Both Spanish and English have two series of stops (also known as plosives); voiceless stops /p t k/ and voiced stops /b d g/. However, the actual phonetic realisation of these consonants is very different in the two languages.

1. Spanish voiceless stops are realised without aspiration. The difference is very noticeable in utterance-initial position. 
2. Spanish voiced stops are often realised as approximants.

What is aspiration?

When a voiceless stop and a following vowel (or liquid consonant) are pronounced in Spanish, during the closure of the stop there is no vocal fold vibration. The vowel on the other hand, is fully voiced. This means that the release of the oral occlusion must be coordinated with the activity of the vocal folds, so the onset of voicing starts at the moment of the release, or very shortly after it. In English, however, there is a considerable “gap” between the release of the occlusion and the start of vocal fold vibration. The result is a voiceless aspirated stop, so we hear a small [h] sound between the release of the stop and the vowel. This allophone is typical in utterance-initial position unless the voiceless stop is preceded by an /s/ as in spill, still. In these cases, there is no aspiration in English either. So the closest production of the Spanish voiceless stop will occur in English words such as spill, spot, still, but without the [s]. 

Note that Spanish /t d/ are more front than their English counterparts. 

Voicing in /b d g/

English voiced stops might be realised without much actual voicing during the occlusion phase of the consonant, while the Spanish voiced stops show vocal fold vibration during the whole of the occlusion. Linguists call languages like Spanish, French, Hungarian and Russian “true voice languages”. Languages like English, German, Dutch, etc. are called “aspirating languages”.

A notable characteristic of Spanish voiced stops is that very frequently – mostly in intervocalic position – they are realised as approximants rather than stops; [β ð ɣ]. This means that the articulators approximate each other, but there is no actual closure e.g. la barra (the bar), a dedo (by finger) agua (water). These types of allophonic differences are very difficult for foreign students to master. Very often, native speakers are not aware of the varying pronunciations of a phoneme either. Note that in utterance-initial position as well as after a nasal – and in the case of /d/ after /l/ too – a voiced stop is pronounced; ambos (both), aldea (village), un guante (a glove).

Word-final stops

Word-finally, the only stop that occurs in Spanish words is /d/ e.g. Madrid. It is normally pronounced as an interdental fricative [ð], or simply deleted if the word is more than one syllable long “Madrí”.

For higher levels: in Northern Peninsular Spanish it is pronounced voiceless [θ]



 “Madriz”; in Catalonia and some areas of Spanish America, it is pronounced [t] “Madrit”.

All the other stops occur in borrowings only and their pronunciation is word-specific. The English word pub, for instance, is normally pronounced [paf], clubis [kluβ] or [klu].

For higher levels: word-internal syllable-final codas in Spanish are not too common and their pronunciation varies. The word doctor, for instance, can be pronounced [dokˈtor] or [doxˈtor], [doɣˈtor]. In some dialects it might appear as a long t. In most dialects in colloquial speech, stops in this context are simply deleted. In other dialects they might be reduced to a velar realisation. 

Spanish stops

 Ideas for exercises

Depending on the level of your students, take a few sentences (or phrases) and ask your students to underline those occurrences of /b d g/ that are realised as approximants. For example, find all the [ɣ]’s in 

Or, which allophones of /d/ occur in this sentence?