We are going to learn the pronunciation for the letter ‘G’ in Spanish and we are going to use a little bit of IPA.

The letter G requires 3 different pronunciations:

The first one is the sound /x/ and it is used when the following letter is ‘e’ or ‘i’ like in: lenguage, ginecologo
the second sound is used at the beginning of a word as long as it is not followed by ‘e’ or ‘i’, like in grecia, galgo, guerra, guitarra.

The letter U before a ‘E’/i/ or ‘I’/i/ is only pronounced if it has dieresis and it is represented by the 2 dots on top of the letter. An example is the word pingüino.

The third sound is used when the letter G is at the middle or end of a word, like in: tango, tanga, iglú.

The last 2 sounds are not normally distinguished and they are called allophones so the second sound could be used for all cases.

This is an spanish version of this video