Spanish pronunciation
How to pronounce “hola” in Spanish
Means: hello
How to pronounce "hola" in 3 Spanish accents
Mexican
Castilian
Rioplatense
Slashes show the phonetic spelling (IPA) — how it sounds, not how it’s written. . separates syllables; ˈ marks the stressed one.
Voices are generated separately from the transcription and may not reflect it exactly. Real speakers vary.
YouTube clips via YouGlish — coverage varies by word.
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About "hola"
"Hola" is your entry point into Spanish — the everyday greeting you'll use with friends, shopkeepers, and strangers alike, equivalent to hello or hi in English. Pronouncing it correctly is simpler than many learners expect: two clean syllables, OH-lah, with the stress landing on the first. The h is completely silent in Spanish, always, so resist any urge to breathe into it. That's actually the number one mistake English speakers make — they ghost the h in writing but still push a little air on it in speech, producing something closer to a whispered English h. Let it go entirely. The o is a pure, steady vowel, not the drifting oh-oo glide that English tends to sneak in. Good news on the regional front: pronunciation is remarkably consistent across Mexican, Castilian, and Rioplatense Spanish, so what you learn here travels well. As for its roots, hola traces back to the Old Spanish interjection ole and shares distant ancestry with the French holà, originally used to hail someone from a distance — a small linguistic reminder that greetings have always carried urgency.