LingoDrop
Spanish · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "el niño" in Spanish?
el NEE-nyoh — the ñ is one fused sound, and the i before it is a tight "ee".
NI-ño: two syllables, and the first carries the beat, which is where the default rule puts it. The ñ counts as one consonant for syllable division. The feminine "niña" and the plurals keep the same stress, and the masculine plural "niños" covers a mixed group of children — the usual Spanish default.
Listen: el niño
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
El niño come una manzana.
The child is eating an apple.
Listen: El niño come una manzana.
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
"El niño come una manzana" uses the present tense where English needs a progressive. "Manzana" has a z pronounced as a plain s in Latin American Spanish: man-SA-na. All three a vowels in that word should be equally wide open, which is exactly what English resists.
Where English speakers slip
The ñ gets split into "NEEN-yo", two sounds where there should be one. Say the middle of English "onion" and hold that tongue position. The i then wants slackening toward "ih". And omitting the tilde in writing gives "nino", which is not a word — unlike the "año" case, the result is meaningless rather than rude, but it is still wrong.