Spanish · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "la gente" in Spanish?

Q: How do you pronounce la gente in Spanish?

la gente is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /la ˈxen.te/. It means “people (singular in Spanish).” lah HEN-teh — the g before e is a throaty h, and the noun is singular in Spanish.

lah HEN-teh — the g before e is a throaty h, and the noun is singular in Spanish.

la gente /la ˈxen.te/

Two syllables, GEN-te, with the weight on the first, as the default rule prescribes for a vowel-final word. The word is grammatically singular even though it means many people, so it takes singular verbs and adjectives — "la gente está", never "la gente están". That is the single most important thing about it.

Listen: la gente

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Sound it out

la A bright l and a wide "ah", unstressed.

gen Before an e, the g becomes a raspy back-of-the-mouth sound, exactly like the j — think of the ch in Scottish "loch". Then a short "eh" carrying the stress and a released n.

te A dental t with no puff of air and a short "eh". Fully pronounced, making the word two syllables.

Hear it in a sentence

Hay mucha gente en la calle.

There are a lot of people in the street.

Listen: Hay mucha gente en la calle.

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"Hay mucha gente en la calle" uses "mucha" in the feminine singular, agreeing with "gente", where English would say a lot of people with a plural. "Calle" has a double l as a y sound. The whole sentence hinges on treating "gente" as one collective thing.

Where English speakers slip

Learners read the g as hard and produce "GEN-teh", when before e or i it is the throaty j sound. That letter rule catches learners constantly, since the same g is hard before a, o and u. Grammatically, using a plural verb — "la gente son" — is the classic error, and it is immediately noticeable to a native speaker.