Spanish · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "ocho" in Spanish?

Q: How do you pronounce ocho in Spanish?

ocho is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ˈo.tʃo/. It means “eight.” OH-choh, stress on the first syllable, with the ch of English "church".

OH-choh, stress on the first syllable, with the ch of English "church".

ocho /ˈo.tʃo/

Two syllables — O-cho — with the stress on the first. The word ends in a vowel, so the default rule applies and no accent mark appears. Notice that "ochenta" (eighty) pushes the beat to o-CHEN-ta — again the second-to-last syllable, again nothing written.

Listen: ocho

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Sound it out

o A pure "oh" with no glide, and it carries the stress. The lips round once and hold.

ch Treated as a single unit in Spanish, and pronounced just like the ch in "church" — one of the rare cases where English spelling instincts get it right first time.

o The same pure "oh" again, unstressed but not reduced. Both vowels in this word are identical in quality; only the loudness differs.

Hear it in a sentence

Son las ocho de la mañana.

It's eight in the morning.

Listen: Son las ocho de la mañana.

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"Son las ocho de la mañana" is telling time again with the plural "son las", and "las ocho" links across the word boundary so the s carries into the vowel: la-SO-cho. "Mañana" gives you the ñ — a single sound made with the flat of the tongue against the roof of the mouth, and here it means morning rather than tomorrow, which context alone decides.

Where English speakers slip

This word is easier than most, so the errors are subtle ones of vowel quality. English speakers glide the first o toward "ow" as in "oh no", and shrink the final o to "uh", producing something like "OW-chuh". Both vowels are the same clean, short "oh". If you can say the two o's identically, differing only in volume, the word is done.