Spanish · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "de" in Spanish?

Q: How do you pronounce de in Spanish?

de is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /de/. It means “of / from (possession, origin).” deh, with the vowel of "bed" and a d made against the teeth — not "dee" or "duh".

deh, with the vowel of "bed" and a d made against the teeth — not "dee" or "duh".

de /de/

One unstressed syllable. "De" is a preposition and never takes the beat, so in "la casa de Ana" the weight sits on CA and A-na while "de" slips between them almost unnoticed. Length, not just volume, is what marks it as unstressed.

Listen: de

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Sound it out

d Dental: the tongue tip presses the back of the upper front teeth, further forward than English. In running speech, when a vowel comes before it, the contact loosens into something close to the th of "this".

e A short, open "eh" as in "bed". Spanish e has exactly this one value; it never lengthens to "ay" and never collapses to "uh".

Hear it in a sentence

Es la casa de Ana.

It's Ana's house.

Listen: Es la casa de Ana.

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"Es la casa de Ana" uses "de" for possession — Spanish has no apostrophe-s construction, so ownership is always expressed backwards as the house of Ana. Listen to "casa de": the d sits between two vowels and softens right down toward a th, so the phrase runs KA-sa-the-A-na in one flow.

Where English speakers slip

Two habits, pulling in opposite directions. Readers who trust English spelling say "dee", borrowing the letter name; readers who know it is unstressed swing too far and say "duh", importing the English schwa. Spanish sits between them with a clean short "eh" that stays clear even when quiet. And the d itself needs to move forward onto the teeth — an English d made on the ridge behind them sounds heavy in a word this small.