Today we are going to learn the pronunciation for the letter ‘C’ in European Spanish and for that purpose we are going to use a little bit of IPA.

The letter C has 3 very different pronunciations:
The first one is the sound /k/ and it used when:
the following letter is ‘a’, ‘o’, ‘u’, at the end of a syllable or word like in casa, saco, costa, coco, cucú, dictado, cognac
the second one is the CH sound and it is used when it is followed by a H like in coche, chico
and the third one is the /θ/ sound and it is used when the following letter is ‘e’ oe ‘i’, like in cinturón, acero, ácido, cerrado

Please be careful as this pronunciation changes from region to region. Also the letter C shares the sound with the letter Z which can cause some spelling mistakes.

There is an Spanish version of this video.