LingoDrop
Spanish · Pronunciation Guide
OH-lah, with the stress on the first syllable. In IPA: /ˈo.la/. The h at the start is silent.
Two syllables: HO-la. The weight sits on the first one; the second is short and light.
Listen: hola
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Spanish spelling is far more consistent than English, so once you know what each letter does here, you can read the word straight off the page. There's nothing silent or surprising in "hola" except the very first letter.
Hola, ¿cómo estás?
Hello, how are you?
Listen: Hola, ¿cómo estás?
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"Hola" works almost everywhere: greeting a close friend, answering the phone, walking into a shop. Spanish doesn't really draw the line English does between "hi" and "hello," so one word covers both, and formality gets signaled afterward rather than in the greeting itself.
With friends, "hola" is usually followed by something like "¿cómo estás?" With a stranger, a receptionist, or a shopkeeper, plenty of speakers lead with "buenos días" or "buenas tardes" instead, then loosen up from there. "Hola" is rarely wrong, but it isn't the only opener you'll hear.
The most common fix is also the simplest: drop the h entirely. English speakers reach for a breathy "h" out of habit, carried over from "hello" and "hi," but Spanish h is always silent, in this word and every other.
The vowels cause more trouble than the consonants. English speakers tend to turn the o into a diphthong, sliding from "oh" into a faint "oo" at the end, the way "oh" sounds in casual English speech. Spanish vowels don't glide like that; the o in "hola" stays a single, clean sound from start to finish. The final a gets the opposite treatment: English speakers instinctively swallow unstressed final syllables into a schwa, so "hola" comes out sounding like "OH-luh." Keep that last a fully open, the same "ah" quality as the stressed syllable, just shorter and quieter.