Spanish · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "mi" in Spanish?

Q: How do you pronounce mi in Spanish?

mi is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /mi/. It means “my.” mee, one syllable with a tight "ee" — and no accent, unlike the pronoun "mí".

mee, one syllable with a tight "ee" — and no accent, unlike the pronoun "mí".

mi /mi/

One unstressed syllable, leaning onto the noun it introduces, so "mi casa" peaks on CA. Its accented twin "mí" — used after a preposition, as in "para mí" — is a stressed pronoun and carries real weight, which is precisely why it earns the mark.

Listen: mi

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Sound it out

m A normal m, lips closed, voice running through the nose.

i A tense "ee" as in "see", short and bright, with the tongue high and the lips spread. Spanish i has no lax version — it never says "ih".

Hear it in a sentence

Mi casa está cerca.

My house is nearby.

Listen: Mi casa está cerca.

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"Mi casa está cerca" is a good example of estar for location: a house's position is a state, not an identity, so "está" rather than "es". The accent on "está" moves the beat to the final syllable, and "cerca" has a soft c before e, so it is SER-ka. Both s sounds in that sentence stay hissed.

Where English speakers slip

"Mih", borrowing the lax vowel of English "mitt", is the usual first attempt — and that vowel does not exist in Spanish at all; it needs the tight "ee" of "meet". In writing, the accent trips people in both directions: possessive "mi" takes none, pronoun "mí" takes one, and swapping them turns "my house" into something ungrammatical. Since the two sound identical in speech, only your fingers can get this wrong.