LingoDrop
Spanish · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "la familia" in Spanish?
lah fah-MEE-lyah, three beats in the noun — the ia glides into one final sound.
Three syllables: fa-MI-lia, stressed on the second-to-last because the ia counts as a single diphthong. Without that fusion the word would be four syllables and the beat would land elsewhere. The plural "familias" keeps the same structure and stress.
Listen: la familia
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
Quiero mucho a mi familia.
I love my family very much.
Listen: Quiero mucho a mi familia.
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"Quiero mucho a mi familia" uses the personal "a" before a human object, which English has no equivalent for. Note "querer" here means to love rather than to want — with people, that is the usual reading, and "quiero mucho a" is a standard way of expressing affection.
Where English speakers slip
Stretch the ia into two syllables and the word grows to four beats: "fa-MEE-lee-ah". Squeeze it into a glide. The English "family" also pulls the stress to the front and reduces everything after it. And the l should stay bright — English speakers often import a slightly darker l here, which shifts the whole word's colour.