how would you say a plural amount of letters? like in english you would say “two K’s” (kays) or “three S’s” (esses), how would you write it in spanish and how would you pronounce it?
Just a warning this kind of goes all over the place because of a lot of grammatical minutiae, but the simple answer:
la K / la ka = the letter K(las) dos kas = the two K’s
la S / la ese = the letter S(las) tres eses = the three S’s
You sometimes see it a letter written by itself or as its pronunciation (la K or la ka in singular), but in plural it’s usually its pronunciation (las kas)
So like…
Hay dos kas en “jackknife”. = There are two K’s in “jackknife”.
“Necessity” tiene dos eses. = “Necessity” has two S’s.
Most of the letters will have a kind of -s sound tacked onto their pronounciation and that will get you the plural of that sound.
There are exceptions… the vowels + X
La a [the letter A] => Las aes [the A’s]
La e [the letter E] => Las es / Las ees [the E’s]
La o [the letter O] => Las oes [the O’s]
La u [the letter U] => Las úes [U’s]
La i (latina) [the letter I] => Las íes (latinas) [I’s]La i (griega) [the letter Y] => Las íes (griegas) [Y’s]
La equis [the letter X] => Las equis [X’s]
With U and I, it’s because you’re preserving the U and I sound so they take on an accent mark to fully pronounce it…. basically because when U+E and I+E are put together, they blend, so the accent mark adds a hiatus. With A+E and O+E, the hiatus is already there so you don’t mix the sound.
It’s really just to keep you from saying something like “the oohs” and “the ees” which could be confusing.
Saying “aes” is kind of like “a-es”, and “oes” is like “o-es” because of the hiatus.
And with E you get two options “es” and “ees”… typically I hear las es with a long EH sound for multiple E’s or people putting la letra E just to be very clear.
And X [equis] already ends in S, so you don’t have to add an additional thing and make it “equises” or something. If you see something like “XXX” it’s commonly pronounced as (las) tres equis
Additional note: Q is frequently written as either la q, or la qu or la cu. In plural I think I’ve only seen las qus and las cus.
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Onto the confusing part - and I can’t stress enough how regional this all can be, so please let me know if I make any mistakes here, native speakers.
This might be a little difficult to explain completely well because I’m not using IPA here. I’ll try and be as clear as possible but just know that I’m using the Spanish pronunciations of things and how they’d write or approximate it.
First, all letters in the alphabet are feminine probably because la letra “letter” is feminine, so there’s that rule first.
Second this is generally how the letters are pronounced or said in Spanish and I need to point out some things because there’s a lot actually here that won’t make sense if I don’t:
A - (a)*
B - (be / be grande)****
C - (ce)CH - (che)**
D - (de)
E - (e)*
F - (efe)
G - (ge)
H - (hache) [although I did learn it as la ache]
I - (i / i latina)*
J - (jota)
K - (ka)
L - (ele)
LL - (elle)
M - (eme)
N - (ene)
Ñ - (eñe)
O - (o)*
P - (pe)
Q - (cu)
R - (ere / erre)***
RR - (erre / erre doble, doble erre)***
S - (ese)
T - (te)
U - (u)*
V - (uve / V corta / V chica)****
W - (doble u / doble uve / uve doble)
X - (equis)
Y - (i / i griega)*
Z - (zeta)
So now the little bits of explanations begin:
* The vowels - All of the vowels [A / E / I / O / U, and Y] are usually written with their pronunciations like I did above. In Spanish, most Spanish speakers know how “A” is pronounced but for the sake of non-native speakers:
A is pronounced like “ah”
E is pronounced like “eh”
I is pronounced like “ee”
O is pronounced like “oh”
U is pronounced like “ooh”
Y is pronounced like “ee”
With i and y it’s common to differentiate them as i latina [I] and i/y griega [Y]… The letter [I] is i latina being “Latin I” because it comes from the Latin alphabet, and because the letter [Y] comes from Greek it’s griega. They are pronounced the same “ee” like a long E song in English.
So say you were spelling out a word like yanqui “yankee / someone from the US” you would spell it Y-A-N-Q-U-I [i griega - a - ene - cu - u - i latina] in a way that tells you that Y and I are different letters.
** - CH. The letter “CH” which is pronounced like che or “chay” in English is not technically a letter in Spanish anymore, but it might show up in some dictionaries as its own section.
*** - R and RR. I’ve seen R written as ere and erre before. And while RR is not its own letter (anymore, but in some places it is considered its own), I’ve seen it as erre or erre doble [double R]. I was taught ere [R] and erre [RR] but I understand why that’s not totally great for everyone depending on your own pronunciation; I personally recommend saying erre [R] and doble erre [RR] if you mean RR because it makes it very clear you’re talking about a double letter.
If you were saying multiple RR’s, you’d most commonly see erres dobles.
**** This one is really its own issue but B and V have similar pronunciations in a lot of things. Just suffice it to say it’s its own issue.
For our purposes, it’s normally pronounced be [”bay”] and uve [”oo-vay”]. Otherwise, you’ll see B as B grande or B larga which mean “big/long B”… and you might see V as V corta or V chica which is “short/small V”
Another common way to differentiate it is to say B de burro “B as in burro [donkey]”, and V de vaca “V as in vaca [cow]”…….. that’s kind of like the equivalent of “B as in boy” and “V as in Victor” in English.
Side Note: It should go without saying but ele is pronounced “el-ay”, and elle is pronounced “ey-yay”… because LL has a strong Y sound.
Side Note 2: Similarly ge is pronounced like “hay”, and jota for “J” is pronounced “ho-ta”
Side Note 3: Ñ or eñe is pronounced “en-yay”
So moving on, just note that the letters are feminine, and normally you’re going to say la and then las for plural.
When doing plural, you usually have to add a -S sound to it. That’s mostly easy for the consonants, minus X so you don’t really have to worry too much.
I typically see the letters sort of spelled out so for example: hacer eses which is literally “to make S’s” is another expression for “to spin around” or “to spin out” is typically written as eses
You might see something like la m but then you might see las emes for “M’s”… I think that might just be for the sake of convenience. But you might also see la ache instead of la h… or la jota instead of la j.
It’s more acceptable when it seems to be a whole different word, kind of like la equis vs la x which I think both make sense.
I typically capitalize it if I’m going to write it as a singular letter because I think that is a little easier to understand when reading, but that is probably just me.
Additional Note: There are some abbreviations where Spanish pronounces them a bit differently; they’re normally treated as loanwords.
These are different from Spanish abbreviations:
FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation]In Spanish el FBI is pronounced like el Efe-Be-I sort of how you’d expect
CIA [Central Intelligence Agency]In Spanish this is la CIA which is pronounced la Si-A, rather than pronouncing each letter individually
KO / K.O. [knockout]In Spanish this is normally el KO which is pronounced el ka-o the way you’d pronounce K + O. In some places you’ll hear el knockout with voz inglesa but in some places they use estar KO to mean either “to be unconscious” or “to be dead tired”
OK / okayIn Spanish estar OK or OK/okay sounds just like English “o-kay”, and it’s pretty directly adapted from English
OVNI [el objeto volador no identificado] In Spanish el OVNI or el ovni is the direct translation of “UFO” or “Unidentified Flying Object”. You pronounce it “ov-ni”, rather than pronouncing every single letter
There are other expressions like this. The one I mentioned above “XXX” in English is “triple X” or “X-X-X” but in Spanish it’s tres equis and is a synonym for “pornographic” in some contexts
There’s some variations with Spanish abbreviations.
Some are like when you might see Los EEUU / Los EE.UU in writing, but you’d hear it as Los Estados Unidos “the United States” rather than hearing it all pronounced.
So it really depends on the actual word/abbreviation in question.
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