Spanish · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "me" in Spanish?

Q: How do you pronounce me in Spanish?

me is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /me/. It means “me / to me.” meh, with the vowel of "bed" — not the "mee" of English "me".

meh, with the vowel of "bed" — not the "mee" of English "me".

me /me/

One syllable, and an unstressed one at that. "Me" is a clitic — it leans on the verb next to it and never takes the phrase's main beat, so in "me gusta" the weight belongs entirely to GUS-ta while "me" slips by almost unnoticed.

Listen: me

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Sound it out

m The same m as in English, lips closed, air through the nose. The one sound in this word that gives nobody any trouble.

e A short, open "eh" as in "bet". Spanish e never says "ee" — that is the job of the letter i. This single vowel is what the whole word hangs on.

Hear it in a sentence

Me gusta el café.

I like coffee.

Listen: Me gusta el café.

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"Me gusta el café" is the classic backwards-looking Spanish structure: literally "coffee is pleasing to me", so "el café" is the subject and "me" is the receiver. That is why the verb is "gusta" and not "gusto". Pronunciation-wise, "me gusta" runs as one unit, meh-GOOS-ta, with no pause after the pronoun.

Where English speakers slip

English speakers see "me" and read their own word, producing "mee". Spanish e is the vowel in "bed", full stop, so this is "meh". The mistake compounds because it teaches the wrong value for every other e you meet — "de", "que", "le", "se" all take the same short "eh". Fix it here and a dozen other words come out right.