Spanish · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "bonito" in Spanish?

Q: How do you pronounce bonito in Spanish?

bonito is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /boˈni.to/. It means “pretty / nice-looking.” boh-NEE-toh, three beats with the stress in the middle and a dry, dental t.

boh-NEE-toh, three beats with the stress in the middle and a dry, dental t.

bonito /boˈni.to/

Three syllables, bo-NI-to, with the beat on the second — the second-to-last, exactly as the default rule prescribes for a word ending in a vowel. All four forms (bonito, bonita, bonitos, bonitas) keep the stress in the same place, since changing between a vowel and an s ending never disturbs the default.

Listen: bonito

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Sound it out

bo A b with the lips meeting gently rather than popping, then a pure "oh" that holds one position.

ni A clean n and a tight "ee" as in "see", carrying the stress. Give this syllable length as well as volume.

to A dental t with no puff of air and another pure "oh", identical in quality to the first vowel.

Hear it in a sentence

¡Qué día tan bonito!

What a nice day!

Listen: ¡Qué día tan bonito!

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"¡Qué día tan bonito!" is an exclamation, and the accent on "qué" marks it as such. "Día" carries its own accent to break the i away from the a — DEE-ah, two beats — and "tan" is the intensifier Spanish uses in this construction, where English says what a nice day with no equivalent word at all.

Where English speakers slip

American English flaps a t between vowels into a d, which turns this into "boh-NEE-doh". Keep the t a genuine dental stop. The two o vowels then get treated differently — English glides the first and reduces the last — when they should be identical. And the b needs its lips loosened; popping it gives the word a hard edge Spanish does not have.