Spanish · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "la izquierda" in Spanish?

Q: How do you pronounce la izquierda in Spanish?

la izquierda is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /la isˈkjeɾ.ða/. It means “left.” lah ees-KYEHR-thah — the qu is a hard k with a silent u, and the ie glides into one beat.

lah ees-KYEHR-thah — the qu is a hard k with a silent u, and the ie glides into one beat.

la izquierda /la isˈkjeɾ.ða/

Four syllables in the noun, iz-QUIER-da, beat on the second-to-last, following the default rule for a vowel-final word. The ie counts as one diphthong, which keeps the syllable count down. Note the noun is feminine, so it takes "la", and as an adjective it becomes "izquierdo" for masculine nouns.

Listen: la izquierda

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

Sound it out

la A bright forward l and a wide-open "ah", unstressed and leaning onto the noun.

iz A tight "ee" as in "see", then a z pronounced as a plain hissing s — Latin American Spanish makes every z an s, in every position including before a consonant.

quier A hard k with the u silent, the i gliding into the e as a y, and a single tapped r closing the syllable. One beat, "kyehr", carrying the stress.

da A soft d after the r, close to the th of "those", plus a wide-open "ah".

Hear it in a sentence

Gira a la izquierda.

Turn left.

Listen: Gira a la izquierda.

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

"Gira a la izquierda" uses the bare command "gira", whose g before an i is the throaty back-of-mouth sound: HEE-ra. Spanish needs the "a" of direction before the noun — you turn to the left, never simply turn left. And the article is compulsory, unlike English.

Where English speakers slip

This is one of the hardest words in the beginner course, and it fails in three places at once: the z gets buzzed, the u after q gets pronounced, and the ie gets split into two syllables — producing "is-koo-ee-ER-da". Fix them one at a time: hiss the z, silence the u, glide the ie. The word then settles into four clean beats.