Spanish · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "tarde" in Spanish?

Q: How do you pronounce tarde in Spanish?

tarde is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ˈtaɾ.ðe/. It means “late.” TAHR-theh — a single tapped r, a soft d, and a final e that is fully pronounced.

TAHR-theh — a single tapped r, a soft d, and a final e that is fully pronounced.

tarde /ˈtaɾ.ðe/

Two syllables, TAR-de, with the weight on the first, straight from the default rule. The word does double duty as an adverb meaning late and a feminine noun meaning afternoon, with identical stress in both roles — only the article separates them, as in "la tarde" versus plain "tarde".

Listen: tarde

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Sound it out

tar A dry dental t with no puff of air, a wide-open "ah", and one quick tap of the r. The vowel stays clean — an English r would swallow it into a long "ar".

de A soft d, brushed against the upper teeth rather than sealing them because an r precedes it, plus a short "eh" as in "bed".

Hear it in a sentence

Llegué tarde a la reunión.

I arrived late to the meeting.

Listen: Llegué tarde a la reunión.

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"Llegué tarde a la reunión" uses the adverbial sense. Two accents appear for different reasons: "llegué" needs one to hold the stress on the final é and mark the past, while "reunión" needs one because the word ends in n and the default would otherwise put the beat on U. Both are genuinely load-bearing.

Where English speakers slip

An unpronounced final e shrinks the word to a one-syllable "tard". It is a full short "eh". The r then gets the English curl, bending the first syllable into "TARR", and the d gets popped when it should be soft. Also note the noun-adverb split: "por la tarde" is in the afternoon, while bare "tarde" is late.