A1 The Spanish alphabet and pronunciation

Good news: Spanish is almost entirely phonetic — once you know the rules, you can read any word aloud correctly.

Tricky letters

h	always silent — hola = “ola”
j	harsh “h” — jamón
ll	like “y” — llamar
ñ	“ny” — español
v	sounds like b — vaca
z / c(e,i)	“s” (Latin America), “th” (Spain)
r / rr	tapped / rolled — pero vs perro
qu / gu	the u is silent — queso, guitarra

Vowels are pure and always the same: a e i o u = ah, eh, ee, oh, oo. That consistency is why Spanish is easy to pronounce.