesn’t there? All letters make the same sound, except the letters “c” and “g”, which have two different sounds.

“C” and “G” sound different in predictable ways

No te preocupes, aunque estas letras puedan emitir sonidos diferentes, existe un sencillo truco para poder saber qué sonido emiten en un contexto determinado. Como la mayoría de las lenguas, el español ha sufrido muchas transformaciones a lo largo de los años, y la influencia de distintas lenguas ha hecho que estas dos letras representen dos sonidos.

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First, we need to make a distinction between soft and hard sounds. For the letter “c”, it’s soft when it sounds like an English “s”, and it’s hard when it makes a “k” sound. For the letter “G”, it’s soft when it makes an English “h” sound, and it’s hard when it makes an English “g” sound, as in “goat”.

Suave después de e o i, duro después de a, o, u

The sound “c” and “g” make depends on the letter that comes after. If they are followed by an i or an e, they make a soft sound, and when followed by an a, o or u, they make a hard sound. Let’s practice!

Intenta pronunciar estas dos palabras, prestando atención a la regla que acabamos de aprender:

• gigante
• circo

Both of these words use the soft and hard version of the letters! “Gigante” sounds like “he-GAN-tay”, and “circo” sounds like “seer-co”.

Next time you come across a new word with a “c” or a “g”, remember these rules and you’ll be able to decode it like a pro!