LingoDrop
Spanish · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "la cuenta" in Spanish?
lah KWEN-tah, two beats — the ue glides into one sound.
CUEN-ta: two syllables, and the first carries the beat because the ue counts as one diphthong and the word ends in a vowel. The plural "cuentas" keeps it. The verb "contar" drops the ue back to a plain o and moves the beat to the end — the diphthong appears only when the stress lands on the stem.
Listen: la cuenta
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
La cuenta, por favor.
The check, please.
Listen: La cuenta, por favor.
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"La cuenta, por favor" is the last word of the course and one of the most useful phrases in it. "Por favor" gives you a b sound where the spelling says v, plus two single tapped r's. The whole phrase has one main peak, on CUEN, with the rest running lightly after it.
Where English speakers slip
The ue gets split into two syllables, giving "koo-EN-ta", when the u is a glide belonging to the first beat. The t then wants an English puff, and the final a wants reducing to "uh". Note also that the word covers a restaurant bill, a bank account and the act of counting — "la cuenta" in a bar and "la cuenta" at a bank are the same two syllables.