Spanish · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "perder" in Spanish?

Q: How do you pronounce perder in Spanish?

perder is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /peɾˈðeɾ/. It means “to lose / to miss (a train).” pehr-THEHR, stressed at the end, with a soft d and two single taps of the r.

pehr-THEHR, stressed at the end, with a soft d and two single taps of the r.

perder /peɾˈðeɾ/

Two syllables, per-DER, beat at the end from the r ending. Stem-changing: under stress the first e becomes ie, giving PIER-do and PIER-des, while per-DE-mos keeps the plain e. The past tense "perdí" needs an accent to hold the stress at the end, since the word now finishes in a vowel.

Listen: perder

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Sound it out

per An unaspirated p, a short "eh", and one quick tap. The vowel must stay clean — an English r would swallow it into "purr".

der A soft d, close to the th of "those" because it follows an r, then a second short "eh" carrying the stress, closed by another light tap.

Hear it in a sentence

Perdí las llaves.

I lost the keys.

Listen: Perdí las llaves.

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"Perdí las llaves" uses that accented past form — per-DEE — and "llaves" gives you the double l as a y sound plus a v pronounced as a soft b: YA-bes. Spanish uses the definite article where English would say my keys, since possession is obvious from context.

Where English speakers slip

The two r's are the problem, and English makes both of them into the bunched American r, which colours both vowels and produces "per-DUR". Each should be one forward flick with the "eh" left untouched. The d then needs softening. As a bonus difficulty, this verb covers both losing an object and missing a train, so "perdí el tren" does not mean the train is lost.