Pronouncing Spanish - start at the beginning (E)

So now we're on the second vowel in the alphabet. It's a good time to remind you that there is only one way to pronoiunce the vowels, with very few exceptions to that rule. The vowel system in the Spanish alphabet and Spanish pronunciation is quite simple and straight forward. There are 5 vowels: A, E, I, O and U that always represent the same sounds except as mentioned previously in which the U becomes silent in combination with the G and the Q. One curiosity, though: for some reason Spaniards find it extremely difficult to start a word with an S followed by a consonant - instead, they put an E in front of it; so the word Spain will usually sound like Espain (and it is España); 'static' in Spanish is estática; 'studio' becomes estudio, and so on - they're in the dictionary.