/n/ · alveolar nasal Spanish n is easy by itself; the difficulty is that it changes place according to the next consonant: m before p/b/m, ŋ before k/g, ɲ before y/ll. The spelling is always n. Mandarin speakers have a second issue: Mandarin contrasts -n and -ng («ān» vs «āng»), while Spanish final n is realised as ŋ in many varieties — so you hear an ng that «should not be there».
Four steps to /n/
Confirm the gesture, then learn where it changes, then put it in words.
Pin down the basic sound
Tongue tip on the alveolar ridge, velum lowered, vocal folds vibrating. That is the n of no and mano. Pinching the nose should buzz clearly.
Learn the three assimilations
n + p/b/m → m: un poco is um poco.
n + k/g → ŋ: banco is baŋko, tengo is teŋgo.
n + y/ll → ɲ: un llanto is uɲ ʝanto.
All three are obligatory, not fast-speech shortcuts.
Do not force a final ng
Many varieties (much of southern Spain, nearly all of Latin America) realise final n as ŋ. That is a dialect feature, not a requirement. At the learning stage, an alveolar n (canción ending on the ridge) is safer than imitating ŋ.
Keep n and ɲ apart
canón (cannon) and cañón (canyon) differ by exactly this. ɲ puts the tongue body on the hard palate — one gesture, not n followed by i.
Spelling: only n and ñ
Nasal spelling is simple in Spanish: n, ñ, m — none of the English kn / gn patterns.
Before p/b/m it is [m], before k/g it is [ŋ], before y it is [ɲ]. The spelling never changes.
Not n + i: one sound. See the ɲ page for the details.
Only in learned loanwords: the n after the initial m is not pronounced.
Which one are you
The three most common readings.
un poco comes out with an alveolar n
The assimilation is missing: it must be m, whatever the spelling says.
My final n keeps coming out as ng
Either dialect influence (you heard it) or the Mandarin -ng habit. Alveolar n is the safer target while learning.
I cannot hear n vs ɲ
canón / cañón is the standard minimal pair. Listen to that pair first, then compare the closure points in the cross-sections (ridge vs palate).
Word list
16 words grouped by where the sound sits in the word. Click a word to hear it. These are recorded as separate words, not cut out of the sentences above — a word cut from a sentence carries its neighbours' transitions and always sounds muddier. All three groups use the same speaker, so what changes between them is position, not voice.
Word-initial4
Word-medial8
Word-final4
Corpus and acoustic measurements
Click any word in a sentence to play from that word. The pale band over the waveform marks the measured boundary of the target word.
Per-token data
Every number below is measured directly from the audio, not hand-annotated.
| Token | Accent | Sex | Target | Target word | /n/ duration | F0 | Pitch range | HNR |
|---|
Where these numbers come from
12 synthetic sentences from two Peninsular voices; phoneme boundaries from MMS_FA.
Corpus: 12 Spanish sentences whose target words contain n, with the target word never sentence-initial or sentence-final (those positions are distorted by pauses and sentence stress).
Boundaries: MMS_FA forced alignment; word and phoneme boundaries come from the same pass. The target phoneme is looked up in the word as declared by the page, never taken blindly from the onset.
Target duration: the column is the length of the target phoneme itself, not the whole word. The «target word» column is the word.
All 12 target words contain n, in onset, medial and final position. Durations are the aligned nasal segment — nasals have no burst and flat energy, so the boundaries come entirely from the aligner. If a final n is assimilated to ŋ, the duration is still measured, but it is no longer an alveolar n.
What this page does not do: no paired differences (there is no pair to compare), and no verdict on whether you pronounce it correctly — the durations describe native speech, not a scoring standard.