Spanish · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "diez" in Spanish?

Q: How do you pronounce diez in Spanish?

diez is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /djes/. It means “ten.” dyess, one syllable — the ie glides together and the z is a plain s sound.

dyess, one syllable — the ie glides together and the z is a plain s sound.

diez /djes/

With one syllable there is no placement decision to make. The word is a good reference point for its relatives: "dieciséis" needs a written accent to hold the stress at the end, while "diez" itself needs nothing at all because a single syllable cannot be mis-stressed.

Listen: diez

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

Sound it out

di A dental d with the tongue on the upper teeth, and the i immediately glides into the following vowel like a y. So "dyeh", one beat, never "dee-eh".

e A short "eh" as in "bed", swallowed into the same single syllable as the glide before it.

z In Latin American Spanish, z is always pronounced "s" — a clean hiss. It never makes the buzzing English z sound in any position.

Hear it in a sentence

Son las diez y media.

It's half past ten.

Listen: Son las diez y media.

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

"Son las diez y media" uses "y" for and, pronounced simply "ee", and it links onto the word before it so "diez y" comes out DYEH-see. "Media" repeats the same ie glide as "diez" and stresses ME-dia, the second-to-last syllable, exactly per the default rule.

Where English speakers slip

The z is where English readers go wrong: they buzz it, giving "deez", when Latin American Spanish makes every z a plain s. And the ie gets stretched to two syllables — "dee-EZ" — where the word should be a single compact beat, dyess. Say "yes" with a d in front of it and you are almost there.