Does Spanish use J?

There are actually two J sounds in Spanish. In the Caribbean and Central America, the jota has a softer sound. This softer J is much easier for new Spanish learners because it's closer to the H sound in English. It sounds like the H in “hand”, but more in the back of your mouth (and also a bit longer).

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Why do Spanish use j instead of H?

Spanish being a different language than English, it can have different pronunciation for the same letters. The letter H in Spanish (and Portuguese and French) has no sound. The English 'J' as in janitor sound does not exist in Spanish.

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Is j pronounced H or Y in Spanish?

In Spanish the letter j is pronounced as the "h" in the word "heart". The letter y is pronounced just like the "y" in English . Let's look at a few examples. Soy jardinero.

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Is the Spanish j guttural?

The Spanish "j" is a strong guttural sound similar to the "ch" in the Scottish "loch".

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Is j silent in Spanish alphabet?

The letter J sounds like the HARD G in Spanish (the sound is similar to the English H but raspier). You can produce the sound anywhere in between numbers 8 and 9 on the image below.

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Spanish pronunciation: J & G

35 related questions found

Does the j sound exist in Spanish?

Mastering The Spanish J Sound

It's not nearly as tricky for most English speakers as the RR or LL, for example. In reality, however the “jota” (or J) in Spanish makes a unique sound that doesn't really exist in English. You can approximate it with an H sound (such as in “hello” and “hard”).

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Why can't Spanish pronounce j?

The same reason why Japanese have trouble pronouncing l after a consonant. J is pronounced like h or is entirely silent in Spanish and g has three different sounds. hard, soft and “h”.

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Why do Spanish pronounce j as Y?

18 Answers. It's simply dialect. "Yo" in Spanish means "I" in every Spanish language country, some just pronouce it differently depending on the country they are from or descended from. For instance because I speak Spanish in the Mexican dialect I say "Jo", pronouncing the Y with more of a "J" sound.

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Why doesn t Spanish pronounce H?

If the h is silent, why does it exist? For reasons of etymology (word history) only. Just as the "k" in the English "know" and the "b" in "lamb" used to be audible, the Spanish h used to be pronounced ages ago. Almost all Spanish consonants have become softer over the years; the h became so soft as to become inaudible.

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Why don t you pronounce H in Spanish?

The letter H

This letter is always silent unless it is next to the letter C. When you see the letter C next to an H you need to make a ch sound. This sound is almost identical to the 'ch' sound in English. In the Spanish alphabet, the word that represents the letter H is hache.

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What languages use j?

The great majority of Germanic languages, such as German, Dutch, Icelandic, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian, use ⟨j⟩ for the palatal approximant /j/, which is usually represented by the letter ⟨y⟩ in English. Notable exceptions are English, Scots and (to a lesser degree) Luxembourgish.

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Is French R similar to Spanish j?

French R Vs Spanish R

The French R sound is produced at the back of the mouth, where you'll pronounce the G of “get” in English. In France, the French R is never the Spanish rolled R, nor is it the very guttural Spanish J as in Jesus.

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How do Spaniards pronounce LL?

Pronunciation 1: LL Sounds Like The English Letter 'Y'

Just as you learned in your beginner course or textbook, ll most often sounds like the English letter 'y' as in the words “yellow” and “yes”. This is the way ll is pronounced in Spain, parts of Mexico, and most of Central and South America.

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What languages have no j sound?

Some famous examples include: Russian, Yiddish, Albanian, Armenian, Greek, and Turkish. But, languages without the /j/ sound as in English yellow, and French caillou (which means pebble) seem to be extremely rare.

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Is J silent in mojito?

The letter 'J' in 'mojito' is a silent entity. Instead, the name of this extremely popular highball cocktail from Cuba, that's made using five ingredients - white rum, sugar (traditionally sugarcane juice), lime, sparkling water and mint - is pronounced as mo-hee-toh.

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How did English get the J sound?

How did J get its sound? Both I and J were used interchangeably by scribes to express the sound of both the vowel and the consonant. It wasn't until 1524 when Gian Giorgio Trissino, an Italian Renaissance grammarian known as the father of the letter J, made a clear distinction between the two sounds.

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Does German have J sound?

J in German is pronounced as “yott” (rhyming with “thought”). The German J is pronounced as an English Y. This can be observed in words like ja, Jammer, and Jahr. Q in German shares a similarity with English: it is always paired with a U.

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What letters are not used in Spanish?

The letters k and w do not occur in Spanish words unless the word has been borrowed from another language such as English or even Japanese. For example, el karate is considered a “Spanish” noun, even though the k is not a Spanish letter.

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What is the only English word with a silent j?

J. Some of you may be happy to know that we have at this point only one English word in which the j is silent: marijuana.

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What are the 4 Spanish letters not in English alphabet?

The Spanish Alphabet: Sounds And Letters

The table above includes the four extra letters that are often included in the Spanish alphabet: ch, ll, ñ and rr.

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What letters do Spaniards lisp?

People of Madrid, and most parts of Spain, pronounce the letters z and c (when before an e or i) different from people in Latin America. This difference in pronunciation is what's called the “Spanish lisp.”

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Why is J pronounced DƷ?

The sound [dʒ] in Modern English is a late-comer, and was not significant in Old English. Old French [dʒ], which was more significant, derived from various (post-)Latin sources, including i~j (also *g plus front vowel). The English practice of writing <j> for [dʒ] was borrowed from French (as were words so spelled).

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