Spanish · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "lento" in Spanish?

Q: How do you pronounce lento in Spanish?

lento is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ˈlen.to/. It means “slow.” LEN-toh, stress on the first syllable, with a bright l and a dry dental t.

LEN-toh, stress on the first syllable, with a bright l and a dry dental t.

lento /ˈlen.to/

Two syllables, LEN-to, with the weight on the first, as the default rule prescribes for a vowel-final word. All four forms keep it there. The adverb "lentamente" adds three syllables and moves the main beat to MEN, which is what happens to every -mente adverb — though many speakers still give the original stem a secondary stress.

Listen: lento

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Sound it out

len A bright, forward l with the tongue tip just behind the upper teeth, a short "eh" as in "bed", and a released n. This is the stressed beat.

to A dental t with no puff of air and a pure "oh", unstressed but fully rounded.

Hear it in a sentence

El internet está muy lento.

The internet is very slow.

Listen: El internet está muy lento.

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"El internet está muy lento" treats internet as masculine, which is the usual convention in Latin America. The accent on "está" holds the stress on the final syllable, and the sentence uses estar because slowness here is a current condition rather than a permanent quality of the connection.

Where English speakers slip

English offers "lent" as a near-match for the first syllable — close, but slightly too flat — and the t picks up a puff of air along with it. The final o then wants reducing to "uh". None of these is dramatic on its own, but together they make a simple word sound foreign. Also worth knowing: "despacio" is the more common word when asking someone to speak slowly.