Spanish · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "así" in Spanish?

Q: How do you pronounce así in Spanish?

así is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /aˈsi/. It means “like this / that way.” ah-SEE, with the accent putting the stress on the final syllable and a clean hissing s.

ah-SEE, with the accent putting the stress on the final syllable and a clean hissing s.

así /aˈsi/

Two syllables, a-SÍ, and the accent is load-bearing. The word ends in a vowel, so the default rule would give "A-si". The mark drags the beat to the end. Notice how the second syllable is identical in sound and spelling to "sí" meaning yes — same accent, different reason, since that one is a diacrítico rather than a stress mark.

Listen: así

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Sound it out

a A wide-open "ah" opening the word, unstressed but at full value.

sí A voiceless hiss and a tight "ee" as in "see", carrying the accent and the stress. The s stays hissed even between vowels, where English would voice it.

Hear it in a sentence

No se hace así.

That's not how it's done.

Listen: No se hace así.

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"No se hace así" uses the impersonal "se", meaning roughly one does not do it that way. "Hace" has a silent h and a soft c before e, so it is A-seh. The whole sentence runs together as no-se-A-se-a-SEE, a nice chain of s sounds all kept as clean hisses.

Where English speakers slip

The s between vowels gets voiced into a z, giving "ah-ZEE", because English does that automatically. Keep it hissed. The accent then gets ignored, producing "AH-see". And there is a useful phrase worth knowing early: "así que" means so or therefore, which appears elsewhere in this course and uses exactly the same pronunciation.