LingoDrop
Spanish · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "el jugo" in Spanish?
el HOO-goh — the j is a throaty h and the g in the middle is soft.
Two syllables, JU-go, beat on the first, which is where the default rule puts it for a vowel-final word. The plural "jugos" keeps it. Note that this same spelling is also the I form of "jugar" in some learners' incorrect attempts — the actual verb form is "juego", so the noun and the verb never collide in correct Spanish.
Listen: el jugo
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
Dos jugos, por favor.
Two juices, please.
Listen: Dos jugos, por favor.
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"Dos jugos, por favor" is about as short as a useful sentence gets, and it packs in the throaty j, a soft g, two hissed s sounds and a v pronounced as a b. Note that "jugos" is countable here, meaning two glasses of juice, which Spanish handles more comfortably than English does.
Where English speakers slip
What makes this word tricky is that both of its consonants look hard and neither is, so readers produce "JOO-go" with an English j and a plosive g. The word has two letters that both look like they should be hard consonants and neither is: one is a throat rasp, the other a soft approximation. Regionally, note that Spain says "zumo" for juice, so "jugo" marks you as Latin-American-trained.