Spanish · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "la amiga" in Spanish?

Q: How do you pronounce la amiga in Spanish?

la amiga is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /la aˈmi.ɣa/. It means “friend (f.).” lah-ah-MEE-gah — two a sounds meet across the words and merge into one longer vowel.

lah-ah-MEE-gah — two a sounds meet across the words and merge into one longer vowel.

la amiga /la aˈmi.ɣa/

Three syllables in the noun, a-MI-ga, beat on the second-to-last, following the default rule. The article stays "la" here rather than switching to "el", because the rule that swaps in the masculine article applies only when the noun's opening a is stressed — here the stress is on MI, so "la" is correct.

Listen: la amiga

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Sound it out

la A bright forward l and a wide "ah". Because the noun also begins with an a, the two vowels run together in speech into a single slightly longer sound.

a A wide-open "ah", unstressed. Written separately, heard as part of the same vowel as the article's.

mi A normal m and a tight "ee", carrying the stress.

ga A soft g between vowels and a final wide "ah", the vowel that marks the word feminine.

Hear it in a sentence

Mi amiga llega el viernes.

My friend arrives on Friday.

Listen: Mi amiga llega el viernes.

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"Mi amiga llega el viernes" uses "mi", which never changes for gender — only for number. "Llega" opens with the double l as a y sound and has a soft g between vowels: YEH-ga. And "el viernes" uses the article where English would say on Friday, with the v pronounced as a b.

Where English speakers slip

Learners insert a glottal stop between "la" and "amiga" to keep the words separate, which no Spanish speaker does — let the vowels merge. The g then gets hardened, and the final a reduced. There is also a common overcorrection: having learned that "el agua" takes a masculine article, some learners apply it here too, but "la amiga" is correct because the a is unstressed.