Spanish · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "la vez" in Spanish?

Q: How do you pronounce la vez in Spanish?

la vez is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /la bes/. It means “time (occasion).” lah bess — it starts with a b sound and the z is a plain hissing s.

lah bess — it starts with a b sound and the z is a plain hissing s.

la vez /la bes/

One beat in the noun, so placement never arises. The plural "veces" adds a syllable, swaps z for c before the e, and lands its beat on VE, which is the default placement. That z-to-c change happens across the language — "lápiz" becomes "lápices", "feliz" becomes "felices" — and it never alters the sound.

Listen: la vez

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Sound it out

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

ve The v is a b sound — Spanish makes no distinction between the letters — followed by a short "eh" as in "bed".

z In Latin American Spanish, z is always a clean hissing "s". Never a buzz, and never silent.

Hear it in a sentence

Es mi primera vez aquí.

It's my first time here.

Listen: Es mi primera vez aquí.

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"Es mi primera vez aquí" uses the feminine "primera" to agree with "vez", which is feminine despite its consonant ending. "Aquí" needs its accent to hold the stress on the final í. Say "vez aquí" and the s links straight into the a.

Where English speakers slip

Two English habits land on a three-letter word: the z gets buzzed and the v gets made with the teeth, giving "vezz". Both wrong: b sound at the front, hiss at the back. The bigger issue is semantic — "vez" means time in the sense of an occasion, while "tiempo" is duration and "hora" is clock time. Using the wrong one produces sentences that are grammatical but strange.