LingoDrop
Spanish · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "el caballo" in Spanish?
el kah-BAH-yoh — a soft b in the middle and a double l that sounds like y.
ca-BA-llo: three syllables, and the second-to-last carries the beat, straight from the default rule for a vowel-final word. The ll counts as a single consonant for syllable division. The feminine "caballa" is actually a fish, so the mare is "la yegua" — a rare case where the gendered pair does not work.
Listen: el caballo
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
El caballo corre muy rápido.
The horse runs very fast.
Listen: El caballo corre muy rápido.
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
"El caballo corre muy rápido" pairs the y sound of the ll with a trilled double r in "corre", so the sentence contains two doubled letters behaving in completely different ways. "Rápido" carries an accent pulling its beat three syllables from the end.
Where English speakers slip
An English l for the ll and a popped b between them strip the word of both its characteristic sounds, giving "ka-BAL-oh". Both need fixing: y sound and a gentle b. The two a vowels then want differentiating. Note that the related English "cavalry" and "chivalry" both come from this root, which makes the b-for-v confusion feel less arbitrary.