Spanish · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "el día" in Spanish?

Q: How do you pronounce el día in Spanish?

el día is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /el ˈdi.a/. It means “day.” el DEE-ah, two beats in the noun — the accent splits the i from the a.

el DEE-ah, two beats in the noun — the accent splits the i from the a.

el día /el ˈdi.a/

Two syllables, DÍ-a, and the accent forces a hiatus rather than marking loudness alone. A weak i beside a strong a would normally form a diphthong; the mark splits them. The word is also one of a small group of masculine nouns ending in -a, which is why it takes "el" — its plural "días" keeps both the accent and the masculine article.

Listen: el día

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Sound it out

el A short "eh" and a bright forward l, unstressed and leaning onto the noun.

dí A dental d with the tongue on the upper front teeth, then a tight "ee" carrying the accent and the stress.

a A wide-open "ah" standing as its own separate syllable. Without the accent on the i, these two vowels would fuse into a single gliding beat, "dya".

Hear it in a sentence

Cada día aprendo algo nuevo.

Every day I learn something new.

Listen: Cada día aprendo algo nuevo.

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"Cada día aprendo algo nuevo" uses "cada", which never changes form for gender. Say "día aprendo" and the final a links straight into the opening a of the verb, merging into one longer vowel. "Nuevo" glides its ue into one beat with a v pronounced as a soft b.

Where English speakers slip

Fuse the í and a into one syllable and you get "dya", which is exactly what the accent forbids. Say "DEE" and "ah" as two beats. The gender is the other trap: everything about the spelling says feminine, but it is masculine, so "un buen día" is right and "una buena día" is wrong. Learn this one as an exception from the start.