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Spanish · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "su" in Spanish?

soo, one syllable — a clean hissing s and a pure "oo" as in "boot".

su /su/

One unstressed syllable that hands its beat to the noun after it, so "su nombre" peaks on NOM. Note that Spanish possessives agree with the thing owned rather than the owner, so "su" becomes "sus" before a plural noun — the stress pattern does not change, only the ending.

Listen: su

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Sound it out

s A voiceless hiss, never a z buzz. English tends to voice s at the start of a word before a rounded vowel; Spanish keeps it sharp.
u A tight "oo" with the lips rounded from the very start. It is shorter than English "soo" and does not slide.

Hear it in a sentence

Su nombre es Carlos.

His name is Carlos.

Listen: Su nombre es Carlos.

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"Su nombre es Carlos" is genuinely ambiguous in Spanish: "su" can mean his, her, their or your (formal), and only context sorts it out. Spanish speakers add "de él" or "de ella" when they need to be precise. The word "nombre" is stressed NOM-bre, second-to-last syllable, and its final e stays a short "eh", not "ay".

Where English speakers slip

The vowel is where English pulls it off course, either lengthening it into "sue" with a glide or, worse, reading it as "syoo" the way English does in "assume". Spanish u is a single tight "oo". Beyond sound, the trap is agreement: learners instinctively want the possessive to match the owner, as in English his versus her, but Spanish matches the number of the thing owned instead.