Spanish · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "los" in Spanish?

Q: How do you pronounce los in Spanish?

los is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /los/. It means “the (m. plural).” lohs, one syllable, with a bright l, a pure "oh" and a hissing s.

lohs, one syllable, with a bright l, a pure "oh" and a hissing s.

los /los/

One unstressed syllable riding on the noun after it, so "los niños" is a single beat-group with the weight on NI. The article's plural s is easy to lose in fast speech, but it is the only thing distinguishing one child from several once the noun's own ending blurs.

Listen: los

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Sound it out

l The bright, forward l Spanish uses everywhere — tongue tip just behind the upper teeth, tongue body low. Never the dark l English uses before a consonant.

o A pure "oh" that holds one position. This is the sound that separates "los" from "las", so it has to be clearly rounded.

s A voiceless hiss, kept clean even though it comes right after a voiced vowel.

Hear it in a sentence

Los niños están en la escuela.

The children are at school.

Listen: Los niños están en la escuela.

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"Los niños están en la escuela" shows plural agreement running through the phrase — article, noun and verb all mark it. "Niños" needs its ñ, a single fused sound made with the flat of the tongue against the roof of the mouth. And "están" takes an accent because the word ends in n, where the default would otherwise stress ES.

Where English speakers slip

Two small things and one large one. The vowel drifts toward the English "loss" or gets glided into "lohws"; the s gets voiced into a z after the vowel; and the plural itself gets dropped in speech, which is the error that actually causes confusion. Spanish marks plurality on the article as well as the noun, so a clear, hissed s on "los" carries real information.