Spanish · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "perdón" in Spanish?

Q: How do you pronounce perdón in Spanish?

perdón is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /peɾˈðon/. It means “sorry / excuse me.” pehr-DOHN — accent on the last syllable, and the d is soft, close to a th.

pehr-DOHN — accent on the last syllable, and the d is soft, close to a th.

perdón /peɾˈðon/

Two syllables, per-DÓN, and the accent is doing real work. The word ends in n, so the default rule would put the beat on the second-to-last syllable, giving "PER-don". The written accent overrides that and moves it to the end. Drop the accent and you get "perdon", which is simply not a word — the mark is not decoration.

Listen: perdón

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Sound it out

per A short "eh" as in "bed", then a single tap of the r. The vowel keeps its own colour; English speakers let their r swallow it into the "er" of "her", which Spanish never does.

d Sitting after an r, this d is soft — the tongue brushes the upper teeth without sealing them, giving a sound near the th in "those".

ón A pure "oh" with the accent mark on it, closed by a clean n. This is the loud syllable.

Hear it in a sentence

Perdón, llegué tarde.

Sorry, I arrived late.

Listen: Perdón, llegué tarde.

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"Perdón, llegué tarde" pairs the apology with another accented word doing the same job: "llegué" ends in a vowel, so the default would be "LLE-gue", and the accent pushes the beat to the final é to mark the past tense. Two words, two accents, both moving stress to the last syllable. The "ll" in "llegué" is a y sound — yeh-GEH — not an English l.

Where English speakers slip

English speakers reach for the shape of their own word "pardon" and stress the front: "PER-don". That is the one thing the accent mark exists to prevent. The r causes trouble too — an American r bends the whole first syllable into "purr", where Spanish wants a clear "peh" followed by a light flick of the tongue. Keep the two sounds separate and the word lands correctly.