LingoDrop
Spanish · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "el fin de semana" in Spanish?
el feen deh seh-MAH-nah — four words, one peak, on the MA of "semana".
The phrase has one main peak, on the MA of "semana", which follows the default rule for a vowel-final word. "Fin" carries a lighter secondary beat, and "de" slips by unstressed. The plural is "los fines de semana" — the first word pluralizes, not the last, which is a common structure in Spanish compounds.
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Hear it in a sentence
¿Qué haces el fin de semana?
What are you doing this weekend?
Listen: ¿Qué haces el fin de semana?
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"¿Qué haces el fin de semana?" uses the article where English uses no preposition at all. "Haces" has a silent h and a soft c before e: A-ses. The present tense covers a plan for the coming weekend, which English would render with a progressive or future.
Where English speakers slip
The vowel in "fin" gets slackened into the English "fin", when Spanish wants a tight "ee". The whole phrase then gets over-articulated as four separate words with pauses, where a native speaker runs it as one unit: fin-de-se-MA-na. And the plural catches learners out — "los fin de semanas" is wrong; it is "los fines de semana".