Other than in loanwords (e.g. hámster; hachís; hawaiano), the letter ‹h› is always silent in Spanish except in a few dialects that retain it as Template:IPAblink or Template:IPAblink (halar / jalar; Sáhara).[13]
↑ 1.01.11.21.3/b/, /d/, /ɡ/ and /ʝ/ are fricatives or approximants ([β̞, ð̞, ɣ̞, ʝ̞]; represented here without the undertacks) in all places except after a pausa, after an /n/ or /m/, or—in the case of /d/ and /ʝ/—after an /l/, in which contexts they are stops [b, d, ɡ, ɟʝ], not dissimilar from English b, d, g, j, except that they are fully voiced in all positions, unlike their English counterparts Template:Harvcol.
↑ 3.03.13.23.3The nasal consonants/n, m, ɲ/ only contrast before vowels. Before consonants, they assimilate to the consonant's place of articulation. This is partially reflected in the orthography. Word-finally, only /n/ occurs.
↑The Spanish /e/ doesn't quite line up with any English vowel, though the nearest equivalents are the vowel of play (for most English dialects) and the vowel of bed; the Spanish vowel is usually articulated at a point between the two.
↑The Spanish /o/ doesn't quite line up with any English vowel, though the nearest equivalents are the vowel of coat (for most English dialects) and the vowel of raw; the Spanish vowel is usually articulated at a point between the two.
Martínez-Celdrán, Eugenio; Fernández-Planas, Ana Ma.; Carrera-Sabaté, Josefina (2003), "Castilian Spanish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association33 (2): 255-259