Spanish · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "dar" in Spanish?

Q: How do you pronounce dar in Spanish?

dar is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /daɾ/. It means “to give.” dahr, one syllable — a dental d, a wide-open "ah", and a single flicked r.

dahr, one syllable — a dental d, a wide-open "ah", and a single flicked r.

dar /daɾ/

A single beat, so stress is settled before you start. The conjugation is where it gets strange: "doy" for I give borrows an ending from nowhere in particular, the past "di" is a single syllable with no accent, and "dé" for the subjunctive needs an accent only to keep it apart from the preposition "de". A tiny verb with an outsized number of odd forms.

Listen: dar

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Sound it out

d Tongue tip against the back of the upper front teeth, not the ridge behind them. Firm at the start of a word, but still lighter than the English d.

a A wide "ah" as in "father". Do not let the r pull it backward — the vowel finishes fully before the tongue moves.

r One quick flick of the tongue tip against the ridge behind the upper teeth. A tap, not a trill, and nothing like the bunched English r.

Hear it in a sentence

¿Me das tu número de teléfono?

Will you give me your phone number?

Listen: ¿Me das tu número de teléfono?

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"¿Me das tu número de teléfono?" uses the present tense as a polite request, where English needs a will or would. "Número" and "teléfono" both carry accents that pull the stress three syllables back from the end — NÚ-me-ro and te-LÉ-fo-no — which the default rule would never do on its own.

Where English speakers slip

English speakers produce "dar" as in the first half of "darling", with the r swallowing the vowel into a long American "ahr". Spanish keeps the "ah" pure and adds a light tap afterward, so the two sounds stay separate. The d also needs moving forward onto the teeth. Idiomatically, watch out: "dar" appears in dozens of set phrases like "dar un paseo" (take a walk), where give makes no sense in English at all.