Spanish · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "un" in Spanish?

Q: How do you pronounce un in Spanish?

un is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /un/. It means “a / an (m.).” oon, one syllable — the u is the "oo" of "boot", not the "uh" of English "un-".

oon, one syllable — the u is the "oo" of "boot", not the "uh" of English "un-".

un /un/

One unstressed syllable, leaning on the noun after it. Its longer form "uno" stands alone when no noun follows, and stresses U-no; "un" is what you get when the word drops its ending before a masculine noun, and it never takes a beat of its own.

Listen: un

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Sound it out

u A pure "oo" as in "boot", with the lips rounded from the start. Spanish u only ever makes this one sound; it has no lax version and no "yoo".

n A clean n with the tongue against the upper teeth, fully released. In front of certain consonants it will shift position — before a p or b it drifts toward m — but it is always audible.

Hear it in a sentence

Quiero un café.

I want a coffee.

Listen: Quiero un café.

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"Quiero un café" ends on a word with a written accent: "café" ends in a vowel, so the default rule would give CA-fe, and the accent pulls the stress to the final é. Meanwhile "un café" runs together as oon-ka-FEH. "Quiero" opens with qu, so the u there is silent — a nice contrast with the u in "un", which is the entire vowel.

Where English speakers slip

English has a prefix spelled the same way — "unhappy", "undo" — and readers borrow its vowel, producing "uhn". Spanish u is always "oo". Then there is the article's other half: masculine nouns take "un", feminine ones take "una", and getting that wrong is more noticeable to a listener than any vowel error. Note the exception in "un agua", where a feminine noun starting with a stressed a takes the masculine article purely for sound.